Keskustelujen arkisto

GARY L.:
Aren't you the guy wot writes the CBG ads? The one on the back-cover of the
new CBG is a dandy! I get it. It's a good "un".
But who is the guy wot does the computer-dialogue in the comics? I just
received the new WDC&S with part 1 of "The Once and Future Duck"... and in a
scene where the Ducks are watching a Briton running off over a hill, Donald
is not saying my dialogue of "He's really hightailin' it!", but instead
Donald's saying "He's really BOOKIN'!" What does that mean?! Lordy, please
don't tell me somebody put some 1996 slang into my story! (I'm praying
that's some appropriate pre-1950 slang I've never heard.)

On Dec 5, 6:23pm, Harald Havas wrote:

> I have this nagging little memory that I saw a map (in
> an Italian story, an old digest, methinks) showing the Duck's travel
> via an arrow. The arrow started at the US-East-Coast and spanned the
> Atlantic to end somewhere in Europe I think...
> Which story?
> Gosh - I have absolutely no idea!
>
On the other hand, that old Romano Scarpa story that sent
the Ducks on an adventure to the South Pole had a map
showing their travels as beginning about Los Angeles
on the West Coast. (Probably Burbank, if you want to
get specific. Didn't Barks's own "Lost in the Andes"
have Donald saying something like, "Howdy! I'm from
the South myself! South Burbank!" Burbank was where Disney's
studio was, and so would've been as much "home" for Donald as
anyplace until the Duckburg mythology was established.)

--Dwight Decker

OLE:
>Subject: Do ducks dream of rubberducks?

Donald does dream in one of the panels of "The Elektric Duck" (page 2, 4th
anel) - and not just of anything - of electric sheep, naturally. :)

> The other one, "The Electric Duck" - a 14 page Donald story divided
>over two issues, is a really well written story about an 'anddroid'
>(no typo, but an intranslatable pun) copy of Donald supposed to go
>with Daisy to a lecture on "The Impossibility of the Cartesian Theater"

This one is quite good, - very well scripted and very funny.

I can't really decide whether I like this one or "Mesterdatalogen" the most. On
one hand I am a bit of a computer geek, and on the other I like Blade Runner a
lot. I think I might be partial to "Mesterdatalogen", but all of Kristian's
creations are masterpieces in their own right.

>-- Ole, who's so lucky as to have a brother at the right faculty...

--- Jan, who's lucky to have friends at the right faculty...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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) ---- WWW: http://www.pip.dknet.dk/%7Epip781/ ---

RICH:

><<What are good addresses to visit in Boston, MA, USA for a European looking

> The Million-Year Picnic in Cambridge is good for back issues, as is New
>England Comics (especially the original store in Quincy...the others aren't
>as good. That store also runs a small publishing outfit, doing characters
>like THE TICK, now an American cartoon series as well. Give me a call at
>508-877-1645 or 617-342-9882 or 617-699- 1740, and I can perhaps show you
>around?

Thanks for your tips! The Million-Year Picnic was the best: it had a
reasonable selection of new comics (I mean from the last few months) and
other interesting things like the old Gladstone Albums (but I had already
ordered those via mail order, so I didn't buy any there) and even some CBL
sets. It had a good selection of CBL in colour and it also had interesting
non-Disney books like Will Eisner's "Comics and Sequential Art" (I was
looking for that one since I saw it mentioned several times in Scott Mc
Cloud's excellent "Understanding Comics"). The back issues section didn't
have much, but still I found a few things.

The New England Comics (almost) next door in Cambridge was completely
useless from a Disney point of view, as you anticipated. So I later took
the T to Quincy. But before that I spent an enjoyable hour in the
Wordsworth discount bookstore, where I got two computer books and Scott
Adams' "The Dilbert Principle".
(On that subject: DON, here is a perfect example of someone who absolutely
CAN'T draw, but who is very "likeable" because of his wit and because he
really has ideas.)

At the New England Comics in Quincy I was rather disappointed to see such
an enormous comics store with so little space devoted to Disney. The
selection of "recent" (last few years) comics was meager, a lot smaller
than the Picnic's; they had a bit more in the region of "period" comics
($10-$100 an issue), but that's not the sort of stuff I buy. I think I
barely found $20's worth of my type of comics in that shop.

All in all I must say that I found that the stores were much better stocked
with the stuff I like when I went to Toronto last year; but still, the
stuff I got should keep me reading for two or three months (especially with
the other things that I'm doing...). Anyhow, thanks again very much for
your suggestions, without which my quest would have probably been very
frustrating.

ALL:
I suppose it's time to announce it officially, given that Don said it here
and that I've been getting a few enquiries via private mail about it. So:
yes, we are writing a book on Don Rosa for the Italian market. It is due to
come out some time next year. Our publisher has just given us a limit on
the number of pages which will make it hard for us to include all that we'd
like... but at least he's committed, just as much as we are. The primary
authors will be Leonardo Gori, Alberto Becattini and yours truly, and there
will be contributions from other experts such as Luca Boschi, Fabio
Gadducci and Mirko Tavosanis.
In true comic-fan spirit, this won't be a commercial enterprise: to keep
the price of the book down we won't get any payment or royalties. What it
*will* be is an act of love. There isn't a book about Don in Italian, and
there really ought to be one -- a GOOD one. We'll put all our passion and
enthusiasm into making it the best it could possibly be. We want it to be
the book that we would ourselves be willing to buy and recommend to all our
friends.
Unfortunately there are currently no plans for this book to appear in any
other language than Italian and we have no contacts with any
English-speaking publisher. I realise that this severely limits the
interest of our work for most of the readers of this list -- our apologies
for that. It's not that we want to exclude you all from this (far from
it!), it's just that it was hard enough to find the right publisher in our
country (and in our language), and we would still be in an abstract limbo
with only a few nice ideas in our heads but nothing practical in the plans
if we had tried to go international. Besides, part of our work will put
Don's stories into perspective with respect to the Disney universe of a
typical *Italian* fan, so it was appropriate to find an Italian publisher
after all.
As Don said, I was his guest for a wonderful week-end a few weeks ago (gee,
time flies!) and you just can't imagine how cooperative and friendly he
was, sharing with me his time, his house, his meals, his comics ...and his
virus ;-)
Don & Ann introduced me to the dogs, the canary and -- best of all -- the
white cockatoo, Gyro. A wonderful bird, and really sweet! Don, I miss Gyro!
Say hello to him from me.
I've seen the absolutely wonderful pencils of Don's latest story, the
U$-50th-anniversary "A little something special". It will be a while before
we see it in print, but it will be worth the wait.
I've seen the big bottle of ink that all the Rosa ducks came out of, and
I've used the very same fountain pen that Don writes his plots with (wow!).
I've seen the famous pack of elliptical templates used for inking, the
drawing board on which $crooge comes alive and (in another part of the
house) the computer on which Don types out his messages to this list.
We also went through some very old notepads (basically: Don Rosa from age
minus infinity to 15 years old). This man (like many of us, by the way) was
bottle-fed on Barks! His first recognisable Donald Duck appears around age
FIVE...
The best stuff, from a biographer's point of view, comes up in two booklets
dated 1964 (age 13): fascinated by "The old castle's secret" and "The
golden helmet", young Don decides to retell these wonderful stories to
himself by... redrawing them panel by panel using his own cast, like an
actor deriving pleasure from the very fact of acting in a Shakespeare play!
That's really stuff you have to see to believe.

But I must stop here: all this and I've also a regular job as a hacker
--err, I mean computer scientist-- and, with all the taken-for-granted
overtime that normally goes into that, I wonder where I'll find the time to
write my part of the book if I spend the time until 1am writing to the
mailing list! ;-)

Cheers to all

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

--------------------------------
End of Disney comics Digest V96 Issue #271
******************************************

I got Anders And & Co. #49 yesterday (only two to go before the next
Rosa story now) and it was quite good! First a William Van Horn story
where Donald gets into a row with Jones involving super weed seeds.

The translator is obviously having fun with Van Horn's scripts and
it shows in some remarkably offensive (and inventive) language.
But this is rescripting for Danish, not plain translation which
would fall flat with the imagery and idioms. Art as usual not quite
as polished as I'd like and plotline a little weak - but, as said,
the dialogue is a riot.

Also in the issue another 10 pager, this time with Mickey and the
other Van Horn, Noel.I suspect the script is one of Davids, as it
costars Minnie, Bad Pete and Sylvester Shyster.

It's about a 'wandering dune' (?) and a lost treasure cave, not
unlike the one Scrooge found in the Australian desert, which Mickey
finds by accident. While waiting in it, Minnie goes to report the
find, and the bad guys show up and surprise Mickey. Minnie returns
and the villains divide the loot: Pete wants the girl!

Well, of course it turns out lucky for our heros, but there are
a couple of tense and scary moments on the way - somehow this story
makes the threats on Mickey's life believable for once.

One question, if David or anyone recognize the story, what are the
lyrics of the song about the dune? The translation doesn't explain
why they should be as offensive as they appear to be?

-- Ole

Hello, all! I m sending this mail from Pieter van Cleef s office. It s like a
Disney-comics Mecca here. I m spending some time here to index Dutch
publications for our database, and I m also trying to convert the database
files to MS-Access so Pieter can use them for their administration...

My harddisk at home is now *really* broke. I haven t been able to send or read
mail in the past week, and it will probably take another week before I m back.

So anyone who asked questions or sent private mail to me: be patient,
please...

--Harry Fluks
(very temporarily at P.van Cleef)

MIKE:

> I realize that Gladstone is not that big as other publishers, but I
> was quite astonished as I got the 4 Don Rosa Albums. Especially
> the 3rd one was obviously smaller in height and had a diffrent
> (smaller) Lettering on the back (the back that you see if you put in on a
> shelf).

Consistency, the ultimate bane of publishing. Those spines caused us fits,
too, but at the time there were reasons, including one of my old favorites:
the printers doing us what they thought was a favor and "fixing" the
lettering to fit better.

DON:

>Aren't you the guy wot writes the CBG ads?

I am that.

>The one on the back-cover of the
>new CBG is a dandy! I get it. It's a good "un".

Thanks! (Bruce came up with the "un"s, by the by.)

>But who is the guy wot does the computer-dialogue in the comics? I just
>received the new WDC&S with part 1 of "The Once and Future Duck"... and in a
>scene where the Ducks are watching a Briton running off over a hill, Donald
>is not saying my dialogue of "He's really hightailin' it!", but instead
>Donald's saying "He's really BOOKIN'!"

Our main computer-letterer is Colleen. The script she worked from, which we
got from Egmont, said "bookin." Which means we can gleefully pass the buck
to Byron.

SOREN:

>So my question to all who already made their own websites containing disney
>characters...
>Is a official consent of Disney necessary?

You're more likely to need the consent of the actual publishers of the
comics, who then have the responsibility of securing Disney's consent in
whatever matter is at hand. But, so long as you're just presenting your
personal views, and/or passing along information that has been released to
the public (anything not put out under a copyright, that is), official
consent is not necessary.

KRITON:

>One way to reduce the cost of subscriptions would be to give subscribers
>the option of having their issues mailed to them once every 3-4 months,
>thus reducing the cost of postage. This makes particular sense in the
>case of the Penny Pincher comics, which will be published in themed groups.

Who said we don't offer the Penny Pincher's in group packages? Well, we
don't, but we may. The subscription offer currently out there is simply
what it is: Penny Pincher on a straight subscription basis, issue by issue.

>The text in the catalog seems to imply that you considered not making
>subscriptions available. For some foreign readers, a subscription is the
>only way to obtain a Disney comic...

The fact that the subscription rate for Penny Pincher had to come in at the
level it did was one thing that made us wonder if offering subscriptions
was a good idea. Some folks would (and do) think it's unreasonable. But our
foreign readers are one of the main reasons wev'e gone ahead and made the
offer; better to be thought unreasonable than indifferent!

>RICH:

Your frustrating quest was frustrating for me to read, let me tell you!
That you were brought to term your shopping a "quest" is alone a severe
indictment of the current level of comics retailing in the good ol' US of
A.

Gary

****************************
"Frogs? I don't get it."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gladstone on the Web: http://www.hamlco.com/bhc/
---------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------
End of Disney comics Digest V96 Issue #272
******************************************