Keskustelujen arkisto

DON:

> PER:
>> (Email removed) is the address of Dutch member Daniel van Eijmeren.
> Oh, that's right! Sorry!

Well, almost. Not Per, but I wrote that message... 8-)

KREE-TON: 8-)

> > (yes, I even enjoyed the heavily criticized "Cash Flow")
> I have seen negative comments on the story, including a recent attempt
> to tear the story apart, right on this list.

You must mean my mail from June 30. I was only giving my opinion about
that story, as part of a discussion of Rosa's best and worst. I didn't
intend to "tear the story apart". So far, every Rosa story has at least one
very good moment, and Cash Flow has several.

> As I stated before, I disagree with this criticism. I suspect that it
> stems from people having expected to read another "quest" type adventure
> like "Son of the Sun".

As I said at the time, "Cash Flow" was not one of the first Rosa stories I read.
I even stated that I may have liked the story more if I had read it *before* all
the other Rosa stories.

> The story was structured similarly to "The Incredible Shrinking Tightwad"
> [..] and there were no complaints about the latter story.

OK, I could complain about that story as well, I you want. 8-)
But I won't. The I.S.T. had no logical flaws or inconsistencies. I know
that Duck stories are just fiction, but I want them to be *consistent* fiction.

--Harry.

KATHY:

> Someone on this
> list around a year ago suggested that "Cash Flow" was reprinted in Don's
> first collection of stories put out by Gladstone, but I checked and think
> that person had it mixed up with "Money Pit" which was in that collection.

I think *you* have it mixed up. "Cash Flow" was in Gladstone's Comic Album #28
(the "Special Don Rosa" issue - that's where I first read the story). The album
that contains "The Money Pit" was issued later. Not by Gladstone, but by
Disney Comics.

> two ray guns a professor invented while trying to develop odorless cabbage
> (and I do not have that story either and cannot tell you if it was Bark's
> or Rosa's, sorry)

That is Barks' story in Uncle Scrooge #8 (reprinted in US 222). It has no title.

> I would love to see the story reprinted or put in a Rosa collection.

"Cash Flow" has been reprinted recently in a Rosa collection! In Gladstone's
"Uncle Scrooge Adventures by Don Rosa" album #1.

About Horace:
> And of all the unrequited loves in all of
> comic land, Horace and Clarabelle have the most unrequited love. Just too
> darn bashful and old fashioned, both of them.

A strange thing is that Horace and Clarabelle were actually engaged in the
early stories! But apparently, they forgot about that later...

--Harry.

--------------------------------
End of Disney comics Digest V97 Issue #165
******************************************

GARY LEACH:
<<And you've got to be fair to Marvel. They never figured their Disney
titles
would sell nearly as well as Spider-Man or X-Men. In some respects they did
their Disney's for the prestige, more than for profit, and even gave
Gladstone a hand with distribution and advertising when we were getting our
Disney comics back up and running.>>

If Marvel did their Disney comics for "the prestige," then how does one
explain the terrible shoddiness of the DISNEY AFTERNOON comic? The multiple
goofs and gaffes in that title do not bespeak a publisher that had any
interest in doing Disney comics "right". Even putting the onus on the editor
brings up the question of why Marvel would assign this title to an editor who
had no conception of how the various "Disney Afternoon" series worked.

DON ROSA:
<<I don't think I've ever seen the episode of "DuckTales" you refer to. If
I
was thinking of anything when I wrote that rather trite ending for "10
Avatars", it might have been "MacKenna's Gold", or any number of other old
movies with a similar ending.>>

As you say, there are numerous movies with a similar ending -- as a
"DuckTales" fan, I immediately latched onto the similarity to "Too Much of a
Gold Thing." For the same reason, I read the last two pages of "Attack of
the Hideous Space Varmints" (in WDC&S 616, just released this week -- albeit
delayed, due to the UPS mess) and flashed back to "Money to Burn," the fifth
chapter of the "DuckTales" serial that introduced Gizmoduck.

(SPOILER WARNING!)

That episode concluded with a similar plunge of the money bin from space to
Killmotor Hill. The major difference was that there was no intervening
asteroid on TV; the bin landed right back on its foundation. This was a much
more convenient ending insofar as Scrooge is concerned, in that he didn't
have to go to the trouble of chipping away an asteroid and selling pieces of
it in order to return the bin to its foundation. It did, however, postulate
that the bin is INCREDIBLY well-constructed (otherwise it wouldn't have been
able to withstand the impact of landing)!

<<There's something more to the rarity of U$#179, DD#222 and one or two
other
Disney Whitmans (and doubtlessly other Whitmans) than simply that it did
not sell well in those bags. Many, many Whitmans sold in bags but none of
them are especially hard to find. The only copies of U$#179 or DD#222 I
have ever seen are publisher file copies or ones that were found in Europe.
My theory is that those two issues (and surely others) were only sold in
the very few outlets for Whitmans there in Europe (and I don't know why
they'd sell any of those bags in Europe except maybe at American military
basesmor sumpin'.) Or they were sold in such a limited quantity in America,
much more limited than any other Whitmans, that virtually all of them have
been lost to the hands of careless children as is the fate of most of those
comics.>>

Which leads naturally to the question: WHY did these particular issues get
distributed in such limited quantities? Was Whitman in the throes of
downsizing (or whatever the term was back then) or administrative upheaval?

AUGIE DE BLIECK:
<<Now I'm heading off to the comic store to pick up "His Majesty, McDuck."
I'm
so excited.>>

I renewed acquaintances with this delightful story last night. It would
definitely be on my list of best Rosa stories, even after all these years.
The CONCEPT is what makes it work.
It is one of the most ingenious concepts ever seen in a Duck story!

DAVID GERSTEIN:
<<I think we'd see more of those get-rich-quick schemes were Horace
to star in his own stories, rather than just the solo one-pagers he
occasionally gets from Egmont. Still, maybe Butch is the best candidate
for get-rich-quick scheming in the Mouse universe, especially seeing as
he's a reformed villain's sidekick (not unlike Aladdin's Iago, albeit
friendlier).>>

Perhaps so... but Butch could probably just as easily turn into a "lovable
lug" a la the SUPERMAN comics' Bibbo Bibbowski. Would Horace be more likely
to team up with other characters in a money-making idea, as he did on one or
two occasions during the Gottfredson years?

BTW, excellent job on "A Mouse vs. the World"! Did the notion for this story
come from the old book "The Goops and How to Be Them," I wonder?...

KRITON KYRIMIS: (re "Cash Flow")
<<I have seen negative comments on the story, including a recent attempt
to tear the story apart, right on this list.
As I stated before, I disagree with this criticism. I suspect that it
stems from people having expected to read another "quest" type adventure
like "Son of the Sun". However, just because the story was different
this does not mean it was bad. The story was structured similarly to
"The Incredible Shrinking Tightwad" (the Beagles get hold of a gadget
that suspends some law of physics, we get to see lots of gags resulting
from said suspension, then the Beagles are defeated by having the gadget
used against them), and there were no complaints about the latter story.>>

I've always liked "Cash Flow", both as a story in and of itself AND as the
first example of a story genre that Don has since made his own: the Ducks
battling forces of nature as well as the usual villains, booby traps, etc.
From the perspective of 1997, it's easier to see how this decade-old story
opened the door for Don to put his educational background to ingenious use in
setting up unusual physical perils for the Ducks.

KATHY FITZPATRICK:
<<I agree, Christopher, Horace should continue to hang around. He is a good
side kick for Mickey, and he and Clarabelle Cow were involved with Mickey
and Minnie in some pretty good romps in those wonderful early days. Horace
is a bit of a joker, practical or otherwise, and yes, Donald is that also,
but Horace is, well, not more sophisticated exactly (except compared to
early Donald!), but different. And of all the unrequited loves in all of
comic land, Horace and Clarabelle have the most unrequited love. Just too
darn bashful and old fashioned, both of them.>>

"Not more sophisticated" ties in with my description of Horace as a
"blue-collar" sort of guy. His attitude is definitely different from the
striving of the relentlessly middle-class Donald. As to the relationship
between Horace and Clarabelle, a lot of the "old-fashionedness" stems from
the fact that these stories were done in the 1930's, when the "game of love"
was a lot different. I wonder -- how would you update the relationship so
that the basic bashfulness remained in place, but the dynamics were a little
more "modern"? Perhaps Horace and Clarabelle could each be convinced that
the other will surely find a more "attractive" partner, and thus each is
unwilling to make that first definitive move?

-- Christopher E. Barat
(Email removed)
http://members.aol.com/cebarat/home.htm
"Gizmoduck: BUT SIR, YOU'LL BURN UP ENTERING EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE!
Scrooge: I'M BURNING UP NOW, WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?!"
-- "DuckTales" episode "Money to Burn"

STEVEN:
Oh, believe you me, drawing a forest full of trees is 1/1000th as difficult
as drawing a cityscape background... even if (for me) it's only because I
find drawing natural settings infinitely less tedious and more interesting
than a modern city. But it's probably just my lack of training or
experience -- I look at a Marco Rota city or a Cesar Ferroli (whose name I
never remember the spelling of) city and turn green with envy at how
wonderfully they can draw that stuff!
And even if there's an artist drawing someone else's script, the editor
might have suggested more stories take place in a rural setting for the
facilitation of the artists getting their jobs done efficiently. I don't
know that's what happened, but it easilly could have. I mean, writers do
get directions from the editors and artists, natch.

KRITON:

> Now *I* am confused: I have all eight of the albums published by Disney,
> and I can't find "The Money Pit" in any of them.

Apart from the 8 "graphic novels" (in the format Gladstone also used),
Disney Comics later issued an album which only contained Don Rosa
stories. It is slightly smaller in size, more like the current WDCs.
This album was called "Donald and Scrooge".
Disney Comics also printed the contents of that album in 3 comics,
also called Donald and Scrooge. These comics had a very poor
distribution.

(see also http://www.pi.net/~fluks4/rosaus.htm under "DAS" and "DASC")

--Harry.

Hi everyone!

Does anyone think it's worth joining "Uncle Scrooge Collectors
International"? I have their flyer. Yearly dues are $20.
Besides getting a pin, I'm not sure how worthwhile it would be.
Are there any members on the mailing list?

Thanx.

Eric

D.U.C.K. HUNTERS:
Fair warning! On all the Egmont editions of "Attack of the Hideous Space
Varmints", which therefore means ALL subsequent editions anywhere else such
as Greece or France or Italy or Holland or etc., the "D.U.C.K." is MISSING
from the splash panel. We think the art-manager removed it with white-out
for mysterious reasons we don't yet know. This bothers me NOT because I'm
some prima donna who resents anyone tampering with my "masterpieces"
(ha)... one can't live 5 minutes doing Disney comics with that attitude.
Removing that dedication has no effect on the story, of course. But A) for
the rest of my life I'll need to answer people's questions of "Why didn't
you put your dedication in that story? Hah? Forgot, dincha? Hah? Nyah,
nyah?" ... and B) anything I don't understand distracts me. I mean, one
time years ago ("The Duck Who Fell to Earth", 1990) I did forget to put
that dedication into a splash, and the editor of the Danish edition (in the
same building as the art-manager who removed it this time) ADDED the
dedication for me.
Where was it??? In the exploding meteor chunks in the lower-right quadrant.
By the way, those Egmont editions don't contain the entire splash panel
anyway -- Egmont trims the top or bottom edge of my splashes to put the
logo above the scene rather in the upper-left as I plan. Nowadays I design
those splashes with a "trimmable strip of nothing-vital" so that it can be
cropped without it being so obvious.

Hi!
I don't recall if it's been discussed before, but Gallerie Lacqua in Germany
offered 4 pages from "His Majesty McDuck" together with the cover some while
ago. The reason for why Don had to leave Gladstone was because Disney told
the company they had to have the original art of anything they published
in a a cabinet somewhere. As it appears, those 5 pieces left this cabinet
a while before the print of those Rosa "Gladstone library" issues. "What's
wrong with this picture"? Why is this suddenly changed so that Gladstone
*can* sell this original art? And did Don get anything for the sales? Or
did Don finally get back all of his original art for "old times sake" and
decided to sell it?

DON:

> PLEEZ let's try to use "SPOILER" warnings when you discuss new stories.

OK, sorry. I thought it'd been discussed before.

> "A Little Something Special" won't be printed in a non-Egmont issue for many
> months, until the proper time when it should be appearing (around Xmas, not
> in July!).

**SPOILERS COMING:**

The environment sure looks more like summer than Xmas, IMO!

> (By the way, the title actually refers to what happens on
> the last page and a half, eh?)

Yeah, I think that was really great! (Damn it. Anyway I do it I can't go on
analysing anything about it, since that would spoil it for everyone!)

> My very first suggestion to Byron was that I might try what many readers
> have been asking me for -- the return of $crooge's mysteriously absent
> sisters.

I don't have the issue here right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if they
can be found somewhere in the crowd of ALSS... ;-) But -- as you say it it
might be that sucha story could appear someday too, eh? However, when you do
it, make sure you don't spoil *everything* about that mystery, OK? :-)

> Byron did not object to this as a valid story idea *someday*, but
> he suggested that to use this plotline would create a story where the
> SISTERS were the stars, the focal points, and not $crooge. And it was
> $crooge the story is supposed to celebrate.

His sisters could easily have appeared *too* on the last one page and a half.
That's for the Gladstone edition, eh? ;-)

> So THIS is how and why I tried the idea that I told you I'd never do.
> So, I wasn't fibbing to you. But having said that to you, I guess what I
> did was the LAST thing you expected, eh? Haha!

Definitely! It was quite a surprise!

> (Now, let's hope that all
> the Americans and Italians and French and Greeks and Dutch and South
> Americans and all other non-Egmont-countrymen on this ML forget your
> question so they can read the story without suspecting that one, small
> "surprise" (such as it was, which wasn't much).

It was quite enough, IMO! *I* sure didn't expect this.

TODD:

> Thanks for remembering about the pens.

I've also had problems with finding things that's gone out of stock... ;-)

> I have a friend in Denmark looking for
> any stray leftovers for me there and in Germany, but if you'd like to look as
> well, here is what I want: Faber-Castell technical pen TG-1, point sizes 2.5
> and 2. If you find any, let me know, and we'll figure out a way to make an
> exchange.

OK, I'll check with them today. If they can order those I'll do it, OK?

TIM wrote:

> And how about Disney comics in different, American, French, Italian, ...
> dialects ?

As a matter of fact, the Barks Ducks (USA) did have accents. And that's
how it *should* be, IMO. It makes the characters more liveful. However, I
cannot *imagine* the Disney characters speaking Swedish accents! To imagine
$crooge speaking stockholmish (he must have something different from DD!),
Donald and the kids goeteborgish (*that* sounds weird in English!) and
Mickey and company speaking skaanska (those are just examples, of course)!
Uh, *no*! That'd be *too* much... ;-) But it might do in MAD magazine...

So Long Then (Chinese travelling businessman ;-) )!

---
/Jakob