Keskustelujen arkisto

Uh oh...

I don't want to say too much about this -- and maybe
it's already common knowledge on the ML and I just
missed the discussion, but...

I just got the latest issue of The Comics Journal
(dated April when it's almost June, but that's typical
for them). There's a one-page article in the news
section relevant to our interests. Basically, Bruce
Hamilton, publisher of Gladstone Comics and Barks art
prints, is suing Barks, Barks's agents (the Grandeys),
and somebody else for breach of contract, among other
things.

The suit was filed in early April but this is the first
I heard about it. As I said, I don't want to go into this
too much -- all I know is what I read in the Journal, and
I'll just point interested parties in that direction.

--Dwight Decker

PS: Bulls don't win bullfights. People do. But then who
wins people-fights? Lawyers.

Vidar:
>ÄMarco Rota's latestÅ story is OK, but the ending wasn't too surprising.
>Could somebody give him a better story to draw???

The story? I hardly noticed it if there was any. Donald falls
asleep, has a nightmare, wakes up, the end. It all seemed like a giant
one-pager with no real purpose. Or had it been shortened to maybe three
pages it might've made an okay beginning to a longer story but as such
it seemed like just a "hallucination scene" with no plot of its own.
Just think how Dumbo would've been like if the only scene in the movie
had been the one about the pink elephants but 20 times longer.

I mean, at no point was the reader in doubt of the reality in
which Donald was. It was immediately obvious that it was a mere nightmare.
And even if it hadn't been it would've ruined a fine impressionistic tale
to have it as a final solution that Gyro just wakes Donald up and he
notices it was all a bad dream.

However, I really agree with you that Marco Rota is a great
artist and deserves some proper stories to draw.

--

Mike - The Finnish Trekkie

In his "eulogy" (sic) of Don Rosa, Ole Neilsen wrote:

<<To state the obvious yet again, in different words: just about
every Disney artist is in some way building on Barks' work;
using his world and characters, and often trying to copy the
general formula of the stories. But only Don gives Barks the
credit for founding Duckburg as we know it, and knows it well
enough to correspond 100% with it.
He is also the only one with a talent that rivals the old
master's; sure there are other good artists and good writers,
but Don is _both_. He's just about the only writer who dares
explore the boundaries of the Duckburg universe and expand our
understanding of it - whereas, say, William Van Horn is mostly
reducing it to the lowest common denominator.>>

Sorry, but I can't agree with this assessment of Van Horn's work. Here are
the reasons why:

(1) As Ole says, every artist and writer who has followed in Carl's
footsteps has in some sense "built" on Barks' foundation. However, it is
possible to do so in very different -- and equally valid -- ways. Don appears
to be most inspired by the classic adventure stories in the early DONALD DUCK
comics and the first 70-odd issues of UNCLE SCROOGE. Van Horn appears to
draw his inspiration from the 10-pagers in WALT DISNEY'S COMICS. I firmly
believe that BOTH of these sources are equally valid as "foundations". Van
Horn's choice to concentrate on the short, humorous duck story (the type of
story, let's remember, that made WDC&S the best-selling American comic book
of all time) does NOT automatically represent a reduction to the "lowest
common denominator," but rather, a free choice to specialize in a somewhat
different type of story than the "far-ranging adventure".

(2) Van Horn has done his part to "expand" the parameters of the particular
genre in which he works. He took Barks' occasional "wacky" humor (such as
funny names for incidental characters) and pushed it out to new boundaries.
Recall the running gag about Bulgaria that he used in a number of his early
stories -- "Scrooge's bubble-gum factory in Bulgaria" and the like. He also
has peopled his stories with huge numbers of weird characters -- "Van Horn
looneys" I like to call them. This definitely represents an "expansion" of
our understanding of what sorts of humor can work in a short, humorous Duck
story. (I don't know -- perhaps this humor loses something in translation.)

Perhaps Ole can amplify what he meant by "reduction to the lowest common
denominator." That is often interpreted as meaning "cheapening to fit the
tastes of a mass audience," and I don't believe it has ever been Van Horn's
intention to do that.

-- Christopher E. Barat
(Email removed)
Homepage http://members.aol.com/cebarat/home.htm
"THERE COMES A TIME IN A MAN'S LIFE WHEN HE MUST...INCORPORATE."
-- Scrooge McDuck, "DuckTales" episode "Till Nephews Do Us Part"

Dwight Decker informs us:
> Basically, Bruce Hamilton, publisher of Gladstone Comics and Barks art
> prints, is suing Barks, Barks's agents (the Grandeys),
> and somebody else for breach of contract, among other things.
Sad. Suing Barks (living legend, eternal hero, this century's
Hans Christian Andersen) is like suing Mother Teresa -- it's simply
not done. I thought. (She asked the bakery in Seattle not to promote
the "Nun Bun" in the way they did, and they obliged. Of course.)

Dwight sounded hesitant in a perhaps unintended intriguing sort of way, and
does not seem about to dive into a long discursion of what he knows goes on
here. Nevertheless, could you, or others, give some more "basic information"
to those amongst us who know far less? What, according to the Comics Journal,
is it that Barks & the Grandeys are being sued for? Which contract has
(allegedly) been breached? Are big sums at stake here, or "only" principles
and small sums?

This ML needs to be informed about this. And we should hope that big dog-fights
with too many lawyers can be avoided.

Nils Lid Hjort

--------------------------------
End of Disney comics Digest V97 Issue #110
******************************************

James- I do not have your e-mail address and I can help you get those
missing
Rosa stories. write me! ---Barry---