Keskustelujen arkisto

I've cast my lot in with the group that wants to leave old black-and-white
comics uncolorized. In "The Phantom Blot" which you're printing now, the
colors are often so dark and dot-filled that they often blur out the action.
The same darkness also ruined "Blaggard Castle," I feel. Mickey's dialogue
balloon in the last panel of the first strip of the last page of part I of
"Blot" is also obscured.

B&W comics would allow the art to shine for itself, and not only would it
would be softer on the eye, but it would save printer's ink costs as well.
Another thing you might consider doing is to print only two strips a page,
rather than three, so the art can be viewed in an appropriate size.

Jonathan Markoff
Vienna, VA
(Email removed)

RICH
>Actually, the child was, as I recall, rather picky. Someone brought up
the wrong book, and he protested, "Why did you bring the book I didn't want
to be read to out of up for? That's *five* prepositions...though Dmitri
Borgmann topped even that by having the other parent brimg up the latest
Patricia Wrightson fantasy from Australia, as yet unpublished in America. The
kid still wasn't satisfied, responding with *eight* terminal prepositions
:"Why did you bring the book I didn't want to be read to out of up from Down
Under for?"<

Hmm... the last one's cheating - but thanks a lot!! You made my
day...

>Not only would it create confusion around the farm (what with Gus Mouse
and Gus Goose both there), but it created more with the Gottfredson strip,
which also featured the characters as mice Mickey's size! As Dwight said, I
suspect the fact that both series were trying to reflect the then-current
CINDERELLA played a part.<

Dont count in the strip continuity: that had Dumbo and Li'l Davy Crocket
appearing at Mickey's home too (at the same time, nevertheless!)

HARRY
This one's for you:

"Combien sont ces soixante-six saucissons-ci?
Ces soixante-six saucissons-ci sont soixante-six sous!"

("How much are/cost these 66 sausages here?
These 66 sausages here are/cost 66 Sous!")

Spoken, there's hardly a consonant besides "s" involved...

And the absolute WORST tongue-breaker in German is unsuspectful-
looking:

"Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid, und Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut"

Which is hard to impossible to say once, let alone two or three
times....

("A wedding-dress is just a wedding-dress, and red cabbage is just
red cabbage" - he, nobody said it had to make SENSE!)

Tonguebrokenly yours

Harald

--- (Harald Havas) (Email removed)

Jonathan:

> Touching story about the blind movie fan. Interestingly, the exact same
> scenario happened in an early episode of the comic strip "Foxtrot"
> <http://www.uexpress.com/ups/comics/> which features a blind supporting
> character.

I had forgotten about that, but you';re right. FOX TROT is my favorite
strip comic I've read. I have yet to buy the new compilation, though. I'm
crossing my fingers for Christmas on that one. =)

TODD:

Thanks for more of the fun word play!

> I've just received your "The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff" for lettering.

YES! YES! YES! There is hope yet!

-Augie, hoping he doesn't sound too enthusiastic.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Augie De Blieck Jr. * (Email removed) * (Email removed)
(Email removed)
http://www.nic.com/~augie/two/two.htm

I have neglected the list for too long... I feel guilty when those digests
accumulate and I file them away without even finding the time to read them
any more!

But before I come back to it, can you people give me a tip? What are good
addresses to visit in Boston, MA, USA for a European looking for American
Disney comics? I'll be there next week and I'll have most of Saturday free.
Thanks a lot

Frank (filologo disneyano) http://www.orl.co.uk/~fms/

Don:

"I'm possiltive that I've stated on this ML that I would never show
$crooge and Goldie interacting in the Yukon days, and I spoke of how I
designed all of "Hearts of the Yukon" in such a way that it involved them
both in a story together and yet they never quite made it to the point where
they spoke to one another."

So your picture on the opening page on the Scrooge web-page is kind of
special? There Scrooge and Goldie stands together on the top (for them who
haven't seen it). Or have I totally mistaken something here? Sure it is not
a storie, but it kind of stands as an opening to the life of Scrooge and
therefor it would look as an accepted thing to happen in your stories, or....?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
~Christer |Christer Hanssen| Tlf. (+47)22722238
|Ulvenveien 112 | E-mail: (Email removed)
|0665 Oslo |
|Norway |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Email removed) (Don Rosa)
DonR> I couldn't believe this when I saw it in your last message:

DaveR> Well, I think Byron's eminently familiar with what he's editing
DaveR> and doing a damn fine job to boot. In fact, I think he's an
DaveR> enormous benefit to the Disney character story-telling community
DaveR> and we're lucky to have him.

DonR> You make it look like I was referring to BYRON of all people when
DonR> I was talking of the Disney-Disney-Comics editors

First, sorry for the delay in responding to this. I (and many other AT&T
users) had inbound e-mail knocked out for a couple of days, and it took
even more time for this message to reach me. By then, deadlines had
overtaken my priorities and ability to respond in a timely way, so do
please forgive me (at least that).

Now, let me see if I can unravel this misundertsanding.

I posted a message about a story where I used a pair of full-blown
weasels as protagonists, and where other principal characters were other
than dog-eared or pig-faced. You responded with a post which started
"It's rare, but I hafta disagree with you on two things here."

One of the things was my comment about the woodchuck tounge-twister, the
other thing was my use of the characters I mention above. In the later
instance you said in part, "if you are to go by what has been
established since the 40s as the accepted, standardized, "official" view
of what's proper and improper in these stories, you cannot use
weasel-people, vulture-people, cat-people, or anything else but the
normal tiny selection of types of 99.99% humanized animals, virtually
all of which are either dogs or pigs."

And you concluded, "Anytime this is violated, it's simply when the
hired-editors aren't familiar with the comics they are editting, that's
why the Disney-Disney Comics had weird stuff like talking super-villain
penguins and talking Kraven-the-Hunter jaquars and other creepy things.
Brrr."

Since Byron edited my use of the characters I described and which drew
your comment as to such an approach, I thought I'd defend his rather
harmless violation of your "anytime this is violated" conclusion that
"only editors unfamiliar with the comics they are editing" would do such
a thing. And try to alert you to the fact it was he you were unwittingly
commenting on.

DonR> Byron is exactly who I constantly PRAISE as being the ideal editor
DonR> for this material. I assume (?) you know that Byron never was an
DonR> editor for the Disney-Disney-Comics that I clearly referred to,
DonR> and he would never let a Duckburg story be written like a "Lil'
DonR> Bad Wolf" story. Please correct your implication.

But Byron did "let" it happen, (has explained elsewhere his take on all
this), has many times since, and was the editor of the material you
chose to comment on, and thus the implication isn't incorrect, rather
your assumption ("Anytime this is violated, it's simply when the
hired-editors aren't familiar with the comics they are editting") was
misplaced. I hasten to add, I wish I had a nickle for everytime I've
done something similar, and likely could out-buy your single instance
twenty times over. No harm done, as far as I'm concerned.

DonR> Another not-so-nice implication is that I'm calling you a "lout"
DonR> when you write "ah, well, I guess I'm a lout, but I like doing it
DonR> different ways. It's fun and it works quite well" in reference to
DonR> my statement that Duckburg or Mickey Mouse stories have guidelines
DonR> different from mainstream funny-animal comics.

No, no, no. I was being light-hearted and pre-emptively self-deprecating
since I recognize my use of characters is different from yours. (Much as
you adopt the self-deprecating description as the guy who puts in way
too much needless detail, when in fact that's much of what we enjoy
about your work.)

DonR> I clearly was saying there ARE different ways to do stories, but
DonR> there are also guidelines which *must* be be followed by a
DonR> writer.

Yes, I know that's what you were clearly saying and I was struggling to
respond to such strong, unequivicating and unsolicited comments about my
writing without having to point out that you were flatly wrong about
what those guidelines were. That's why I tried to take a humorous
culpability onto my own shoulders, and tried to obliquely alert you that
Byron had in fact edited the characters you took issue with.

In short, I thought I was sparing you a bit of inadvertant
embarrassment, despite you leaving me very little room in which to
manuver.

--
riverrun past Eve's and Adam's from swerve of shore to bend of bay
(Email removed) -=*=- http://users.aol.com/dcrawson/home.htm

Kriton writes about Don Rosa's "Universal Solvent" story:

> On the splash panel, showing a cross-section of the Earth, it says
> "MANTLE SOLID ROCK". If I'm not mistaken, the mantle is liquid: it
> is the source of lava in volcanoes.
>
No, the mantle is solid rock. It does "flow", with subducting plates
and rising "plumes", but that's only on geological time scales (same as
the way that the solid rock of the crust deforms over millions of years,
when horizontal strata are folded into mountains, etc.). The mantle is
partially molten only in local pockets of lava. That's a good thing, or
else we would have volcanoes almost everywhere!

Incidentally, the upper mantle is largely an olivine/pyroxene-rich
ultramafic rock called "eclogite". You can go see it in a museum. It's
dark green, and it's ugly. I'm glad the colorists on stories like "The
Universal Solvent" and "The Land beneath the Ground" choose to ignore
that fact and instead make the mantle look much prettier than it really
is! (Of course, it's usually mighty dark down there, so "prettiness"
would be wasted, I suppose. But on account of its temperature, the
mantle is actually pretty bright -- in the infrared!)

> Now, in Don's story, we have a blob of universal solvent falling
> through the Earth, making its own tunnel as it goes, and coming
> abruptly to a halt at the center, instead of keeping on going till it
> emerges at the other end.
>
It wasn't **totally** abruptly; it did go a bit past the center, then
part of the way back up, then down again, etc. This is how the hollow
chamber at the end of the shaft was carved out. As you say, this yo-yo
effect, with each cycle being smaller than the one before, was due to
friction. We must assume that the way the Solvent works (swallowing up
the material in front of it, compacting it down to a very compressed
molecular form, and then extruding the compacted "dust") is certainly
high in friction. But I agree, it would have been fun had the Solvent
been nearly frictionless and its momentum had carried it all the way up
to the earth's surface on the other side. Since that would be somewhere
in the Indian Ocean, all the water would have poured into the shaft.
A hole in the bottom of the sea! Then, when the shaft melted, all that
water would have been converted to steam. Talk about a geyser!!!!

> Next, we have the ducks going after that blob. Instead of accelerating
> all the way to the bottom, their speed is proportional to the
> acceleration of gravity:
>
Actually, they're using those tires that rub against the shaft to brake
their fall all the way down. Otherwise, they would wind up at the
center of the earth in the same time that it takes an earth satellite
to go one-quarter way around its orbit, i.e., less than half an hour.
[This is because, as you correctly implied, an object which is dropped
into a shaft through the center of the earth is really in orbit around
the center, and so it will keep returning to the surface for that same
reason.] Since it took the ducks much longer than one-half hour to
reach the bottom of the shaft, you can see that they were always **far**
from being in free-fall. Good thing, too - if they had been free-
falling, then their momentum would have kept them going straight into
the blob of OmniSolve at the center of the earth. What a **terrible**
"death of Scrooge" story **that** would have made! "Pressed Duck", I
suppose you could call it.

> (So, what happened, Don? Did you skimp on your research, or has old
> age made me forget what little physics I learnt in high school?)
>
Well, it's a comic book. If Superman were **really** to fly through the
air, probably his hair would get mussed up. You have to make allowances
for small violations of the laws of physics in these stories...

> I think you should wake up now, as the interesting postings are about
> to resume.
>
Okay, how about this one: in the division of the Disney universe into
animal-people and animal-animals, what do you do with the Larkies? :)

Wilmer Rivers