Keskustelujen arkisto

I agree with Dwight, Don, Rich, et al. who assert that Ludwig von Drake
(or any character who is based on some other one) must stand on his own
apart from comparison to the original. What I was saying is that in
the case of Ludwig, he **fails** to stand very well on his own. If you
aren't familiar with Sid Caesar's "Old Professor", then I don't know
why you would find Ludwig particularly interesting. You would probably
enjoy the character of Fred Flinstone more if you were familiar with
comedian Jackie Gleason's "Ralph Kramden" character from "The Honey-
mooners", on which "The Flinstones" was based, but it's certainly not
**necessary** to know about Ralph Kramden in order to enjoy Fred. He's
a strong character in his own right. I don't think Ludwig is, though.

And while it's true that the intellectual who has his mind in the clouds
and doesn't have much common sense is a stock comedic character of long
standing, I still assert that Ludwig was created specifically as an
animated version of the "Old Professor", since that was a popular TV
character at the time that Ludwig was created for the Disney TV show.
The trademark of Sid Caesar and the "Old Professor" was Caesar's squinty
eyes and deeply furrowed brow. If you look at a caricature of the Old
Professor (I'm thinking praticularly of how he was drawn, frequently,
in cartoons for "Mad" magazine by Mort Drucker) and then at a picture of
Ludwig, you will see that the image of Ludwig was created basically by
adding a beak to the caricature of the Old Professor. Well, that's my
opinion, and I'm sticking to it.

Wilmer Rivers

For the Duckburg landmarks, has anyone mentioned the stone head of Senator
Snoggin on Mount Mushmore (WDC 204)?

GARY LEACH
Thanks for the cover stock explanation. We had discussed it here before and
it seemed far too occasional to be a planned marketing tool. On second
thought, the thicker cover stock I saw was not nearly as heavy as regular
comic book stock and there was no gloss.

Gary Brown,
Bradenton, Fla.

Gary Brown wrote:
> For the most part, people don't care who wrote or drew a particular
> comic book story.

Are you joking? That's the most laughable statement I have heard
here in some time. (My reply could gain that position, though.)

People don't care that Stephen King wrote The Stand?
People don't care that the guy in new Mission Impossible
movie was played by Tom Cruise?
People don't care that Alfred Hitchcock directed Vertigo?
People don't care that Frank Miller wrote and drew Sin City?
(I could go on and on)

Man, you're killing me!

/Mikko

On Sep 22, 6:20pm, Shaun M. Knowler wrote:
> Subject: stuff fer Don

> QUICK FACT: Barks HAS used Ludwig von Drake! At least once! He's in a
> one-page gag from U$ 54, called "Flowers are Flowers"!
> <hope that wasn't too well known, I'd hate to look like a horse's
arse!>
>
Actually, you can get sort of used to looking like the south
end of a horse going north. After a year or two here on this
ML I've almost become accustomed to it myself. (My surefire
method is posting something from memory without looking it
up first, but I've managed to discover other ways of resembling
an equine posterior. This posting itself may be a new one...)

--Dwight Decker

Last month I wrote to the subscription office of the Dutch Donald Duck
Weekly asking for subscription info; this reply just came. It looks
promising. However, I have somewhat of a problem trying to use it--my
inability to read the language. I'll fix that problem as soon as I've
completed my study of Spanish :-) but for now that stands as it is. So here
is the message. I can make out some words--onderstaand is obviously understand,
wij hopen=we hope, but it's too risky to go by that alone in monetary
matters. So--translations, anyone? (BTW, the word "abonnement" pops up
alot--does that mean subscription?)

Betreft: Donald Duck
Onze ref.: STD005-GP/SJ/mz

Geachte heer,

Hartelijk dank voor de door u getoonde interesse in een abonnement op het
bovengenoemde tijdschrift te verzenden naar de U.S.A..
Onderstaand geven wij u de condities:

- De abonnementsprijs bedraagt per jaar f 195,-per SAL.
- Er gelden geen welkomstpremies of kortingen.
- Prijswijzigingen voorbehouden.
- De verzenduur van het tijdschrift is maximaal 2 weken.
- Bij onze abonnees in het buitenland gaan wij om administratieve redenen
uit van een
abonnement op _jaarbasis_, bij vooruitbetaling.

Wanneer u een abonnement wenst, kunt o genoemd bedrag overmaken op onze
nederlandse bankrekening: 26.54.51.558 bij de Deutsche Bank de Bary NV te
Amsterdam. Graag met vermelding van: nieuw abonnement Donald Duck en het
volledige verzendadres. Of u kent een internationale postwissel sturen naar:

Medianet BV
afdeling Klantenservice
Postbus 299
2000 AG HAARLEM.

Na ontvangst van de betaling, starten wij de verzending van het tijdschrift
met ingang van het lopende nummer.

Wij hopen u hierjme voldoende te hebben geinformeerd.

Met vriendelijke groeten,

MEDIANET BV
afdeling Klahntenservice

Sandra de Jong.

[end of letter]

Note: Sandra de Jong is the name on the letter, not my name. My name, as
most of you know, is--

--Jonathan Markoff

(PS: I must commend their promptness--they replied after only three weeks
after I sent the message! Great contrast to the Spanish Disney publisher,
who hasn't replied to me since June!)

DWIGHT (for the translation of the letter):
Thanks!

SHAUN:
Why my interest in Ludwig? I'm doing a story where I might have reason to
show all the familiar Disney Ducks in one scene, and I realized that I
wasn't sure about Ludwig's use in Europe. In American comic books he was
only seen very briefly in comics (or toys or TV) around 1961-62. He would
have disappeared totally after 1963 except for the Donald Duck newspaper
strip. So, apparently, if he isn't very familiar to Egmont readers, I won't
bother with the ol' guy (even though I like him). He may or may not be in
the Italian comics, but I guess that doesn't matter. I have a great respect
for those (and hope to learn more about them) but the Italian Disneys have a
whole slew of other Duck clan members, and I can't deal with all that,
particularly in my ignorance.

WILMER / RICH:
I have never seen a collection of "The Gumps", but I think Uncle Bim was
depicted as being absurdly wealthy and always shown standing in piles and
bags of money, just as we see Barks' $crooge. How much does $crooge owe to
Bim? I dunno... but I never thought our $crooge owed much at all to Dickens'
Scrooge. That Scrooge was a heartless miser, but he was not RICH.
Well-to-do, perhaps, but not especially rich. That wasn't what that story
was about. When someone calls somebody a "Scrooge", it means he's cheap and
unfeeling, not wealthy. The only reason we read $crooge McDuck comics today
is because Barks first created the character for a CHRISTMAS story, so
that's why the "Scrooge" name was picked. If, for some reason, Barks had
created a wealthy uncle for Donald for a summer issue, we very likely would
be now reading "Flintheart McDuck" or "Glomgold McDuck" comics. But isn't it
great how it worked out that we in America can have $crooge (with the "$")
as his first name!? If his name had been Flintheart, that would only have
made a nice logo in France or Switzerland. And "Glomgold McDuck" would only
have looked good on Dutch comic covers.

DWIGHT / GARY:
There's one of these guys here in town who thinks he's gonna write a book
about me (tsk) and has been going through my basement and closets and the
Comic Vault indexing anything I've ever done. He's found some things that
I'd even forgotten, such as blank business-ledgers from the Keno Rosa Co.
that I used to fill with my own comic book stories as a child... and though
all the others were original stories, two of them were where I took a
favorite Barks story and redrew it using my own human characters... those
being "The Old Castle's Secret" and "The Golden Helmet". This was about 1964.
Oh, but what I was gonna tell you is that he found a copy of the final
ballot for the Comic Book Fan Awards (the only American comics awards in
those days) for 1974 or thereabouts. And three of the half-dozen nominations
for "Favorite Fan Writer" were Dwight Decker, Gary Brown and Don Rosa. (One
of those names was also in the "Favorite Fan Artist" category.) Are we old,
or what?

HARRY:
"Is Don Rosa still working for you?"
>Thom Roep:
> "When he no longer had the opportunity to work for Gladstone he came to us,
>where we bought three stories from him. We weren't all satisfied with his
>art, so we returned some pages and asked him to remove some of the far too
>many details he uses in his stories. He answered: "Okay, maybe I'm overdoing
>it. I agree to change it."
> Rosa is a very honest man, because a few months later he called us and said
>that he had recieved an offer from Egmont. They would pay him the same salary
>as we did, but they could give him a better contract, where he got the oppor-
>tunity to do more pages a year. We don't work the same way as Egmont, because
>at them he would be guaranteed a steady income. We told him, that we could
>understand that he would prefer their contract, so we allowed him to work for
>them instead of us. We have a good cooperation with the Danish editors, so
>his stories would be published in the Dutch magazine anyway.
> Now we no longer have any influence on his art, but I love reading his
>stories. From what I heard from Gladstone, Rosa and Van Horn will be working
>for Gladstone again. It won't be permanent, because they can't afford it."
>
>Any comments, Don?
>--Harry Fluks.

Well, this aroused my curiosity. I wasn't sure what Thom Roep was referring
to with regards to a "contract" or his "allowing" me to work for Egmont. But
I knew I might have some old letters from Roep, so before I replied I looked
into the back of a file cabinet to see what I still had. Nowadays I do ALL
my communication with Byron by phone -- that's how we discuss stories and so
forth. So I had completely forgotten the extent of the paperwork there was
involved in FAXing and letter-writing earlier on. And I had completely
forgotten that I'd kept ALL my correspondence from GP and
Gutenberghus/Egmont, and all my FAXes to them.
But I glanced through the stack of Roep's letters to me... I'd forgotten
that we had corresponded so much! And I think I found what he refers to,
although he might be using the English word of "contract" different than we
use it. But this also refers to another old question of yours concerning the
Dutch having given my "Treasure Under Glass" a code-number though I knew I
did that story for Egmont, something I couldn't explain to you until now.
You might recall that while Gladstone was awaiting Disney's
slllloooooooooowwww review of my script for "His Majesty McDuck", I had no
choice but to write several more stories on my own time while I waited.
Later, when Disney told Gladstone to no longer return my art, I realized I
was unwilling to and couldn't afford to draw that group of stories for
Gladstone if I couldn't later sell the art to augment the low pay. So, after
quitting Gladstone, I needed to find work (having liquidated my construction
company) and I later submitted 3 of those stories to GP, those being "The
Pied Piper of Duckburg", "On a Silver Platter" and "Treasure Under Glass".
Roep said he would accept those stories if I would draw them for GP, and I
slowly started. But, as he says, GP would only tell me on a wait-and-see
basis when they were ready to buy another of the stories. Over about a year
I did two of them. Then Egmont called and asked if I'd work for them -- they
would keep me busy FULL time, and (I hate to disagree with Roep) would pay
lots more per page. So I see that I wrote to Roep and asked if he'd be
offended if I did the last of the three, the "Treasure" story for Egmont,
and he said that was fine since GP would then get it for free, just as
Egmont gets GP's stories. I didn't think GP had a actual claim on "Treasure"
since I'd never signed a contract nor was I paid for the script, but I still
like to do business on a friendly basis and I would have done whatever Roep
said. I dunno... maybe he DID think he had a claim on "Treasure". If so, he
was nice enough not to say so, and I did the story for Egmont.
I also find some letters where I thanked Roep for sending me copies of all
the Dutch comics that reprinted my stories. Hm!

But (and I know this is all getting way too long, as my messages always do)
I found stacks of other correspondence that completely chronicles every word
exchanged between me and Egmont from their first letter inviting me to work
for them, all the way to Byron and me discussing every aspect of the first 7
episodes of the "Lo$". I didn't read ALL this stuff, but a few of the more
interesting ones I glanced at were stuff like the FAX I sent to Egmont 5
minutes after Disney Comics called me asking for help on a $crooge McDuck
biography their bosses had ordered them to do; I see that I told Disney that
Egmont was already working on such a project, and my FAX to Egmont was
suggesting they undertake the project or the world would be at risk of Marv
Wolfman turning $crooge's life into a Captain Carrot adventure like in his
"DUCKTALES" comic.
I also found a series of FAXes from 1991 where I suggested to Egmont that
they sponsor an extended tour for Carl Barks so that he could see how
beloved he was in Europe; they had a meeting and agreed to it, and
apparently, as Egmont's "representative", I proposed it to Barks in my next
letter to him... but he replied that his wife was too ill for such a trip.
The other letters describe in great detail that there were longer versions
of lots of my old stories that I'd forgotten, or how Byron and I had fervent
discussions about how to do the "Lo$", and lots of other stuff that you
might be interested in, even if those other folks who wisely stopped reading
this message 7 paragraphs back wouldn't give a fig about. My gosh... I've
even bored myself... uh-oh... I... I....
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