Keskustelujen arkisto

Hi!

DON ROSA:
There are no Ludwig Von Drake stories in Holland either!

Have these landmarks been mentioned before?:
- upside-down house from WDC#198
- the new woodchucks-building in the first panel from WDC#221
- the oddly shaped rock/mountain in WDC#67
- the house with the car on it from DD#26 (gag)
- the super-safe from DIS.B.PARTY #2
- the airplane from WDC#156

What are your working on at the moment, by the way?

Bye!

Arthur de Wolf -- Roosendaal, the Netherlands
email: (Email removed)
homepage: www.pi.net/~wolfman/disney

Hi all

I m back on the list again, and have a new address: (Email removed)
I changed my work, had computer-problems and a new-born daughter! All this kept me off for some time.

David: I just finished some work on your Mickey/Eli Squinch-story. Send me your address, and I will tell you more

All:Some time ago someone was looking for Disney-magazines in latin. I don t know if this information has allready been on the list, but at least two of those comics can be bought in Norway:
Donaldus Anas atque nox Saraceni
Scrugulus et radius contra procellam
They re sort of expencive, though. Anyway, try them:
"Korinor, box 13, Oppsal, 0619 Oslo"
Their faxnumber: (Norway) 22 65 78 25

Erik Horthe

First off, I've received a message asking me to pass on the news that there
is a new discussion group opening up on the Internet sponsored by the Danish
SERIEJOURNALEN which will be devoted to Carl Barks. Not Disney comics in
general, as we are here, but Barks exclusively. I don't know if there's
anything posted on it yet, but here's the address so we can take a look-see:

http://www2.dk-online.dk/users/seriejournalen/discuss5.htm

JAKOB:
I'm sure you were just kidding in order to point out the absurdity of the
American political-correctness public-relations fad when you wonder why
Disney will allow all the Plain Awfultonians to look alike, but not the
Peeweegahs. But if Disney and Gladstone were both based in South America, my
"Return to Plain Awful" would be the banned story, not my "War of the
Wendigo". But as with elves, Andes Indians are unlikely to be a noisy
socio-political group in America.

TERJE:
Just to clarify something to make sure you understand what's what:
regardless of how Gladstone serializes my stories or how you see them in
Europe, my stories are not "originally nonserialized". They are originally
serialized AND non-serialized... I do two versions of each story, so you
can't say which version is the "original". But, sure, the PREFERRED version
is the non-serialized one... nobody would disagree with that.

JOACHIM:
I'm very happy to see your 100% accurate opinions posted here onto the List
on the value of giving credits in comics as with all other creative
endeavors. But the problem is not that the publishers disagree with you.
It's not that they don't have any sense... they don't have any *choice*.
Can't you recall that in 1990-91 ALL the Egmont Disney publishing branches
started giving full credits on the first page of all their stories in all
their comics? But soon they were told to remove those credits, and for a
while they actually refused to give in saying that no one could stop them
from publishing the names of the people who wrote and drew the stories,
anymore than they could stop them from printing the names of the editors,
translators and all the other personnel. But, pretty soon, somebody DID stop
them, kaboom! So I don't know what to tell you that you can do to change
things -- quizzing the editors in public will only get you explanations like
"oh, nobody cares" or "gosh -- the one or two names just won't fit!" or
other things that we all know don't make sense. We can't expect them to make
those powers publicly look ugly for forcing practices on them and making
them take all the heat. The best thing to do is to keep expressing (as you
do) that full creator-credits are desired and are beneficial to the
popularity of the comics, but not browbeat the poor licensees for policies
they can't control. Such policy changes are bound to come along eventually
-- the 20th century in almost over, and there's so little time left to join it.

LUDWIG VON DRAKE:
Oh, I know he's not a list member, but I was asking if he was a character
who is used and seen in Europe, and you might notice I got conflicting
answers. One guy says he was never seen much and not at all for 10 years,
and someone else says he's well-known. Which izzit?
But as to Wilmer's remarks that Ludwig was based on a Sid Caesar character
and would make no sense to Europeans. Huh? Sid Caesar's professor wore
ragged clothes and a squashed top hat, like he was a destitute intellectual.
Ludwig looks nothing like that. Besides, they were both versions of the
screwball European intellectual that had been in vaudeville and movies for
50 years before Sid Caesar started using him on TV.
But the main point is that when Ludwig is used in European comic books, he
isn't given that accent, and even if he was, how could a European accent be
used in a European comic? To Europe, Ludwig surely is simply a wacky
professor type, and they've probably had those sorts of comedy characters
longer than America. The character needs nothing to do with Sid Caesar in
order to make sense. It's said that Barks based $crooge on the
ridiculously-wealthy Uncle Bim in "The Gumps" comic strip from the 20s, but
we all still understand $crooge without having ever read "The Gumps".

KRITON:
Thanks for the landmarks. Didn't that T-shaped building burn down? But the
Jr.Woodchuck Science Hall might do -- I'll check it.
And to Per with the suggestion of Notre Duck. I might have been trying to
forget that one. Do you realize how hard that will be to draw!? I'll give
you a dollar if you forget you mentioned it and delete this sentence from
the Digest before anyone sees it! Okay? Hm? Per?
Uh-oh....

HARALD:
The names "(Ulrich)Schroeder/(Klaus)Strzyz" were in an ad? It must be one
drawn by Ulrich. Ulrich and Klaus were roommates many years ago when they
were both trying to find jobs in Disney comic work. But Klaus is not the
editor-in-chief of the German weekly, if that's what you meant... he's the
translations-editor.

HARALD:
There also was a Super-Chip and a Super-Dale once. They accidentally got
some of Goofy's peanuts and used their newfound super-powers to get even with
some denizen of the forest. Anyone remember this story?

>PS: Interesting side-note: this kind of misinformation in newspapers is
>called "Ente" or "Zeitungsente" in German - meaning, of course "Duck"
>or "Newspaper duck". Whyever! But it's a normal expression...

In Denmark this phenomenon is known as a "And" or "Avisand" - meaning exactly
the same as it's German counterpart.

--- Jan

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan Lund Thomsen (aka Qed/Triangle 3532) Lystrup, Denmark
C64/RPG/INWO/Warner Bros/Disney/Anthro/Comics-addict and all-around nice guy.
----------- Email: (Email removed) ---------- Fido: 2:238/128.11 ----------

On Sep 20, 7:10pm, (Email removed) wrote:
> Subject: Re: Scones story
> For Marco Barlotti:
> The story you're describing is from Donald Duck 48 ('56) entitled
"A
> Bucket of Scones." In the original, Scrooge is on the bridge asking
for a
> "bucket of scones." Donald and the boys go to the dump and bring him
a
> bucket of *stones* (rocks) and get informed that scones are a "thin,
flat,
> round cake that's eaten." Scrooge is homesick for Scotland, you see.
> The gag works in English because stones and scones sound reasonably
alike.
> Apparently in translation you end up with words that don't sound
alike.

Yes, but Barlotti mentioned that Donald and HDL went to the
dump and collected a bucketful of gears (or "rotelle" -- little
wheels in Italian). Something tickling at the back of my mind
insists that there's a kind of pasta called "rotelle," in the
shape of little wheels or discs. I'm wondering if what happened
was this...the Italians wanted to use the story, but the pun
was impossible to translate (it's kind of far-fetched even in
English), and there wasn't a good way to rewrite the story and
still use the existing artwork. Then somebody thought of the
pasta called rotelle, and had the art retouched to make what
had been stones into little gears so that the pun would work.

To confirm my theory, I'd have to verify my vague memory that
there is a pasta called rotelle in the first place, then compare
the original US version of the story with the Italian. A strike
against the theory is the fact that Barlotti, a native Italian
kind of guy, didn't make the connection with gears and pasta,
and has stated that he thought the story didn't make any sense
as rewritten. Then again, Italian cuisine is different from
region to region... Anyway, if I'm right, the rotelle pun is
probably better than the implausibly contrived stones/scones
original. (Not that Barks himself couldn't nod off. I'm thinking
of the Christmas story that depends on somebody assuming the
plural of "moose" is "meese.")

Puns are a translator's nightmare. I've recently seen one
ingenious way of dodging the whole problem. It was a Swedish
album collecting Hagar the Horrible strips. Most of the dailies
are duly translated into Swedish, but the ones whose gags depend
on some English pun or American cultural reference (such as a
a Roman pillar with chatty graffiti on it -- a "gossip column"
-- and a gag somehow bringing Ethel Merman into connection with
mermaids) are left untranslated and in English, with a footnote
explaining what the point is. I suppose you can only get away
with that in a country where 98.6% of the population speaks
better English than most Americans...

--Dwight Decker

Pedantic footnote: "98.6%" is a thoroughly fabricated figure
in this context. It _is_ well known in the part of the world
still not using metric measurements as the average human body
temperature expressed in degrees Fahrenheit.

Dwight:
> (Not that Barks himself couldn't nod off. I'm thinking
> of the Christmas story that depends on somebody assuming the
> plural of "moose" is "meese.")

That story actually was written by Bob Gregory. And I liked the pun. In the
Dutch translation, they changed it to GANZEN/ELANDEN, drawing an extra
hole in the letter (*AN*EN).

> Puns are a translator's nightmare.

But they can be very rewarding if a good translation can be found! In one of
the episodes of "Police Squad", a stone was thrown though a window that said
"Locksmith", thus removing the L. A guy with an ox walked by and asked
"Oxsmith?". In the Dutch translation, it said "Doet u ook in oude koeien?"
Answer: "Nee, alleen in sloten". (Sorry, but I can't re-translate *this* into English!)

Back to Disney comics: the Dutch had to change some of the drawings
in various Barks gags. In one of the gags, a boy gets "Top wages". That's
untranslatable, so they redrew the top (a toy) to a stamp showing our queen,
and called it "Royal wages".
In a different gag, they redrew some cats so they could translate "it's raining
cats and dogs" to "it's dog weather", as the Dutch saying goes...

> Comic books in the US have been historically aimed at the very
> young who wanted to read a funny story about Donald or Mickey,
> not a story by Carl Barks.

But when they grow older, they're curious to know who made all those
wonderful stories. I know I did. And some of the creators of the best Disney
comics I only learnt recently, here on the list, almost 30 years after I first
read the stories.

--Harry Fluks.

Hi again!

Wilmer Rivers wrote:

<<Don (wasn't it?) asked whether Ludwig von Drake is a character who is much
used in Europe. If he is used there, I'd like to know why. Ludwig is just
an animated version (created for the Disney TV show, right?) of comedian Sid
Caesar's famous "Old Professor" character, who was a staple of American TV in
the late 1950s and early 1960s. Pretty much
everything about Ludwig - his facial expressions, his clothes, his
absent-minded behavior - is copied from Sid Caesar. Since the "Old
Professor" character was a US television character, I doubt that the
character of Ludwig would have much meaning to Europeans who hadn't seen Sid
Caesar's original version. It would therefore seem unlikely that Ludwig
would be very popular there, since he would have to be taken out of his
native context of the culture of American television. So if he is in fact
widely used in Europe, then why is that?>>

To which Dwight Decker replied:
<< Does anybody today outside the hardcore fans know that Foghorn Leghorn is
a takeoff on a radio comedian's act (I'd have to look it up to tell you just
whose)? Or that the Flintstones were swiped from the Honeymooners, Topcat is
Sgt. Bilko, and the Jetsons are Blondie? Yet those cartoons are enjoyed all
over the world without knowing the source material. And Archie is basically
Henry Aldrich, still going strong long after Henry Aldrich has been largely
forgotten. To be honest, I didn't even know that Ludwig von Drake was based
on something else. I've never been that fond of the character, but Ludwig
seems
to work well enough on his own terms that you don't have
to know what he was based on.>>

Very true. I believe the character Foghorn Leghorn was based on was
"Senator Claghorn from Bighorn," a regular on ALLEN'S ALLEY (a radio series
starring Fred Allen) who was voiced by Kenny Delmar. Ironically enough,
Delmar was later hired to voice the character of The Hunter on the TV cartoon
KING LEONARDO AND HIS SHORT SUBJECTS. He gave him much the same voice as
Senator Claghorn, and like most of my generation I thought The Hunter was a
takeoff on Foghorn Leghorn, whereas technically the reverse was the case.
For that matter, Asterix seems universally popular here and elsewhere
(except, again, in the States), and how many people outside France would know
Hubinon's character Redbeard the Pirate (whose appearance, ship and crew are
directly parodied in the pirates who regularly appear in the Asterix
stories), or the various politicians (like Caesar's financial advisor in
OBELIX ET COMPAGNIE) the supporting characters sometimes resemble?

Don Rosa wrote:

<<I'm sure you were just kidding in order to point out the absurdity of the
American political-correctness public-relations fad when you wonder why
Disney will allow all the Plain Awfultonians to look alike, but not the
Peeweegahs. But if Disney and Gladstone were both based in South America, my
"Return to Plain Awful" would be the banned story, not my "War of the
Wendigo". But as with elves, Andes Indians are unlikely to be a noisy
socio-political group in America.>>

Very likely. I've been told that the tension in South Africa are one
reason Flintheart Glomgold's native country has rarely been mentioned in
recent years. (He's been treated as a Scot and sometimes even as a resident
of Duckburg...but that all fits. Like Scrooge, he may be of Scots
ancestry...and since his first story established that, also like Scrooge, he
owns property all over the world, he probably also owns a home in Scotland
and (since his rivalry with Scrooge commenced in earnest) bought a house in
Duckburg to keep a closer eye on his competitor.

<<To Europe, Ludwig surely is simply a wacky professor type, and they've
probably had those sorts of comedy characters
longer than America. The character needs nothing to do with Sid Caesar in
order to make sense. It's said that Barks based $crooge on the
ridiculously-wealthy Uncle Bim in "The Gumps" comic strip from the 20s, but
we all still understand $crooge without having ever read "The Gumps".>>

Also true, though Uncle Bim was a generous and free-spending man,
decidedly unlike Scrooge. His name and origin in a Christmas story both
indicate his debt to another fictional character, Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles
Dickens' "A Christmas Carol..." a story still known throughout the
English-speaking world but quite possible unfamiliar to many readers in other
countries.
And, speaking of wacky professors, this brings to mind the earlier
thread about the cross-influence of two other characters of that persuasion:
Gyro Gearloose and Dr. Brown from the BACK TO THE FUTURE movies. Again, I
can't see any direct influence (can't say in Ludwig's case, never having seen
the Sid Caesar character), though a friend of mine was absolutely convinced
Brown was a takeoff on the host of a children's science show, Professor
Wonderful (I think that was his name), whom I'd never heard of.
At this point, who's to say who influenced these characters, who proved
so much more enduring than their original influences? Archie does owe much to
Henry Aldrich (and very likely to Harold Teen, Andy Hardy, and many other
comic teenagers in various media) but the fact that he's survived so long
indicates that he connected on some level that those long-forgotten
characters didn't.

Rich Morrissey