Keskustelujen arkisto

Don Rosa wrote in response to a comment of mine: <<....I just feel compelled
to say that this is all fun and a matter of
individual interpretation. But I hope you know that there are some of us...
at least ONE of us... who considers Barks' Universe quite distinct from any
other, even from any other Duck stories, even from other Duck stories he
drew but did not write. ...And also considers all other Disney comic
character universes quite distinct from every other, such that no character
from one animated feature could ever exist in the universe of another
feature... that the very notion is silly and pointlessly complicated. I
just wanted to make sure there are folks like that. They PREFER each
Universe separate. Now.... carry on...>>

Oh, sure I knew that, and the idea of a Don Rosa Donald Duck meets Hercules
story sound like such a good idea too... ;)
But seriously, to me it's the story. I''m sure if Barks had been asked
to do an outrageous team-up, he would have done it (just like he did Porky
Pig), and it would be okay (like Walt Kelly''s was okay). However it
wouldn't have played up to his strengths. Just like being forced to do an
outregeous team-up wouldn't play up to your strengths.
On the other hand, I could argue that taking the tidbits of Barks
background on Uncle Scrooge and attempting to turn it into a coherent story
is a silly and pointlessly complicated notion too. Which is why nobody else
did it until you did it. It did play into your strengths and you turned out
a whizz-bang of a yarn.
I just wanted folks to know that there are people who don't mind the
silliness of shared universes. Although Scamp meeting Jimmy Cricket was
stretching it a bit, as much as I like Al Hubbard art.

Christopher Barat said in response to me: <<I think you mean "C.E."
(Christian Era) in place of "A.D.", don't you? "B.C.E." (Before Christian
Era) would be the replacement for "B.C.">>

Oops, typing without thinking. Yes, BCE is BC, and CE is AD. and according
to my source, the Biblical Archelogy Review, BCE stands for Before Current
Era. I found it funny that BAR would court contoversary by using it.

Rich M. wrote (but not in response to me)<<Mickey is moderately well off
after all
those treasure hunts, but not *that* well off. (Though if any of you saw the
recent PEANUTS sequence, Snoopy's brothers Andy (?) and Olaf are *sure*
Mickey is rich, and with the help of their other brother Spike--who knows
him, or claims to--can get them jobs in Hollywood...)>>

I understand that Uncle Walt left him a few bucks in his will!

Steven Rowe

RICH:

> I might agree with you about Mim, [...] her connection to Magica
> in European Disney is stronger, they LIVE together...

These stories were not European, but made by the Disney Studios
for the foreign market (i.e. also for Brazil, for instance).
But the stories with Mim and Magica were very bad, and this
sub-universe is not continued today (I don't know any new stories
where Mim and Magica live in a castle). So let's forget this stuff...

> Are you referring to the [Barks] tale where U$ gave Donald, Gladstone and the
> Nephews each a thousand dollars to see what they would do with it? [...]
> So this is still considered valid? Cool. ;-)

Only if you consider Barks stories only (like Don does). There have been
dozens of stories where Scrooge (re-)considers the future of his money.
So either Scrooge changed his mind, or the story didn't happen (which is
also consistent with another aspect of Rosa's view on the Duck world).

> I would settle for a team-up of Super Goof (& Gilly),
> with the Red Bat (Fethry), Super Duck (Donald), Plastic Mickey, and
> HD&L in their T-Squad personas. And INTRODUCING: Wonder Minnie
> and Invisible Daisy.

Terrible! I would hate a story like that! (I don't like super heroes...)

--Harry.

STEVEN ROWE:
> On the Duck timeline, modern schloars now use "BCE" rather than
> "AD" (this is done to upset traditionalists )

I heard about these abbreviations (CE and BCE) when I was in Israel.
There it seems very logical to use them in stead of BC and AD. Anyway,
they don't use it to upset traditionalists, but to NOT upset jews,
muslims, hindus, atheists, etc.

BTW, I don't think the "C" in "C.E." means "Christian". That would be wrong
anyway, since at least the first 30 years A.D., there are no christians
at all. In Israel, they said it was "Common Era" (which doesn't make sense
either).

--Harry.
(BTW, the word "schloar" sounded jewish enough to remind me of my trip
to Israel... 8-)

DOMINIK:
>Don Rosa told me that there is a map of Duckburg in some Egmont comics. >Where
>can I get an copy of that?

Try http://www.donald.no
If its anywhere, its probably there.

ABOUT MICKEYS HOMETOWN:
In Norway its very simple, he is living in Duckburg. Thats at least the
impression I've gotten through reading Donald Duck & Co. during 13 years.

_____________________________
Arild - (Email removed)

Oooops! In my previous post I accidentally said "NOT"
when I meant "NOW"

This line: "In fact I would say that the clear line you have drawn in the
Duck universe might even be the new benchmark the other Disney
Universes are NOT adhering to."

Should read: "In fact I would say that the clear line you have drawn in the
Duck universe might even be the new benchmark the other Disney
Universes are NOW adhering to."

Sorry

-Rich (xephyr)
http://www.jps.net/xephyr/rich/disney.html

Listen to the Stories I Could Tell

But I won't. In the recent Disney Digest, someone came up with gossip about
Don Rosa. From 20 years ago.
Now, comics fandom is such a small group of folks (relatively speaking) that
it' easy for us to tell tales. I know stories about Don, and Don Markstein,
Rich Morrisery, Gary Brown, and selected other folks on this list. I'm
sure they know some stuff about me, that I may not particuarly want known
(and at least the ones about me would probably be true).
I also know a real good bad thing about Barks from the 1940s.
While the stories about Barks are alot more interesting than the other
stories - you won't see it here. His personal life has no bearing here.
If someone tells you gossip about Don, pleas don't share it here. E-mail
it to him; or just trash it.

Steven Rowe

Hey, gang!

I'm back on the Digest for the first time in a while, since I was
first away at the Egmont seminar and then, after returning home, unable to
get to my computer for a few days while my house was being fumigated. Now,
though, I have a chance for some chatting.

RICH M./RICH B.:
>> Has it *ever* been established where Mickey lives? In his seminal
>>article on Gottfredson, Bill Blackbeard claimed he was said to live in
>>"Homeville" ...
>Someone may be able to anser this better, but it is my understanding that
>because of heroic deeds Mickey performed (namely saving his town from
>destruction) the town, whatever it was called, was renamed "Mouseton"
>in his honor. This, I believe, ocurred while Disney was handling the
>publishing of "Mickey Mouse Adventures."
I know the story you speak of where Mickey saves the town from
destruction (MICKEY MOUSE ADVENTURES 11-14), but Disney Comics called it
Mouseton as early as MMA 2. The town is not named (or renamed) for Mickey.
The FG strip calls it "Hometown" (around 1935), "Homeville" (around
1938), and finally "Mouseville" (1939), with no name given afterwards.
Disney Comics originally set out to call it Mouseville, too, but ran into
legal problems with Viacom (whose Mighty Mouse property is set in
Mouseville). Hence the name "Mouseton", which was originally suggested in
a Gladstone lettercol somewhere around 1988.
>I think David Gerstein has mentioned that it is still called "Mouseton" in the
>tales he writes for Egmont. Is it David?
Egmont's policy is that the town is officially called Duckburg,
although in actuality, it's treated in the Mickey stories as if it's a
different town. I think that what I said is that when *Gladstone* uses
some of my Egmont stories, if there's a Duckburg reference, I've asked
Gladstone to change it to Mouseton.

[Regarding Figaro]
A text story in one of the mid-1940s WDC&S has Mickey and Minnie
together with Geppetto. Geppetto mentions that Figaro ran away from home
some time ago, and Minnie points out that she rescued him, and that the cat
would now rather live with her. Thus a very messy explanation of the
situation (glossing over the fact that Geppetto, SUPER GOOF #2
notwithstanding, just doesn't work IMHO in Mickey's universe).
Figaro is certainly Minnie's cat at Egmont, where Byron's even
asked me to put him in certain stories. I just figure that Disney's
PINOCCHIO is a fanciful tale that happens to include a cat very similar to
the "real" Figaro (who lives with Minnie, natch).

[Regarding Gus and Jaq and others]
I have no problem with Gus and Jaq living on Grandma's farm;
Disney has no objection in Europe, and hasn't expressed one (yet) in
America. Gladstone has run some of them, too, with no problem.
Regarding actual editorial preference, Egmont tends to use Gus and
Jaq little to not-at-all, and GP in Holland uses them *often*. As with
Figaro, I just figure that these are different mice who happen to be very
similar to the fairy-tale versions of themselves.
Me, I can't really accept _any_ of the "lead" characters from
features (Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Dumbo... _especially_ Dumbo)
appearing together with the ducks and mice. It makes their "real" world an
impossibility.
On the other hand, the Wolf and Br'er Rabbit universes being one
has been done since time immemorial -- even before Disney, Joel Chandler
Harris himself pointed out that the "Br'er Wolf" in his 1880s stories
chased the three pigs. Of all the "universe mixing" I've ever seen, this
particular crossover has always been the one that struck me as perfectly
natural.
On the other hand...

[Regarding Mim and Magica as roommates]
They _still_ live together in the Brazilian stories. The Brazilian
stories seem to be a direct continuation of the S-coded stuff, with lots of
Hard Haid Moe, Scrooge-as-newseditor, and Double-O Duck stories, even
today. I've also seen Mickey's rival Monty in their stories, and until
some fairly-recent Egmont stories, the S-coded ones were the only ones to
use that character much.

BRIX:
>I don't know if you're the writer of D 96013 because I couldn't check it
>with the DCD yet, so maybe this doesn't concern you. But I don't think
>Mickey was handled as well as in Timber Topper. Though the story was
>okay I had the feeling of a wrong cast.
I did write this one ("Off the Beaten Track"), but I do think that
were you to read it in English, I think you'd see why it's quintessentially
a Mickey story. It's all about "brains versus brawn," with Mickey trying
to convince himself that his intellect and enthusiasm can help him even in
an athletic type of competition. The story has an emotional subplot that I
felt was tailored very specifically for Mickey.
On the other hand, I suspect that some countries might have
eliminated that subplot entirely, as it was all in the dialogue. I've seen
one of my stories (Scrooge's "Ten-Penny Opera") in which one foreign
translation altered certain subplots quite drastically. With a heavily
altered dialogue, I can see where "Beaten Track" would have felt more like
a Donald story.
Why did I get the idea to do this kind of story with Mickey in the
first place? I was actually inspired by a cartoon, BARNYARD OLYMPICS,
which is a Mickey cartoon with a fairly similar structure. The chewing-gum
bit toward the end (which becomes a running gag in my version of the story)
and Mickey's training session with Horace are adapted, roughly, from that
cartoon.

On a different note, no, I don't know how many Gottfredson stories
are banned, but if you look hard enough, you can find something vaguely
objectionable in almost _any_ pre-1945 Disney comic story. That doesn't
mean that the story should be censored or banned, but it does explain why I
have no clue which stories have been blacklisted and which have remained
legit. I suspect all stories with cannibals (a total of eight) and Nazis
(six, I think) aren't allowed in America today. But I have no real idea
about anything else. Indians, for example, may be okay with some censors
but not others. Same goes for foreign accents and certain kinds of
slapstick violence.

PAOLO:
I view Mickey, in a fictional sense as being "born" somewhere
around 1917, which shows how he can be just older enough than Donald for
most of his 1930s-1950s adventures to make sense on a very realistic time
scale. In 1931, he really _acts_ 14, and so on. But when are the current
Egmont Mickey stories taking place? Today, methinks (including some of my
own, which have included devices that didn't exist in '38).

Forever holding the banner high,
David

<(Email removed)>
Also <(Email removed)>

DON wrote:
> Maybe it wasn't shown in the version of the story that you saw in Finland,
> but it was certainly shown in the original! It sounds like the version you
> saw either mistranslated the dialogue in the final panels or ended a
> half-a-page too early. At the end of the story it is clearly stated that
> $crooge DID change his mind and he definitely DID name HD&L his sole heirs.

In the Swedish translation I have the two last panels go something like this:

Donald sees "another rainbow" and wonders if there's a new share of
gold. HDL tells him to check it out, because they themselves have
already got their treasure, and they don't care who becomes U$'s heir.

--
Fredrik Sandstrom