Keskustelujen arkisto

Eirik Krogh Visted <(Email removed)>:

Hi, Eirik! Something you said caught my eye and I wanted to comment
since its possible others believe the same as you. If you will, allow me
to give some real world examples as I explain.

EIRIK> A production manager can do a horrible job without it really
EIRIK> mattering for the quality of the story.

My long-standing experience is just the opposite. The line editor or
production manager is extremely important to whether or not the reader
will experience what I intended when I constructed the story.

For instance, the first story of mine ever printed was short, 12 pages
or fewer as I recall. The production manager forgot to include page
numbers on the art, and never caught that the pages were out of order
when they went to the printer.

The offending pages occurred during the first third of the story where I
was building the character and his motivation and explaining the nature
of his conflict. In my opinion, that story (as seen by the reader)
suffered irrevocably from the confusion this caused. It was extremely
disappointing after more than two years of trying to get published.

I've had a short story where the first gag was used to immediately
establish the two main characters of the story and their traditional
relationship. One character was being deliberately baited by another to
extend themselves precariously over a pool of water. Only the pool was
colored as if it was the same concrete as the surrounding area, rather
than as water.

This undercut the entire short story since it softened the opening, the
characters, their relationship, and caused confusion in the minds of the
reader, likely violating the suspension of disbelief necessary to enter
a story with trust.

Just this last year, I wrote a story, PASTA PAZOOM, which will feature a
supporting character named as a composite after some list members here
who were very kind and helpful in getting me lists of all the different
kinds of pasta. The story features Donald as a South Seas pasta
salesman, and there are local folks who speak <<in their own tongue>>
and make comments the reader can understand, but which Donald cannot.

Unfortunately, a person involved in the production side of things
virtually destroyed the story by not using my suggested traditional
comic book convention of indicating balloons spoken in a <<different
language>> by surrounding such phrases in these markers: << and >>.

Instead, the production person chose to put useless gobbledygook into
the balloons and then translated *every* balloon in a box below. This
immediately meant that every time a local spoke, the words took more
than twice their intended space!!!

Dear God of Artists Everywhere! In one panel it was so bad the artist
only had room -- I'm not exaggerating -- to have the characters lean
their heads into a minute area between all the balloons and captions.
There was no art at all. Surely the artist must think I am a complete
idiot.

Believe me, everyone who touches the story can destroy it if they want
to (or if they are just incredibly incompetent).

On the other hand, someone who understands the *intent* of the story or
even of a given panel and whether it reveals character, motivation,
conflict, plot advance or whatever -- someone who understands that can
bring their own specialized skills to amplify the intent of those who
preceded them, and thus make the story better than it would have been
without their participation.

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

At 15:43 02.07.97 +0300, Archontis wrote:

>So I ask all interested List members to send me their picks on the following
>categories:

How much time do we have. (You should tell us, shouldn't you?)
I'll still be away from my comics for two more weeks.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vidar Svendsen http://home.sol.no/vsvends

One good thing about getting old is that people believe you when you say
"I don't remember"

Joe Torcivia wrote:
>To the best of my recollection Buck first appeared in the issue of
>"Walt Disney Comics Digest" which appeared in December, 1968 or
>January 1969. The story was drawn by Paul Murry - very unusual for
>Murry to do a non-Mickey related feature by that time! It was later
>followed up by another Buck story drawn by Jack Manning. There may
>have been more in issues I don't own. My digests have always been a
>lower priority on my organizing sacle - so I don't have the numbers
>handy!

Finally, a chance to use my collection of Walt Disney Digests! I checked
the first 30 issues and found three Buck Duck appearances.

The first Buck Duck story is in WD Digest 7 (Jan/69) with a small cover
shot by Murry and blurb "Introducing Buck Duck. Last of the Good Guys"
Title: "When You Show Your Gums...Smile!" 12 pages of three panels per
page by Paul Murry (not very good Murry, but adequate.) An oddity is
that the story uses "square" word balloons like those of the early Gold
Key comics five or six years previous. I wondered if maybe this had been
done earlier and shelved, but the panel layout is obviously for the
digest size.

The second Buck Duck story is in WD Digest 14, (Aug/69) Title: "You
Don't Have to be an Artist to Draw Your Gun." Ten pages of three panel
per page Jack Manning art (I guess. I'm not that good on newer GK
artists) Another oddity. Only the main characters (and the "square" word
balloons) are in color. The rest of the panels are left in black and
white outlines (no shading.) Looks very, very ugly.

There is a one page "Buck Duck Buck-A-Roo Quiz" puzzle page in WD Digest
11 (May/69). Art by Vic Lockman (?)

best -- Merlin Haas

NISSE (ALL):

Yes, I too enjoyed that Egmont (Danish publisher of Disney) finally
got around to print The Treasure of Marco Polo (ToMP) -the last of
the long Barks stories we Danes yet had not been introduced to.

I loosely checked the Danish translation of the text and it matched
pretty well. That is, it matched Gladstones recent published version
from U$A (#41 ?).

I think this is a good opportunity to mention that a few of Barks'
stories (incl. ToMP) have been altered one way or another when
re-printed by Gladstone (and Disney Comics). In the case of ToMP all
references to a civil war has been changed to a war between two
countries. And please don't ask me why international wars are any
better than civil wars. Also, twice guards are attacked by "Soy" with
his bare hands. In the original version he has a string/wire in his
hands ('Them Charlies sure are nasty!).

Now (Gary) don't get me wrong here. If Disney says that the only way
they will alow a story to be printed, is if the publishers do this
and that to soften up a few things, then okay for me. Still though, I
find it a bit sad that here in the 90'ies Barks stories are still
being censored. Compared to earlier it's just other topics that now
concerns Disney (I here assume that Gladstone has no interest in
censoring stories -including Rosa's: War of the Wendigo).

Other Barks stories that are not to be found in their original form
any more include: Donald Ducks Atom bomb, A cold Bargain, Race to the
South Seas, Voodoo Hoodoo and Darkest Africa (BTW: Has anyone made a
list of the changes that are done in the B&W Carl Barks Library -incl
the places where Barks art has been re-inked?).

In my opinion the changes to the above mentioned stories are
relatively minor (though I get annoyed every time I read them). The
plots are still the same and so are 99 % of the dialogue and
drawings.

I know that those of you who collects the first printings of the
stories will know about these changes. Still, it is my impression
that since the changes are not mentioned in Gladstones comics nor in
the CBL (as far as I've seen), a good deal of you out there might not
know about this modern censoring.

Poul

*****************************************
"Beware of the papa seal - He's smarter than Houdini -and meaner than
a tarantulas mother-in-law!"
******************************************

This week's Norwegian Donald Duck & Co claims to contain a
never-before-published Barks story dealing with Marco Polo. Apparently,
this story was never published because it could be interpreted an allegory
dealing with the Vietnam war. Is this really a brand new story, or is it
just that it's never been published in Scandinavia before ?

Eirik Krogh Visted =20
-- intellektuell r=E5ne =20

"Skjebnen er hard! Halsen er bl=F8t ... et siste hugg og s=E5 er det m=F8rkt=
!" -
Iskalde Gr=F8ss #6/1994

http://home.sn.no/~evisted
=09

<< An artist I don't like
is Lockman whose work I've seen for the first time in Penny Pincher. I
really hope he's in training and he'll get better.>>

Ah, Vic Lockman has been writing and doing some drawing on Disney Comics for
over 40 years. More recently he did giveaway comics, both commerical:
ShoneyBear, and a mulitude of political and religious tracts.
I like his current style (as stiff as it is) myself...

Joe wrote: <<What no one has yet to point out is that Buck Duck DID appear
once in the
regular comics line. "Hotlead Hollow Hoax" ( 6 pages ) by Vic Lockman and
Tony Strobl
appeared in DONALD DUCK # 131 (1970) and was reprinted in DD # 231 (1981).>>

Well I did say that I remembered Buck with Donald- Oddly enough I even
remembered it was drawn by Tony Strobl... Thanks for finding this,
Steven Rowe

Harry Fluks wrote:

>I'm not sure what you mean here. At least the Disney comics Database,
>which I am "executing", is on a strict non-profit basis.

I am saying you could make it profitable if you are a capitalist. I am
not, but I'm sure the Internet Movie Database and the Ultimate Band
List make quite a bit of money. I would be very happy if you kept it
without a commercial taint of course.

>There is an internet database of *all* American comics, called the Grand
>Comics Database (GCD). From time to time, the USA part of the Disney
>comics Database (DcD) is copied to the GCD. However, the DcD also has
>information of dozens of countries outside the USA.

Then what we need is a WCD.

>I am very interested to know what you think can be better! Have you seen
>the ftp version of the DcD as well?

I tried to pulling up some files, but I couldn't understand them
easily and since I don't use Windows or generally anything by MS, I
wasn't able to have a feel for it.

Anyways, what I was thinking of was more along the lines of the
Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com). You can have various
categories (from creators to characters to publishing info), links to
pages, reviews, plot synoposis, graphics, etc. etc. (In a similar
spirit to the IMDB.) ALL this info can be updatable and changeable by
users interactively (in a spirit similar to the UBL:
http://www.ubl.com) with some particular pieces going through an
editoral board.

Also, searching can be more sophisticated like in the IMDB.

I understand you're a single person doing this and this is a
non-trivial task. All I am saying is that whoever does it well could
do it systematically and raise revenues through sales and advertising
(like the movie database). You would need a bunch of people to work
on this also I'd argue.

Also, for some reason the database page that I access through the
primenet.com/bhc page after clicking through the "moved" links has
missing link errors.

Also, when I searched for "Life", I didn't find "The Life and Times of
Scrooge McDuck". Is there something about the operation of database I
am missing?

I hope you do not take my comments negatively, but what I feel is
missing is a unified database of ALL comics ever.

--Ram

(Email removed) || http://www.ram.org || http://www.twisted-helices.com/th
God is a conjecture; but I desire that your conjectures should not reach
beyond your creative will. Could you /create/ a god? Then do not speak
to me of any gods. But you could well create the overman. ---Nietzsche

Howdy folks!
I'm now going on vacation till the late August, in case anyone (!) wanna
know. You can expect a *really* long posting when I'm back. ;-) No,
actually I'll keep it down to size, I won't have time for that much next
semester. You can all relax from now on. ;-)

TODD:

Too bad you weren't in time to tell me about which specific kind (of pen)
you wanted, I could easily have gotten it for you. I'll remember to ask
you about it again when I'm back.

Till then; have a great summer everyone! Uh, that is those who's gonna have
as great a summer as *me*! The Australians can have a nice winter, some
others a nice Autumn... $-) Whatever. Just have a great time! :)

Hmm, there's gotta be something Disney-bla I can mention. I hear pygmees
will rule the Internet in August... ;-)

---
/Jakob