Keskustelujen arkisto

Hi all;

My name is Archontis Pantsios and a reluctant lurker in this ML since
mid-November of last year. Why reluctant? Well, I really wanted to start
posting from the minute I became a subscriber, but I kept postponing it for
one important reason: I felt I had to wait at first, and simply read the
digests long enough in order to acquaint myself with the philosophy of this
list, its participants, etc. Now, almost four months later, I feel I've
become acquainted with this list to a comfortable extent that I can safely
make a reluctant introduc(k)tion.

First off, some brief bio data: I am 35 years old, and I was born and raised
in a small town in Northern Greece (Greek Macedonia). I started devouring
Greek Disney comics at a very young age, even before I had started
Kintergarten. In a way I was lucky, since that was around the time that many
present Disney publications had just started being published: the Greek
edition of Mickey Maous made its premiere in 1966, when I was a wee 5 year
old tyke. I remember collecting Greek Disney comics thru my Elementary
School years, cartons and cartons full of various Greek comics. The fact
that I was bringing home good grades, provided the required alibi that my
parents needed in order to not bug me about reading them more than my school
books.

I thought I had outgrown them by the time I was 14 or so. Slowly, without
realizing it, I got rid of my old comics--actually, my mom had burned
(sacrilege!) most of them by using them as fire kindlings.

Then came a bleak period full of equations and graphs. Finishing high school
in 1979, I left for the United States on a full scholarship at Bates
College, a Liberal Arts college in Maine. During my four years as an
undergraduate at Bates, I wondered occasionally WHERE the American Disney
comics were! I mean, I was in the U.S., and I couldn't find ANY! Truth to
tell, I didn't search much, but I'd expected to find them easily if they
were being published.

After getting a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics, I went on to graduate
school and eventually earned a Ph.D. in Economics. I thought I was happy and
fulfilled by that time. By 1989, I was happily married, had found my first
full-time job as a College Professor in Middlebury College, Vermont, and we
were expecting our first child. What more can a human ask for!

Well, I got much more without even asking! One day, I wandered into a
bookstore in a small Vermont town. As I was browsing thru its stacks of
books, I happened to come across a thick and heavy book, full of beautiful
color, with a number of Donald and Scrooge stories. As I was flipping thru
it, some of its images kinda looked familiar! Now, wait a minute. I hadn't
read a Disney comic book for years and years now. How could that be possible?

I bought that book at $35.95. It was the Celestial Arts book, and when I
brought it home that evening, my wife took a look at it and gazed back at me
with astonishment. I had paid all this money for a book with Disney stories?
She told me that our baby wasn't even born yet, and that he\she wouldn't
start reading before 4-5 years! When I told her that the book was for me,
well, need I continue?...

Many stories in that book had stuck in my mind from my Elementary school
years--especially the "Island in the Sky" story. I wanted to find more. And
more I did--a trip to a comic book store opened my eyes to the wonderful
Gladstone books of their first run--I bought as many as I could find, and
more directly from them. Pretty soon I was able to get most of Barks'
stories. It's very difficult to describe these feelings of rediscovering
one's lost childhood.

I was fortunate to re-discover my lost childhood in a wonderful combination:
having a baby (son) and re-discovering Barks! In these 7-8 years that have
elapsed since that magical moment in a small Vermont town, I became an even
happier person!

Well, the rest is history, as they say. I started buying everything I could
find on Barks and the Ducks, I became hopelessly hooked.

By 1992 we had moved to Washington, DC, where I had a tenure-track position
as an Assistant Professor of Economics. My Barks collection was virtually
complete, and I was now hooked on this new Duck guy, Don Rosa. I loved his
stuff! Pretty soon I was able to find an outlet to him and started a regular
correspondence with him. I think we Barks/Duck fans are very fortunate to
have him draw the Ducks.

In 1994, we decided to move to Greece. It was a tough decision. I now live
in Thessaloniki, and teach Economics at the American College of
Thessaloniki, a Liberal Arts College of the american tradition, and a
division of Anatolia College, an American educational institution with a
more than 100 year history (first in Asia Minor, since 1886), and in Greece
since 1923, where it re-located after the Asia Minor Catasroph and the
exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey. I now have three children
(two boys and a girl), and are all on their way of becoming ardent Duck
fans. My oldest one (he's 6), now reads Barks and Rosa on his own! My wife
still cannot understand why I spent all this money on the Ducks. But amongst
my greatest joys is still when I get to open a package every 2-3 months and
read the adventures of my favorite Ducks--and my heart registers an extra
beat when the comic books happen to contain a story by the brilliant, magic
pen of Don Rosa.

Nice to meet you all,

Archontis Pantsios

BILL WORMSTEDT:
>> MARC:
>> The CenterCon people are good freinds and great Duckfans,
>
>Speaking on behalf of Center Con:
>Everything Don said above is absolutely correct!

That is not true. I misspelled "friends"!

DAVID:
> DON:
> What duck adventures are you working on now?

Well, I dropped back onto that "Eldorado" story to see if I can put a bit
more action and humor into that historical-fact-heavy plot.

JULIANNA:
>To whom it may concern:
> Could you please send me some of those pre-Disney comics by Dona
>Rosa.

The name's not "Dona Rosa". It's Don Ros. No, wait, it's Don Rosa. Yeah.
(And please don't repost entire Digests with your messages.)

I wrote:
> I'm going to make a whole bunch of xeroxes, which I'll send to anyone
> who sends me his physical mail address.

Today I sent the first bunch of packages. USA people may need to
be patient, because I sent the package by ship. This is 4 times
slower than (but 1/3 of the price of) air mail. It may take 4 weeks...

--Harry.

--------------------------------
End of Disney comics Digest V97 Issue #54
*****************************************

The unexpurgated Carl Barks This is the kind of silly publications I would
have bought anyway, and with a Barks connection i can even talk about it.
I've seen an issue of the Calgary EyeOpener before, so i knew what to expect
(Captain Billy's Whiz-Bang type humor).
some folks think that this sort of stuff was the 20s version of smut, it
wasn't. The 20s (and earlier) had XXX material, very similar to what we see
now. It just wasn't as available as it is now. Therefore the more tamer
stuff seemed much more racier (know what I mean; wink wink nudge nudge) and
popular. It's a collection of gag cartoons, some good, some bad, and some
offensive (the racial sterotypes are typical of the period). I'm also
surpsrised there was no editioral mention of the swastica (now asociated only
with nazis) Lots of underwear drawing and rear ends. It's got a photo of
Clara Bow on the cover (I can't place the actress in the bathtub, although
I've seen her in some silent film). It's great fun for those of us who like
this kind of silliness; however Duck fans may be a bit less (shall we
joke) excited by this. Hey, I've allready ordered Coo-Coo. (and if anyone
knows who the other actresses are, let me know).

Steven Rowe

MARK AND KRITON

(1) The story "The Zodiac Stone" was published in Greece in a One Shot comic
4-5 years ago. The exact publication date escapes me at the moment, but I
can check it out if I find some time to dig out my old Greek comics when I
get back home. It was a long story--more than 100 pages long, and published
in a digest format.

(2) "To Katepsygmeno Kelepouri" was the Greek title for Barks' "A Cold
Bargain", and it was published very early on in KOMIX's life--if my memory
doesn't fail me too miserably, it was published during its first or second
year of publication back in the late '80s. I personally have all the KOMIX
issues binded into 12-issue volumes--starting from #1 that had printed "Lost
in the Andes" back in 1988.

Archontis

Hello!
I've been subscribing to this mailing list for a couple of months
now.I've been meaning to introduce myself(but haven't gotten around to
it)for a while,and seeing all these other new people accelerated this
process I think.I'm not exactly a disney comics expert,so I probably won't
be posting too often.
Okay,the "mandatory" self-presentation:I'm sixteen years old and
living in Norway (which is where I'm from) at the moment."At the moment"
because I lived in Sweden from I was seven 'till eleven,then in
Ireland(where my mum's from)for five years or so.I moved back
here(Trondheim) in the summer.Oh,and my name's Tarjei.
I've been collecting Norwegian disney duck comics since I was about
six,and have been expanding my collection ever since.I collected the swedish
duck comics and albums while living there,and subscribed to them for a while
in Ireland before changing to a Norwegian subscription.They have a disney
duck comic in Ireland called something like the "the disney weekly" or
something similar(We didn't bring all our stuff back from Ireland(we'll be
getting it in the summer),so I was forced to leave behind some of my
collection;and can therefore not check the names),but it seemed to be geared
a lot towards younger readers(and other people heavily into
Ducktales).Though to my amazement I once saw a Don Rosa story in one issue
(and stupidly didn't buy it because I already had a few copies of that story).
ANYWAY...Sometimes when I went on holiday to Germany,Oslo and London(and
in the early days in Ireland in comic shops like "Forbidden Planet"),I'd
come across some American Gladstone and Disney issues.At the time I kind of
assumed(wrongly) that Disney comics were really big in America,and didn't
really know anything about the Gladstone-->Disney-->Gladstone changeover
thing.But after obtaining these comics for a while,I began to get a clearer
picture through the letters columns.Then,while on holiday in Norway,I found
an interview with Don Rosa-along with "his" family tree-in a Norwegian
newspaper.They mentioned where he lived etc. etc..Before that I thought
maybe he was Italian or something by the sound of his name.So I began to
follow his lt$md (or however you guys shorten it-lto$ ?).I got into
reseaching all the dates,and sent him a couple of letters over the space of
one or two years(and got a reply(thank's!)).Then I went on a holiday to
America and visited him with my mum!I also bought some more Disney/Gladstone
comics,and have been subscribing to a lot of Gladstones' ones since
shortly after.
Well,that should just about wrap up my intro(it's long enough anyway!).

DON:
Could you post a message detailing exactly where and when you're coming
to Oslo when you know yourself?I don't have a clue who informs about these
things here(though I saw the address to something called "ntf donaldistene"
(a club I think) on the back of an Norwegian/American Don Rosa index)?

OK!

THE T.
ªªªªªª

P.S. By the way,does anyone know if Gold Key's "Walt Disney Donald Duck"
#138 from 1971,or Dell's "Walt Disney's Comics And Stories" #225 from
1959,are worth anything in particular?They're the only oldish American
Disney comics I have.

I refrained from commenting on the two last issues of "Zio Paperone" because
I promised Don not to criticize too much the translations of his stories.
But now a new, [grame] series of "Zio Paperone" is announced: no Don Rosa
story in this issue, no Don Rosa story even announced in next issue!
This issue (#90) is dedicated to Unca Carl's 96th birthday. The
Salvagnini-Cavazzano story we discussed a few days ago is the main feature!
So it's a very important story after all, at least in Walt Disney Italy's
intentions...
And next issue will feature Barks' story from UNCLE SCROOGE 6, June-August
1954 (I don't know the original title!). BUT it will **not** feature Don's
sequel <return to Tralla-La> (is that the correct title?). Four more stories
by Rota, Vicar, Jippes and Reiche (who's that?) are announced, so I guess
there is really no space for Don! Well, Lidia Cannatella told me (when she
rung me up... do you remember?) that she was having problems with the
translation [;-)] ("a tricky one", she told me...). We agreed that I would
send her a very good but rare translation of Coleridge's Kubla Khan by our
grat contemporary poet, Mario Luzi; which I promptly did, and I know that
she received it... but it looks like it was not enough!!!

Well, since I came to speak of translations... I can't help telling you a
true gem in this issue #90 of ZP. The author of the translation is NOT
Lidia, but -alas!- is a member of this ML... so I shall not tell his name...
I think he is blushing enough already!

The subject was Barks' announced new story, <Somewhere in Nowhere>. The
following translation is proposed to Italian readers: <Every where in no
where>. Notice that "every -(space)- where" is NOT "everywhere" (the latter
has a meaning, the former, as far as I know, is meaningless! It is anyway in
Italian!); and "no -(space)- where" is opposed to "nowhere" (again, in
Italian the two words <no> <where> juxtaposed but parted have NO MEANING!).

Shame, shame on you, thou new Evil Translator!

Marco

<A vow is a vow! You keep your promise, I'll keep mine! That's a deal!>
Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 173, February 1955

--------------------------------
End of Disney comics Digest V97 Issue #55
*****************************************

CHRISTER:
>In two weeks Egmont (or is it just here in Norway) is going to publish the
>Duckburg-map discussed here earlier. It is a huge poster published over at
>least two issues (maybe four). They publish it as a complete map of
>Duckburg(!) and some kind of guiding trip trough it. Though this as a
>strongly compromised map I'm really looking forward to see it. But I'm not
>shure wether this is the same map as mentioned here earlier which I figured
>a bit smaller, then again maybe they've just blown the proportions up a bit.

It probably isn't. Unless I'm completely off track here, some
thing called a map was published in the Italian pocketbooks not long ago.
It was not very mappish being a mere aerial view of a town with a Money
Bin. Some of the houses had texts such as "Donald's house", "Daisy's
house" etc. No real map value missing most of the Barks references that
could've been included.

However, there has been a real map of Duckburg that included if
not all, at least most of the possible Barks references. It was published
in the Editorial Page of Aku Ankka in 1981 but that's all I know of it.
Oh, and it looked like a giant Donald's head.

>made it? It's a quite funny Mickey story, which a usually don't think of his

I didn't really like it as a story (although it was entertaining
enough). They use way too much of this parallel universe dimension transfer
stuff imho. I remember how Egmont published a story last year where Donald
and HDL enter a parallel universe filled with ugly space monster aliens
who live in a place called DUCKburg! Luckily they're not yet as bad as some
of those Italian soft scifi Duck stories: Let's go have a picnic in the
fifth dimension after we've battled the Evil Hairdresser from Mars in
the Center of the Earth!

MARCO:
>The subject was Barks' announced new story, <Somewhere in Nowhere>. The

What? They're publishing it already some where?! How come
we don't know any thing about it? Are the Evil Editors keeping it a
secret? Isn't there any body any where who'd be able to tell us
some thing about it?

--

Mike - The Finnish Trekkie