Keskustelujen arkisto

On Oct 16, 9:05pm, Fabrizio wrote:

> However I did not expected Jac was so popular abroad, 'cos I tought
> in most of his comics text is very important and cannot be translated
> (there are lots of puns etc.)
>
Well, I have copies of Cocoa Bill albums in German and Danish editions,
so it looks like somebody made an effort to translate Jacovitti. Even
if the translations lose a lot, though, I'm sure his art alone attracts
people's interest. Unfortunately, as far as I know, Jacovitti is
completely unknown in the United States (except for a few fans who
keep up on European comics). I've seen a series of black and white
cartoons by Jac that were entirely (or mostly -- my memory fails)
without words, in which his distinctive art was more crazed than
ever, so there's material available that would easily cross the
linguistic boundaries if some US publisher ever did decide to
introduce him to the US.

--Dwight Decker

I happen to love running jokes, among them the prune-loving Beagle Boy.
I must say, though, I was disgusted at what DuckTales did to the
Beagles. I cringe when ever they say those hokey names. I suppose
saying 176-761 all the time is too time-consuming for animation. :-(
Still, in the comics I like it. Besides, it not like every Beagle story
includes the gag.
As a side note...a prune-pertinent story, the one with the
cabbage-loving professors anti-interia and anti-friction ray guns (The
Money Flood? Sorry, Don, I'm terrible with titles!) makes a lot more
sense now that I'm suffering through high school physics! In fact, I
have a test on friction Friday! :-) I swear there's not a single thing
I've studied in school that I haven't at least seen mentioned in an
Uncle $crooge comic! In my ancient history class Thursday, we talked
about Alexander the Great. Whenever Alexandria comes up, I can't help
but think of "The Guardians of the Lost Library" with a smile. Best
surprise ending *ever*, BTW.

Katie Sullivan, a.k.a. Mrs. Quackfaster
http://www.execpc.com/~sulliva1/scrooge.html

DONALD MARKSTEIN commented, re the hypothesized connection between Don
Rosa's "On Stolen Time" and DUCKTALES' "Time Teasers".
<<I'm not all that knowledgeable about "DuckTales" myself (tho
I keep thinking I really ought to get that way, having mostly
enjoyed what episodes I've seen). But I did read "The Girl, the Gold
Watch, and Everything" many years ago, and recognized the basic idea
of it in "On Stolen Time". And I'll wager that's where the writer of
the "DuckTales" episode got it.>>

For the record, I was the person who made the contention that Rosa took
inspiration from "Time Teasers" in writing the script for "On Stolen Time."
He's since
claimed that this was not the case. I've never read or seen "The Girl, The
Gold Watch, and Everything," but if what people say about it is true, then
it might very well have inspired Anthony Adams (the writer of the script
for "Time Teasers") to create a time-stopping watch as a Gearloose
gadget.

Another possible source of the idea of a time-stopping timepiece is the
US TV series VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. In several episodes, the
crew of the "Seaview" dueled a devious villain named Mr. Pem who had a
pocket watch that could stop time.

ANTTI HYVARINEN (sp?) asked:
<<Hi everybody! Could someone tell me where Uncle $crooge was between
1914-1918 and 1939-1945?>>

Unless I miss my guess, he was probably trying to keep his empire
together despite the pressures of wartime. I imagine that this
got to be a full-time job at some point.

GARY LEACH asked, regarding foreign stories:
<<So I have to ask: If you have the original version of something, and can
read the original version, then what do you want from Gladstone?>>

Oftentimes, a translation of a foreign story can put some extra "spice" into
it. Witness the great job that Geoffrey Blum did during "Gladstone I",
putting literary references and the like into his translation scripts for
Gutenberghus/Egmont stories.
If the English script is sufficiently inspired, then that just adds to one's
enjoyment of the story, even if one can read it in the original language.

There's also something to be said for educating the American Disney comics
public as to exactly what is out there in the wider world. I can go to a
book shop in Manhattan and buy a copy of TOPOLINO, but seeing a story by
Scarpa or Cavazzano in an American comic (with, perhaps, an explanatory
article attached) is a most enlightening experience. One of my great regrets
about the "Gladstone I" era is that Disney took away the license just at the
point at which Gladstone was swinging into high gear with extensive Scarpa
reprints.

DON ROSA commented regarding the Beagle Boy prune theme:
<<There's no "big deal", as someone suggested, about Beagle Boys liking
prunes... or even ONE Beagle Boy liking prunes as, yes, the correct version
goes. But I always found that idea intriguing simply because it was one of
the very VERY few factoids in his own stories that Barks ever referred to
in a later story. You can literally count on one hand the number of times
he did this...>>

A good point! As you noted later in the paragraph, Barks seemed to assume
that his audience had a rapid rate of turnover. One other way that this
can be seen is in Barks' occasional use of reminders as to who these
characters are. The Beagles, for example, frequently talk about robbing
"old Scrooge McDuck" (or something similar). Why not simply "old Scrooge"
or "old McDuck"? So new readers can pick up on Scrooge's full name more
quickly, that's why.

A reader described DUCKTALES as the worst "rip-off" of Barks that had ever
been done. An adaptation is not a rip-off. Repeat: an adaptation is NOT a
rip-off. And even the direct adaptations of Barks' stories were kept to a
relative minimum.

-- CHRISTOPHER E. BARAT
(Email removed)
http://members.aol.com/cebarat/home.htm
"YOU MUST LOVE YOUR COAT VERY MUCH TO TALK TO IT!" -- The Grand Kishki to
Glomgold, "DuckTales" episode "Working for Scales"

CHRISTOPHER E. BARAT writes about the possible inspiration for Don
Rosa's story "On Stolen Time" and the DuckTales story "Time Teasers":
> I've never read or seen "The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Everything,"
> but if what people say about it is true, then it might very well have
> inspired Anthony Adams (the writer of the script for "Time Teasers")
> to create a time-stopping watch as a Gearloose gadget.

There was a made-for-syndicated-TV movie version of "The Girl, The Gold
Watch, and Everything" which starred Robert Hayes (of the movie "Air-
plane") and Pam Dawber (of the TV series "Mork and Mindy"). It was
actually a lot better than that sounds as if it would be. It inspired
a sequel, which was about as poor as you would expect a sequel to a
made-for-syndicated-TV movie to be.

> Another possible source of the idea of a time-stopping timepiece is
> the US TV series VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. In several
> episodes, the crew of the "Seaview" dueled a devious villain named
> Mr. Pem who had a pocket watch that could stop time.

I recall a similar storyline in other TV shows, such as an episode of
"Science Fiction Theater" and one (or more?) of "The Twilight Zone".
Then there was an episode of "Star Trek" in which time was sped up so
fast for some of the characters that it seemed to them that time had
stopped for the other characters. In fact, I think this happened in
"The New Generation", too. It's a storyline that presents so many
possibilities, it's bound to be used over and over. I liked the
twists on the idea introduced by Don in the "Stolen Time" story.

And of course, as we all know, Walt Disney is being kept in stasis
in a frozen-time chamber underneath Main Street in Disneyland, right?
Perhaps Scrooge McDuck is stored there too, the two tycoons frozen
side-by-side, just waiting to come back to life when someone clicks
the gold watch, so that they can see how much their fortunes have
grown while they've been hibernating...

Wilmer Rivers

KRITON:

>
>In "Back to the Klondike", Goldie had been scratching a living at Scrooge's
>exhausted claim. At the end of the story, however, Scrooge practically gave
>her the gold he had left behind in a stash, and it is with this gold that
>she bought the saloon. (Or was it a ballroom?)

nonono ;) "Back To The Klondike" happens when Scrooge has been living in
Duckburg for many years and so on, while Goldie is shown working in the
saloon (which she owns BEFORE working in the ballroom) much earlier when
Scrooge is still in his young sourdough/gold prospector/whatever days. In
"Back To The Klondike", Goldie is an old woman.

CHRISTOPHER:

>GARY LEACH asked, regarding foreign stories:
><<So I have to ask: If you have the original version of something, and can
>read the original version, then what do you want from Gladstone?>>
>
>Oftentimes, a translation of a foreign story can put some extra "spice" into
>it. Witness the great job that Geoffrey Blum did during "Gladstone I",
>putting literary references and the like into his translation scripts for
>Gutenberghus/Egmont stories.
>If the English script is sufficiently inspired, then that just adds to one's
>enjoyment of the story, even if one can read it in the original language.

yeah, and it seems like most of the European Duck scripts are written very
hastily, incorporating few references, or even much thought. Especially the
ones in the weekly Donald Duck comics. That's why it's much more fun to read
the story in a Gladstone comic, especially with the superior coloring.

EVEN FLOOD(?):

>I have much to my surprise seen no comments on Don's
>latest story about how the boys ijoned the Woodchucks.

err..nooo. I commented on it here just a few days ago, and so did Geir J.
Netland.

|| <<<<Tarjei Kidd Olsen>>>> ||
||___________________________||
|| http://home.sol.no/~kidd/ ||
|| (Email removed) ||

DON R. --
Excuse me while I fish my jaw out of my navel. I am amazed at
the stuff that got into Blum's intro, appalled at the measures
necessary to correct it, and delighted that you took the effort.
Very few people would. Of course, WE need no reassurance, but a
stranger, hearing this, would have to conclude that your work must
be very good for you to take such pride in it.

TARJEI KIDD OLSEN --
I guess I have kind of a kneejerk response to disparagement
of "political correctitude", just as most of said disparagement
(that I see here in America) is a kneejerk response either to
incidents on college campuses which turn out (when looked at closely)
not to have happened the way they are said to have happened; or to
simple recognition of the fact that America has a very diverse
society. When, say, a TV show has a cast that (to use Bill Clinton's
expression) "looks like America" -- i.e., has one or two black
members, one or two Asians, some Hispanics, etc. -- it is often
denigrated as "politically correct"; whereas in reality, that show
is a better representation of what I see around me than the former
norm, where nobody on the air had any non-European ancestors.
What you're referring to -- censorship on grounds of minor
story elements unreasonably deemed offensive by splinter groups --
would be different -- if there were all that much of such censorship
going on. (And the fact that there isn't all that much of it is why
the exceptions are so much discussed.) Drop "minor" and "unreasonably"
and change "splinter" to "minority", and yes, that's a pretty
familiar process here in America. But it was happening LONG before
it got the sneering epithet "politically correct" attached to it.
And why shouldn't it? Why should a company like Disney WANT to
alienate portions of the audience it's trying to attract?
As I said, surely there are excesses. But (to propose an
excess in the other direction) Cartoon Network's decision not to put
"Coal Black an' de Sebben Dwarfs" in the package with the rest of
its producer's output, to turn up periodically on The Bugs'N'Daffy
Show, isn't political correctitude. It's survival.
Of course, the ideal situation would be for such material to
be available to an audience sophisticated enough not to be offended
by it. So -- all we have to do is convince them there are enough of
us to be worth marketing to. Difficult, but NOT impossible. Just
this week, "The Chain Gang" turned up on The Disney Channel's "Ink
and Paint Club" -- a PRIME candidate for self-censorship, inasmuch
as it depicts Mickey Mouse in prison.
(The above does not, of course, apply to censorship for
depiction of unsanitary habits. I can't think of any reason
whatsoever to deny such material to children, who always enjoy a
good joke about dirt or excretion. Adults, on the other hand, due to
their more delicate sensibilities, sometimes feel a need to be
shielded from such material. Maybe we should encourage Disney to
hire kids to oversee Gladstone's license.)
(Oh, and a note on the word "censorship", which I've used
LOOSELY here. What looks like "censorship" to you and me may look to
the OWNER of the work in question like simple discretion in letting
works lie dormant if they don't meet the standards of the current
venue. Many authors "censor" their early works that way. I'm not
saying I don't want to read the story, or that I always [or even
frequently] think their critera make sense -- but I can't argue with
their right to do it.)

GARY LEACH --
I guess the fascination with prune-loving Beagles is that
it's probably the first individual characteristic Barks gave to any
Beagle Boy, and the only one that was referred to in more than one
story.
You know, recently, I was trying to think of sets of
identical characters -- those who are precisely the same, one to the
next (with the exception of very superficial identifiers like
numbers or cap colors) -- and aside from the Beagles and the
Nephews, all I could come up with were the Twins from the
GORMENGHAST books. Maybe my brain is defective, because I'm SURE
there must be more than just three sets, two of which are associated
with Donald Duck.
Someone, a few months ago, referred to a translated version
of a story as having been "criminally" mistranslated. I believe the
bone of contention was that a gag making fun of some left-wing
historical buffoon was replaced with one twitting a right-winger, or
vice versa. But of course, it wasn't that way at all -- and wouldn't
have been even if partisan politics (as opposed to ridiculing
buffoons of any stripe) were a legitimate thing for a writer to
insert in a Disney script. The script writer simply took out a gag
that he thought wouldn't work for his audience, and put in one that
would.
We're all familiar with the phrase "lost in translation".
It's inevitable that a piece of writing in any language lose
something when rendered in another. When I'm re-scripting a story
for American readers, I don't hesitate to throw in running gags,
altered characterizations, even the occasional subplot. I figure all
I'm doing is adding something to make up for whatever was lost. I'm
certainly not doing anything to the original story, which, as you
point out, is still there, exactly the same as it always was.
And then there's the scripting I'm doing for you guys right
now, the Dutch Bucky Bug stories (which, by the way, start in WDC&S
#623, just in case I haven't already mentioned that). I couldn't
follow the original even if I wanted to, because I've never seen it.
I just look at the artwork, figure out a story that fits, and write
a script for it in meter and rhyme. What the heck, it works. And I
think it'll entertain the readers -- which is, of course, the bottom
line.

TODD KLEIN --
I don't know about licensing rights, but "Ben and Me" turns
up fairly regularly in The Disney Channel's daily cartoon anthology
series, so Disney must still have SOME rights to it.

STEVEN ROWE --
My kids are 13 and 15, and are reasonably familiar with the
appearance and function of human bodies. Anyway, Thorne Smith's work
may have been pretty bawdy when he wrote it, but it's fairly ho-hum now.=

"You read portney's complaint to your kids too? "
No, but right now we're doing a book about Xanth, where
a running gag (which even gave title to one of the later books)
concerns speculation as to the color of someone's underwear.
They're right on a par with Thorne Smith, and thousands of kids
read Xanth.

CHRISTOPHER E. BARAT --
"The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything" was a very well-
known and widely read novel in its time, and may, for all I know,
still be in print. John D. McDonald, the author, remains popular,
and this is one of his few fantasies. And given the similarity --
even to the point of making the device in the form of a pocket watch
-- I'll wager the creator of "Mr. Pem" got the idea there too.
No matter what the turnover rate in readers might be, EVERY
story is SOME reader's first. In scripting comics, I always make a
point of having each character addressed by name, or otherwise
identified, early on.

Quack, Don =

Remove

Don Rosa wrote:
> And in both cases that was a teeny, tiny rodent, not a man-size > mouse-creature.

Don gets competition in "not dismembering man-size mouse-creatures but
teeny, tiny rodents". Anybody seen "the unknown rodent" in Supreme 52 A?

(Yep, I shamefully admit I read and like some superheroes comics, too
;-) )

Brix