Keskustelujen arkisto

Thus wrote Don Rosa:
>Anyhow... the legendary treasures of South America are by far the greatest
>of the Americas (it would take me a moment to think if there are ANY
>legendary great treasures anywhere north of Mexico)...

Naow... how about a certain building atop a certain hill containing (so
it's rumoured) a certain number of cubic feet of money?

North of Mexico, too... ;-)

Hmmm...?

/Mattias

**** Mattias Hallin ** Halmstad * Sweden ** <(Email removed)> ****
* *
* "Oh bury me thar! With my battered git-tar! *
************* A-screamin' my heart out fer yew!" *************

DON:
Yes... thanks a bushel for ten years' worth of warm, complex,
meaningful, and often hilarious Duck adventures. Sorry I didn't bring it
up before -- the date eluded me.
At the ten-year mark, my favorite among your "normal" stories is
"His Majesty McDuck," with my favorite LO$ chapter being "The Vigilante of
Pizen Bluff". Keep up the wonderful work... I enjoy nothing more than Duck
stories produced by someone who genuinely cares deeply about doing them for
no other reason than that he enjoys them.
Keep up the Mickey cameos, too!

David Gerstein
"This is all such a *farce!* You *greedily* set up your own
country to beat the tax collector, and all you succeeded in doing is
*losing everything* to the first thugs who waltzed through the door!"

<(Email removed)>

My friend Soeren, expressing his frustration at his inability to find the
Rosa albums at his local comics shop, (isn't it plain DUMB entrepreneurship
refusing to carry the works of a popular artist that SELLS?), called
"conservative" those Barks "purists" who find that Rosa's sequels (or is it
ALL of his work) destroy somehow the pristine, authentic Barksian universe.
Putting characterizations aside, I always found it perplexing that the
criterion for whether or not a story is good or worthwhile is its supposed
effect on somebody else's work! (or someone's perception of it!) My
criterion of whether somebody's work is worthwhile is the work's
CONTRIBUTION to its field! To my eyes, Barks and Rosa are great in their own
right, because of how each artist's work has elevated the field of Disney
comics. Would Disney comics have been better (would Disney comics READERS
have been better off) if Don Rosa hadn't entered the field? People may
criticise Barks or Rosa on his own faults or merits, but to say that a
reader hates one artist because he somehow "destroys" the other artist is,
well, childish.

Ten years ago, American Disney comics were just coming back to life due to
the admirable efforts of a small group of die-hard Barks fans over in
Arizona. If it wasn't for Rosa, the American audience would only have gotten
more of Barks (which was OK back in the mid-80's due to the earlier Disney
comics hiatus), and some exposure to the European stuff. For how long? I
remember reading letters in those early Gladstone comics from American
readers who didn't care much for the European stuff at that time. And after
the Barks well would run dry, then what? More and more Barks reprints? Well,
there's something called "too much of (the same) good thing"!

Rosa revitilized the Ducks. He injected into them a sense of energy and
enthusiasm plain to the naked eye. People are entitled to a negative opinion
of his work, but failing to recognize his important contribution to (at
least) keeping Disney comic books alive (in the U.S.) would be just plain
myopic. Of course, I'm being nice and I'm not even considering other, less
innocent motives.

Ten years ago, when "The Son of the Sun" hit the stands, a reviewer in the
Comics Buyers' Guide wrote of Rosa's story: "This story rates a very solid A
plus. It is one of the very, very best Uncle Scrooge stories I have ever
read. It is, in fact, like discovering a new Barks story".

That was probably high praise, but it may also have disturbed certain
people. But should we, Barks and Rosa fans, care about this? NO! Not if it
doesn't affect our ability to enjoy their stories. People should STOP
calling Rosa the new Barks--at the beginning that may have been natural,
since there was Barks and then ALL the rest. Ten years later, it's obvious
that Rosa is an individual shining star, not a NEW Barks, but a great new
Duck artist, different from Barks. Whether he's worse, at an equal footing,
or better, that will be judged MUCH later. For the time being, let us all
enjoy what we have. And what we have is according to my humble opinion,
great, admirable stuff.

In 1984, Don Rosa gave an interview to Mr. David Campiti (in the CBG, I
think). David had asked Rosa: "What would happen if somebody came along and
offered you the chance to do comics for real comic-book money--on a steady
basis?" Don replied: "Couldn't do it. I'd have to quit my job....I'm not
interested in giving up my construction company, and I certainly would never
be able to make Frank Miller-type money".

Thank God Don changed his mind!

Archontis

PER, about the full names of some Disney (Egmont) artists:

>> Tel JTe Jose Tello
> I suppose Jose should have an acute accent on the e.

Correct.

>> Mil JMl Josi Maria Millet (JMi = Jim Mitchell)
> I suppose Josi really should have been Jose with such an accent too.
> (If an e with acute accent in character set Latin1 loses the high
> bit the result is "i".)

My info is from Francois Willot, who uses accented characters all the time
in his French database. But in Millet's case he consistently uses "Josi".
So either that's Millet's name, or Francois read a wrong version of the name
somewhere, and used that since. But Francois has no internet access, so
that can't have caused the problem...

> Should there be any other accents in these names?

Not according to Francois.
--Harry.

Harry Fluks asked in his 03-04 contribution if anyone had information on=20
Barks giving any more details on the two lost ten-pagers: "Bobsled Race"=20
and "Golden Apples".=20
I did ask him exactly that, in the question time part of the Swedish duck=
=20
fans' meeting on his tour of Europe in =B494 (19 June, to be precise). His=
=20
answer was something like "yes, I remember doing something like that",=20
after he got a small briefing on what he had said before in this matter,=20
but he had nothing to add. Now, this was in a public question session,=20
with about 150 people in the room. MAYBE he could dig out something more=20
if asked under other circumstances - though I doubt it. He had been given=
=20
the question in advance (the night before), but I don't know if he had=20
read and thought about them before the meeting.

Anders Berglund,=20
Stockholm, Sweden.

To Herald( for Wolfgang):
In response the reported dearth of queries for Carl Barks:
I'm not sure these are appropriate here or are to be sent to Harold(for
Wolfgang). So I will mail this to both. Forgive me if any of these
topics have previously been addressed as I am new to this list.

1.In "Dangerous Disguise"(four color #308, 1951) the characters, other
than the ducks, are human. I think this works well and the
tongue-in-cheek political satire makes this one of my favorite stories.
Why was this use of humans discontinued?.

2.After about 1951 the length of the Ducks' bills shortens quite a bit.
Is this part of the natural evolution of style, or was there pressure to
change their appearance? I note that the language was cleaned up( no
more use of "ain't") and that Dell's "pledge to parents" came out at
this time.

3.I assume you still have your censored Duck frames and pages. I would
love to obtain a copy of it all and would pay for the opportunity. I
have seen bits and pieces of it here and there( the Milkman story, the
bar brawl splash panel from "Back to the Klondike"{US#2) )so I assume
there is a way for it to be done. Do you anticipate this material
becoming available?

4. Have you compiled a bibliography of your work and is it available?

5.(I hope this isn't too heavy) "the Gospel according to Peanuts"
attempts to draw lessons about living from the "Peanuts" comic strip by
Charles Schulz. Are there lessons you would like us to draw from the
Scrooge and Donald Duck stories(by Carl Barks)?

6. Any favorite stories?

ALL
I noticed the posting on the Disneyana Convention and other Disney World
stuff. I live only 90-100 minutes away from Orlando, so if I can ever help
anyone with anything during or before a visit, please don't hesitate to
e-mail.

David:

> ANDERS AND #15/1997 apparently contains my Magica/Beagle Boys
> 12-pager "Ten-Penny Opera" (drawn by Daniel Branca). I'm curious to know
> what readers thought of it... also whether the operas made any sense in
> other languages! (As I originally wrote the story, the operas were genuine
> ones, some by Gilbert and Sullivan...)

I won't see this until later today, so I can't say much yet.
Except that the preview mentioned Scrooge battling the Beagles, Flintheart
and Magica all in one day! Did Magica ever meet Flintheart before in an
American comic book? I don't believe so, and am not even sure if it ever
happened in the Italian stories, where _anything_ can happen.

For a little spoiler, I can inform that "Il Ratto di Brigitta",
the 1961 Scarpa story you just translated, is widely available in European
pockets (dkJB:43, dLT:79, and swKAP:41) along with two other Scarpa stories
"The Last Balaboo" and "The Big Treasure Hunt". Is it still 33 pages, or... ?

Marco claimed that Gaudenzio Capelli, author of the first Wild
Duck story, was only credited for two stories in Fossati's index, but
several stories in Almanacco 1975-77 bear his name. Like I A-215, "The
Money Ocean" (U$ 266/7) co-written with Rota. Note that this is yet
another way to place the dash in that abbreviation, this time from the
Gladstone index. We believe to have the problem under control for the
next update of the indexes.

Now that I have your attention, Marco, could you please answer Jacob's
question about who is who of Marlin and Zapotek? My guess is Zapotek is
the tall guy, but it's based on very circumstantial evidence...

Dwight:

Since you like the multiplying concept so much, let me remind you of
a great Branca story in Anders And #16/1996 with far too many Scrooges.
It's D 93511 in case you can get Gladstone to buy a translation.

Gary:
It came as surprise to me that 95% of the Gladstone issues stay in the
US! I calculated that maybe 50-100 went to Denmark alone, but perhaps
my multiplying for other foreign countries was too optimistical? With
a number like 80,000 copies of the U$, only 4000 are sold abroad.

And you 'trash' the 40,000 returned copies?! Elaborate, please.
I'll be losing sleep over that one, even if I'm sure I misunderstood:
Don't Hamilton Co. sell those back issues at rapidly rising prices, and
sort of speculate in the stock - why else print twice as many copies
as you can sell?

-- Ole 'RoC' Reichstein Nielsen

Bohimaton: A cross between 'behemoth' and 'abomination'.