Keskustelujen arkisto

DON:
>There. Was that tale worth the Digest space?

Not at all. In fact it was a very nice story. I especially liked the bit about
the issue collecting dust along with Wolverine and Spawn comics. I work in a
comicstore that sells less than 3 copies of each Gladstone publication - the
exception being the Libraries at approx. 10 copies each.

The libraries by far outsell Wolverine and are in close competition with Spawn
(selling 11 copies of each issue) ... Now, if we could only get some of those
Gee-I-like-to-draw-bulging-muscles-all-over-the-place kids to pick up the
occational Gladstone.

FRANK:
>I got this enquiry from a random net person, presumably because of the
>various Disney things in some of my web pages. I don't have the faintest
>clue, and know very well that this isn't a Disney comic in the sense we
>mean, but thought that perhaps someone here may have some info that could
>be relayed to the poor soul.

Despite me being a youngster at the time, I managed to sneak into the dark of
the cinema and watch the movie "The Black Hole" when it originally came out.
The film was hyped in the Danish Donald Duck weeklies and a series of Black
Hole comics were also published in Denmark. The cover to issue #1 was a shot of
the villains spaceship (the name of which eludes me at the moment) hovering in
front of the Black Hole. The first two issues were an adaption of the film,
whereas the two last issues dealt with the events following the film ("The
new/further adventures of...") and did indeed feature a Lost World scenario,
including a high tech human race, dinosaurs, etc. The adaption was ok, but the
last issues were pretty bad - by even yesteryears standards.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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/ ---

When does the actual, irrefutable, unassailable, positively *true* version
of a story happen?

This is not an idle question in my mind, because it seems to occupy the
thoughts of many who contribute to this mailing list, and has been known to
cause some pretty lively discussions. One thing's for sure: I haven't
figured it out.

Creators have visions, which eventually result in stories read by the
public interested in same. But these visions, if they take the form of the
written word (with or without illustration), have to go through a process
called publishing before they can reach the public, and this process
invariably leaves its mark. By the time the public sees the stories, there
are always aspects of them that, for good or ill, no longer strictly adhere
to the visions.

Harlan Ellison once expressed an opinion that I have always taken to mean
"the first draft is the final draft." In other words, anything done to a
story that deviates from what the writer first put down renders it a
bowdlerization, even if the changes are done by the writer before anyone
else ever sees the story. This view (and I can't say if Ellison himself
actually holds it) is a tough one, but it does suggest that maybe that
first draft is the *true* version, the vision made manifest, and that all
else is, for good or ill, "tinkering with the truth." If so, then the
public never sees the *true* version of anything.

I'm interested in anyone else's thoughts, observations, and opinions on this.

DIDIER:

>For the first time in over 25 years a new Barks Donald Duck comic book
>story has been completed. The title of this new 28 page adventure is
>"Somewhere in Nowhere".

Golly. We heard rumors of such a story being concocted, but it was very
hush-hush. I wonder who spilled the beans?

Gary

****************************
"It's nailed in cement!"
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Gladstone on the Web: http://www.hamlco.com/bhc/
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Ole, Kristian and I met at the local comics store today. After consuming
Coffee, discussing Disney comics in general, and Kristians comics in particular
(including hidden subplots in some of the stories), xeroxes were traded. Ole
and I now have copies of Kristians complete works, including an early
politically incorrect version of the ice skating scene from "Bambi" and a
tribute to Paul Murry (both one-pagers), and (best of all) Kristians new story
"Held igen og igen!" (Luck, Luck & Luck!) which has yet to be published; A
hilarious (the thumbtacks gag had me in stitches!) 13-pager dealing with the
unlucky/lucky relationship of Donald and Gladstone.

Not only are the stories great fun, Kristian also turned out to be a very
nice person in real life. He seems totally unprepared for all this fame (the
look on his face when Ole asked him to *sign* his comics was priceless :))

As mentioned earlier I am now in posession of quality A4 Xeroxes of
Kristians work. As a friend of mine owns a scanner, it will no major difficulty
to put the comics online. This of course depends on Kristian giving me the
go-ahead, and someone providing storage space (45 pages, at approx. 100Kb each)

An international edition has been suggested more than once. Bent[1] has
volunteered to join the cause, and I believe Ole can be talked into joining as
well. :) I volunteer to join the team as general computer-geek(scanning/minor
image manipulation), letterer and by-no-means-evil-translator.

Kristian, you mentioned writing the translated stories in manuscript-like
form? I would love to have a go at lettering the comics (no, I don't intend to
use tipex to erase the old lettering! :)) Have no fear about the university
inside jokes. I know none of the people you refer to in "Mesterdatalogen" and I
still busted my gut reading it.

Expect to see "The Kristian Thougaard Pedersen Library of Comics & Stories in
Black & White #1" at our earliest convenience. :)

--- Jan

[1] No worries. I've got copies of the "Electrical Duck" and the "Thinking
Stone" for you. I'll bring 'em on Saturday. Just to make sure you show up. ;)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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/ ---

Digest #30 was almost entirely dedicated to a little little come-
together, Jan and I was going to have with Kristian Pedersen.
At the risk of Jan flooding the list with the same info, I'll
let you in on a few of the topics that came up:

Kristian:
> As for the older stories, I *have* thought about translating them too.
> ('Mesterdatalogen' is bound to lose quite a bit in the process, though,
> as a lot of the jokes are aimed at students at Aarhus University).

Kristian revealed a lot of hidden allusions to, among other things,
Pink Floyd and Kurt Vonnegut in the "Mester-datalogen" story. Also,
which passed entirely unnoticed, by both Jan and me, the story
suggested that Gyro, just like Donald in the story, had been replaced
by an android, and that in the end (*spoiler*) it was Donald, not the
android, which was 'retired'! A hidden message will probably not live
through a translation, though I might give it a try...

> There are also two short Gyro stories that have yet to be published
> online.

I also got copies of two earlier one-pagers, which I had not known
about before, including a MM gag on a Paul Murry idiom, and the latest
epic, which should soon be available in English.
Copies of all these will soon be in the snail-mail for Harry and
Marco. If anyone else asked for them, please remind me again.

Jan (who likes to turn my wild ideas into full-fledged projects)
suggests an annotated "Kristian Pedersen Library", but that would
require someone with an inside knowledge of the Aarhus University,
computer science and Barks stories. Next to my brother, Lasse, only
Kristian himself comes to mind.
Claiming he is out of ideas for new stories, it may be feasible,
but I'd rather he spent his time making new stories, and left the
trivial nit-picking to the less inspired geniouses, like me. :-)
Jan BTW related an idea of Ivar Gjoerup (another brilliant, but
to my knowledge not Disney related Danish comics creator) about
doing a DD story of Kafka's "The Process" with Donald as Joseph K.
I wonder if this has already been done in Italy?

> I must say I'm rather flattered by the attention but also increasingly
> worried about running into copyright problems! I hope The Powers That
> Be, if they ever discover the stories, won't look at them as vicious
> parodies violating the Disney spirit!

As most of us know, People In High Places _are_ monitoring us, but
I think they can tell the difference between dedicated fandom and
shameless commercial rip-offs, which are their major concern.
Your only worry should be if you are discovered as a writer!
If Egmont, sorry, ECC ever does talent-hunting, I wouldn't be surprised
if Byron contacted you one day about a try-out.

Thanks for the chat and xeroxes and signature yesterday!

Per:
> Does that mean that Miroslav's original [Topolino] file no longer
> contains anything not in the DcD?
Harry:
> I think so, but I'm not 100 per cent sure. Ole Reichstein did the
> conversion, so he should be able to tell.

I'm almost sure nothing got lost in the semi-automatical process, but
apart from some comment-lines too long to process by Harry's program
and a few tentatively corrected codes everything should be the same, if
not even improved, like the Bucky Bug codes, I got from Becattini.
Anyway, I've kept the original file for future reference.

-- Ole

OLE:
Oh, absolutely, anyone looking at Kristian's Internet DD stories would know
it's all a non-profit fan activity. But that *would NOT matter*. I don't
know how it is in Europe, but in America a copyright holder must defend its
copyrights or risk losing them or being sued by its licensees. The perfect
example is the deal a few years ago when Disney got lots of unfair bad
publicity for ordering a for-profit nursery school to stop using Disney
characters as part of their exterior decor/advertising. If Disney does NOT
prevent such a use, when they decide to exert their copyright on some other
violator down the road, the judge will tell them that they lost their
copyright for not defending it in all cases. Also, Disney would risk a
serious lawsuit from some commercial establishment that had paid Disney a
big fee for the exclusive rights to (maybe) use Disney characters as
decor/ads on their nursery school, part of that fee being that Disney would
pursue any unlicensed use and violation of the licensee's...eh... license.
(Disney might deserve some bad publicity, but not for this nursery school
incident.)
So (and not to worry anyone, but just to make sure you understand how this
system works), if the right (wrong) people at Disney knew about Kristian's
Internet comics, they would have *no choice* other than to tell him to get
rid of them. There are literally thousands of people putting Disney
characters on web-pages all over the world... but to actually use a Disney
character in a full story, text and art, is a difference by light-years from
using them as homepage decorations.
But as I told Kristian, he shouldn't worry about it, as the worst that can
happen is that he's told to "cease". But I would suggest that we stop
jabberin' about it here on the ML!

JAN L.T.:

Thanks for the translation!

> I guess one of the reason I like Kristians stories are because even though they
> are clearly Barksian/Rosarian/Whateverian in their structure, they are also
> madcap adventures paying homage to a great deal of non-Disney material - and as
> such might not be popular with the Powers That Be. I fear that the stories will
> loose their "edge" by being processed by Disney MegaCorp.

Though some of the inside- and mathematicians jokes would be lost, the stories I have
seen would be fit for a regular Disney comic. Homages to non-Disney material is no
problem, I think. There are quite a few Dutch Disney stories that did the same (have you
ever seen Tintin's captain Haddock in a Disney comic? In Holland, we have).

OLE:

> Copies of all these will soon be in the snail-mail for Harry and
> Marco.

Thanks, Ole!

--Harry.

Say, no one at all responded to my plea for where to find a photo of Ted
Osborne and-slash-or Al Taliaferro. I want to draw them into this HD&L
anniversary story since they created the kids, but I can't do that without a
photo reference. Halp!

ALIPIO in Brazil:
I received your package, but I don't have your e-mail address. Please send
me a private message so I can ask you some stuff.