Keskustelujen arkisto

I was impressed by the following yesterday when I discovered it. Maybe it's
all well known to you. In such a case, I'll ask for more in a few lines, so
be patient.

I know well that some Barks-scripted stories were drawn by Tony Strobl. I
also know that some Barks-scripted stories drawn by others have been
re-drawn again. But only yesterday I realized that a Barks
scripted-and-drawn story from 1952 was re-drawn less than ten years after by
Tony Strobl!

The story is a DD ten-pager from WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES 141
(6/1952) with Gyro Gearloose inventing some thinking-boxes. It was re-drawn
by Strobl in a "This is your life, DD!" special which appeared in Italy in
February 1962.

In case you were already aware of this, I have a few questions:
(1) is this the only instance? Or, are there other Barks stories re-drawn by
others?
(2) is this the only episode from "This is your life, DD!" which is a
remake, or are there others? Which?

Of course, you all will remember that the same "thinking-boxes" story was
quoted by Don Rosa in "The duck who never was".
[I shall admit here that this was the prompt for me to discover the whole
matter. I knew the Strobl version by heart, but when I read Don's story I
realized that he MUST have quoted Barks!]

Marco

http://marcobar.cce.unifi.it

A few immutable facts about publishing:

1) There's never enough of what readers want;

2) There's never a shortage of what readers couldn't care less about;

3) Policies are fairy dust;

4) Deadlines are brick walls;

5) Everything is too expensive, and nobody gets paid enough.

These, with slight adjustments in terminology, apply to any business you
can name. It would be my hope (a vain one, perhaps, but such is life) that
the above items are given due consideration before such words as "ripoff"
are bandied about too freely around here.

Gary

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"You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you
think it means."
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Gladstone on the Web: http://www.hamlco.com/bhc/
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In a message dated 97-05-11 00:04:29 EDT, you write:

<< JOHN PATRICK:
If your "Gold Key and Whitman lookalike comics" date from the early 1970's,
then this may represent Western Publishing's earliest attempt to sell comics
in bags at toy stores and department stores. There was a short period of
time in 1973 or thereabouts when the month and year seemed to disappear from
the comics indicia, as they later did during the early-to-mid-1980's, when
Western had fully committed itself to the "Whitman bag" policy. This may
have been a trial run that didn't work out at the time. >>

My memory (which runs about 85%) tells me that Whitman had no "trial period"
of Whitman packs. They started them, it worked, and as sales on the newstand
stuff went down, they converted soley to packs. Of course us fans could have
told them what would happen. Look at King which did the same thing...
But speaking of "trial", were the Top Comics distributed in packs? (this is
before my memory...)

Steven Rowe

I'd like to share with the list my own experience with regards to Rosa
stories and how pleasing they might be for young kids.

My oldest child is a 6-year old boy and he's now in first grade. I have been
reading him Barks' duck stories since he was 3. I have now read him ALL of
Barks' stories, and we have recently entered the second round of Barks
reading starting again with his 10-pagers. It's a daily ritual that he looks
forward to with excitement and anticipation.

Other than Barks, he doesn't like anything else but Rosa's stories. When I
bought for him a few issues of Greek Disney comics other than KOMIX (Kriton,
you see how confusing this sentence would have been had I called KOMIX
"Comics"? :-)), he'd flip through them once or twice and would just throw
them away. Most of the Greek Disney's other than KOMIX print, well, mostly
trash (in my humble opinion). Trash for adults, anyway. I guess they believe
that kids like 'em. I got for my kid a subscription to KOMIX that mostly
prints Barks and Rosa and I see that he's saving every single issue!

Every time he reads a Rosa story he'd consistenly tell me that it'd be his
favorite in the specific issue! He seems to be fascinated by the realism in
the drawings and the detail in the art. He always tells me how "good" the
art looks. His favorite Rosa story seems to be "The Treasury of Croesus".

KOMIX is now printing the "Life of Scrooge". In his spare time, whenever he
picks up a comic book to read it's usually the last part of a KOMIX issue
telling Scrooge's adventures. He has read the episodes so many times that he
can now tell you Scrooge's life details. He's only 6 years old! I'm afraid
he'll outgrow them by the time he becomes 10!

Don Rosa, stop warping my kid's mind! :-)

Archontis Pantsios

=====SOMETHING LOST, SOMETHING GAINED=====

Marco Barlotti <(Email removed)>:
> So, at last, we know that evil translations are proper of "Zio
> Paperone", **NOT** of poor Lidia Cannatella!!!

I'm reminded of a silly anecdote from a story Pat McGreal and I wrote
early in our careers.

Where nowadays I might create a panel description which would read in
part, "Mickey thinks very deeply about his dilemma," we wrote with the
more idomatic phrase, "You can see the wheels turning in Mickey's head
as he ponders his problem".

When we finally saw the line art, which was based on a translation from
English into the artist's native tongue, there was a lovely picture of a
perturbed Mickey with a thought balloon above his head filled with --
yup -- two round gears meshing tooth to gap!

The irony of this too literal translation is that it actually worked
nearly as well for heavy thinking as, say, a light bulb over a
character's head signals sudden inspiration. Serendipity.

=====PUBLICATION FACTORING=====

(Email removed) (Gary Leach):
> A few immutable facts about publishing:

One of the interesting things I've found in my life is that human nature
compels all but a few folks to accept their first possible explanation
as THE answer.

Some folks, humiliated and eventually humbled by the repeated experience
life hands them, grow to recognize their perpetual falibility and begin
to recognize that THE answer is likely one of many equally possible.

Some among us even grow to realize that what one chooses to see and
believe often are as reflective of the viewpoint, as of the actual
object viewed.

Put analogously, because one has learned 6+3=9 does not mean that when
one spies a 9, it follows it can only be composed of a 6 and a 3. This
kind of thinking is, however, endemic.

However, I don't mean to slight in any way the actual point of the
original poster here which I believe was one of disappointment, despite
any possible misattribution of intent on the part of Gladstone which is
a separate issue (so to speak).

=====ACROSS THE POND=====

Along with Dwight Decker, I, too, will be in Kobenhavn in early
September. In fact, and I hope I'm not thoughtlessly preempting anyone
with the news, but I think it should be said, a truly historic occasion
is in the making.

Egmont Comic Creation will be gathering many of its far flung global
cadre of creators for a first ever summit.

To my mind, it can't be emphasized enough what a breakthrough this will
be to have this gathering of many of the world's Disney Comics writers
and artists.

Tremendous kudos to Byron Erickson, Per Grubert, and all the support
folks at Egmont for this remarkably progressive approach. I hope you all
grow to be as proud of this singular achivement as I'm convinced you
deserve to be.

I predict that someday we'll all look back at this coming moment as a
watershed event.

Ciao!

--
riverrun past Eve's and Adam's from swerve of shore to bend of bay
(Email removed) -=*=- http://users.aol.com/dcrawson/home.htm

MARCO:

I don't believe that any of the other segments of This is Your Life, Donald
Duck were based on previous comic-book stories.
For your information: The 1994 Gladstone reprint of TIYLDD replaced the
Strobl-drawn "adaptation" of the think-boxes story with Barks' original
artwork. At the same time, the pupils of Strobl's ducks' eyes were redrawn,
repositioned, and "pie cut" to more closely conform to the Barks style.

DR. ARCHONTIS PANTSIOS:

You say you are afraid that your son will "outgrow" Duck comics by the time
he's 10.

CHRIS:

Thank you very much for all the information on the "Barks Treasury".
I liked it all -except the price. $390. Isn't it simply amazing how
big numbers publishers can dream up when the numbers are to follow a
dollar sign? Sometimes I truely wish that publishers never learned to
count to more than 50.

Unfortunately I know (from past experience) my three mental stages
when a book of this sort (and price) is released:

1) Laughter. Indulgence ("Fools! They must be crazy to charge
such a ridiculous price -they'll never sell a single copy!").

2) Anger. Disgust ("Bastards! I WANT it but its by FAR too
expensive!").

3) Buying ("Hmmm... well, if I live on spaghetti and beans
for 6 months I should be able to afford it").

So, as I am presently somewhere between stage one and two my best
guess is that within a couple of weeks I will have called Bear
Mountain and ordered a copy...

Another concern of mine is: How long time will it take before a
similar book (at a similar price) is issued with the remaining 35
sketches? I guess I might as well go for a truck load bargain of
spaghetti and beans in the first place.

ALL:

Every now and then the term "Lost art" pops up here in the mail. But
is the "lost art" (and the huge number of printed pages) that Barks
sent to Western really non-existing?

As we all know Western Publishing did not bother to save the original
pages, but microfilmed the lot. Afterwards the pages (except the few
returned to Barks) were probably thrown in the dustbin. The trash is
collected and that's it -or is it?

I must admit that my mind began to spin when I read an article in the
May 1991 National Geographic. It was a story on a guy that dug up
trash from (recent) landfills in order to investigate living
standards over the past years. In this article it said that today 70%
of all garbage ends up in landfills (my guess is that in the 50'ies
it was probably all of it). This guy could tell about things that
don't degrade in the month or two we all think they do. Actually, the
article claimed that some newspapers found were as old as 40 years
-and still legible!

Now, the landfill investigated was the one on Staten Island in the
wet New York. If Paper can last 40 years in wet conditions, what
about the dry California where Western Publishings "Trash" Probably
went?

What I'm saying is that all those Barks pages could very well still
be down there, buried in an old landfill somewhere in California. Not
in "Mint condition" but probably still legible.

"So what should we do about that", you sceptics might say? Well,
isn't it obvious? -we all go buy a pick and a shovel and then: off to
California! Isn't it true that Barks originals sell for as much as
$8000 per page? Not exactly petty cash if you hit a "Barks vein".

So come on guys, let's go west, find the landfill, and we'll all end
up with three cubic acres of money... Eh?

-Poul Frokjar

ARCHONTIS:

> bought for him a few issues of Greek Disney comics other than KOMIX (Kriton,
****** *****
> you see how confusing this sentence would have been had I called KOMIX
> "Comics"? :-)),

Yes. Almost as confusing as one of the replies by the Komix staff in their
letters page, referring to friends of komix (i.e., comics) and Komix (i.e.,
the specific magazine).

If it's confusion you want, try asking for Komix at a kiosk (I assume you have
a subscription). You'll either get a blank stare, or the reply "sure, which
one?"

In any case, it appears that "Komix" is the official transcription, so I'll
abide by it.
--
Kriton (e-mail: (Email removed))
(WWW: http://dias.cti.gr/~kyrimis
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"You know, I think it's just a matter of putting two and two together to make
three..."
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End of Disney comics Digest V97 Issue #100
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