Keskustelujen arkisto

TO ALL:

First, I'd like to extend Gladstone's sincerest appreciation to all of you
who have wished us well in the current situation over the handling of
Gladstone comics and albums overseas. It's strange, but true, that you
often don't realize the friends you really have until a crisis (or at least
a really aggravating mess) comes up.

And now, to business. First: contrary to what anyone may have heard,
Gladstone is very much still in business. As those of you who have been
with us for a while probably already know, we don't stick our tail between
our legs and slink off like a whipped dog just because another hound starts
barking. Second: I offer the following prepared statement:

"Because of issues involving Disney Germany and German customs, Diamond
Distribution has decided to no longer distribute Disney comics and comic
albums outside the US and Canada. As we are not currently licensed to do
so, Gladstone is unable to assume such distribution as Diamond has now
suspended.

"We are working with Diamond and Disney US to address the matter, but we
cannot determine at the moment when or how things will be resolved. In the
meantime, we continue to offer and service overseas subscriptions and
retail back issue orders, which are unaffected by the present situation.

"We apologize for the inconvenience, and suggest that you contact the
Disney Company in your country to ask if they might be able to help bring
this matter to a satisfactory conclusion for everyone.

"Best regards,
All the folks at Gladstone"

This reflects Gladstone's understanding of the situation at this time, and
is not meant to reflect or usurp the position of any other party involved.
There are certain particulars in which we are, at this juncture, as much in
the dark as anyone.

(By the way, the "retail back issue orders" mentioned in the statement
refer to the availability, at our retail pricing, as seen in our printed
back issue house ads, of Gladstone's available backstock. It is not a
restriction on who may place such orders.)

I don't expect this to deal with all present or potential points of
confusion, but maybe it can alleviate some worries.

Thanks for listening.

HOY:

Uncle Scrooge's official American coat colors are: YR (red) and Y2R2B3
(bunnyrabbit gray - cuffs, collars, belt).

Gary

****************************
"Life ain't nohow permanent!" - Porkypine
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Gladstone on the Web: http://www.hamlco.com/bhc/
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ULI:

I've replied to your private mail twice now; but both times the message has
returned to me because of some error with your e-mail address. So now I'm
answering you here: Yes sure, I can get those issues you are missing (if
they have them!), and I'll accept both comics and money in exchange
(providing it isn't TOO many #'s that is! :-)....ok? Which issues are you
missing?

>Subject: Rosa Steals From Strobl! Read all about it!
>Don Rosa's story "Last Sled to Dawson" which recently came up as one
>of the readers' favorites appears to be heavily inspired by a story
>written by Carl Fallberg and drawn by Tony Strobl, "The Secret of
>the Glacier" from Donald Duck #51, January 1957.
>Several panels are practically identical - especially the panel with
>part of the glacier breaking off the glacier where you can see the
>sled inside is strikingly similar.

Just in case that Don is already gone (to germany) and not able to reply
personally on that matter, I would just like to point out that the article
is never saying that Don "stole" from Strobl. It rather points out that
there are other (visual) referenced that Don uses besides Barks (like this
Strobel Story, The cizizen Kane referenze). And the story itself is (so
says the article) completely different besides these panels.
(actually is pete a villian in that Strobl story....)

Besides that there are several other references in many of his stories.
But Don has (as far as I know) never claimed credit for these Ideas, but he
openly admitted several times that he used ideas and scenes from movies or
whatever. Like the gag with the cool guy and the bear in "hearts of the
yukon"...when someone mentioned it on the List Don immediately said that he
wasn t the one who invented this gag!

Mike

RICH asked for information about a lot of characters. For now I'll say
somehing about Cavillo Busillis, because I've recently discovered that
Scarpa used that character at least three times.

The story which introduces that character is I TL 552-B (1966), afterwards
reprinted in "Classici di Walt Disney" 114. $crooge has a car crash against
Filo Sganga's car; Daisy and Brigitta, passing by, offer to give evidence at
the trial; but they don't agree on **what** the evidence is! So the four of
them go to the lawyer, who is this guy Cavillo Busillis (Cavillo means
<quibble> while Busillis means <the core of the question> in a popular
saying derived from Latin - which would be far too complicated to explain
here). Now it turns out that this Busillis is worried because he is losing
his hair, and it seems that Sganga has invented an ointment which has mad
hair grow on the top of $crooge's car!!!
By Brigitta's deposition, $crooge is bound to pay Sganga a huge amount of
money, since Busillis is now on Sganga's side because he wants the ointment!
The only solution for $crooge is to marry Brigitta: a wife can't teesify
against her husband!
Just before the end, Busillis finds out that Sganga's ointment made him lose
the remaining hair: the "hair" grown on the top of $crooge's car was in fact
a piece of Brigitta's wig... So Sganga has no more a lawyer helping him,
hence $crooge needs no more to marry Brigitta and the story (not one of
Scarpa's best ones as you might imagine) is over.

Cavillo Busillis appears again (in three panels) in I TL 624-A, when Donald
needs a lawyer. It seems that Scarpa had decided that when he needed a
lawyer he would use Busillis. But probably he didn't need a lawyer many more
times ;-)
As far as I know, Busillis reappeared only 20 years later, whith his hair
now red (a wig?), in "Paperolimpiadi" (I TL 1705-A) an eight-part story
where Scarpa managed to use most of the characters he ever created. You can
check on "Topolino" 1706 on page 155 and following ones...

Oh, BTW:

Ottoperotto is **not** a Dachshund looking "Beagle Boy", but rather the
"Beagle dog" of the beagle boys. He is a "real" dog, a beagle in fact,
carrying on his back the number <64> (because "Otto-per-otto" means
"eight-times-eight"). He was used by Pier Carpi in at least two stories
which appeared in 1964 on "Almanacco Topolino", drawn by G. B. Carpi (not a
relative as far as I know): I AT 86-A and I AT 92-A.

and:
>Zigia(?) - R. Scarpa character
does not exist, as far as I can tell.

Marco

At 11.50 1997-10-25, Marco Barlotti wrote:

>Anyway, "Der Donaldist" #102 had a real scoop there.

Nope! 'T'ain't no scoop unless your the first to break the news! And that
they're not!

>I've checked on
>Strobl's story <The Secret of the Glacier>, and certainly some sequences are
>startingly identical in the layout with Don's "Last sled to Dawson". I'm
>especially thinking of $crooge's recalling how he lost his sled. (Page 6 of
>Don's story). This **can't** be juvenile recall! Take also panel three of
>page 7 and compare it with Stobl's layout: you even have the same dog in the
>background!

Actually, what I said was that I seem to recall reading a statement by Don,
that this was a sort of *tribute* to Tony Strobl, done because the Strobl
story was one of the non-Barks $crooge stories that he had liked the best
as a kid. But I don't think, nor meant to say, that I understood Don to sau
anything but that he had consciously borrowed this scene from Strobl.

However -- let's not argue about what Don has or has not said, or has or
has not done, but instead wait for his return and any comments he might
feel like making.

Also, please let me say that this message is just intended to clarify what
I meant to say in my previous posts; I certainly don't try to speak for Don
Rosa!

All the very best

/Mattias

*** Mattias Hallin ** Halmstad * Sweden ** <(Email removed)> ***
* *
* "Oh bury me thar! With my battered git-tar! *
************ A-screamin' my heart out fer yew!" ************

OLE:

In V97 #232 Ole mentioned Don Rosa and Citizen Kane. Don once put me in
front of a big TV and put on his laser disc copy of Citizen Kane for me to
watch. One of the points of the movie was that the sled called Rosebud (the
search for Rosebud was central to the movie) was a symbol of something that
Kane had lost, his childhood, and which all his money and power couldn't
regain. This is a theme Don returned to with his story The Last Sled to
Dawson, the reason Scrooge valued his lost sled so much was for the memories
it contained, which were about a time in his life he cherished and couldn't
regain again for all the money in his bin. To a certain extent The Attack of
the Hideous Space Varmints also revisits this theme when Scrooge is tempted
to stay in outer space because he suddenly finds that it is possible to
regain that lost part of his past life.

In several stories too Don has had Scrooge state that he really didn't have a
childhood because he was always working to support his family, which again is
a passing reference to the central theme of Citizen Kane. The Lo$ part 12
reference to Citizen Kane has already been mentioned by Ole, but there are
others (and no doubt some that I haven't noticed):

For example the sled called Rosebud can be seen (at least in the Gladstone
printing) as one of the objects taken out of the store room during the clean
out in The Incredible Shrinking Tightwad story, and the Cornelius Coot
Memorial Library scene in His Majesty McDuck is also straight out of Citizen
Kane.

Anyone wanting to get an inside line on how Don visualises the character
called Scrooge McDuck would find watching Citizen Kane a very good investment
of their time!

Of course Don Rosa isn't the only one to rework Citizen Kane into his
stories. There was an episode of the Simpsons where Montgomery Burns loses
his teddy bear, where the flashback scene was also straight out of Citizen
Kane.

DON:

The character coming out of the publishers was Byron? I always thought that
Byron was supposed to be Old Man Ericson the pig farmer in Lo$, or am I being
uncharitable? ;-) Do I detect some more additions to the lists of identical
characters being compiled on this ML? Ha ha ha :-D

Shaun Craill

$CROOGE'S COLORS:

This discussion about the proper coloring of Scrooge's coat gives me a
chance to rant about something I've found strange about the way Uncle
Scrooge is drawn and colored: his top hat. It doesn't look like anything
like a real top hat anymore, but rather a combination of lines
representing a one. It's always drawn with those bizarre blue sectors
almost as if they are a part of the actual color of the hat. The only
proper top hat I think I've ever seen on Scrooge is in Barks' paintings:
Replacing the blue sector is a white fuzz which is the reflection of the
light coming towards the velvety pattern of the hat. I was wondering if
there's an actual reason for always drawing the top hat in that very
untophatlike way.

GARY:

I'm glad to hear you're still up and kicking! Keep up the great work.

MATTIAS about DON and STROBL:
> great job speaking for himself ;-), I seem to recall a statement of his
> (possibly to this list?) where he said that the Strobl story in question
> was one of his childhood non-Barks favourite stories. So, if my memory

Yep. It was in a reply to my first message to this list three or
four years ago. "Last Sled to Dawson" had been driving me nuts because I
was sure I had read a story very much like it in some old Aku Ankka my
father had shown me. I couldn't, however, find that old issue, and none of
my Disney-maniac friends (well, there weren't too many) recognized that
story. Everybody kept saying I was just having a deja vu... I was really
relieved when Don finally put an end to my pain with that reply.

About a DUCKBURG RPG:

I don't know much about licensing agreements, U.S. copyright laws or
anything like that. But I do know a whole lot about role-playing games
having played them for almost ten years and being a minor rpg guru here in
Finland. Yeah, big deal, I know...

Anyway, if someone were to write a role-playing game based on Duckburg, he
would run into several problems. The biggest problem would probably be
continuity problems - Duckburg in Disney comics generally is just
an average American city which can be anything and anywhere. Don Rosa
having been the only one so far to offer any stability, it would be
logical to choose to follow his view of the world. Even more so as it also
includes all the Barks facts necessary to keep the world interesting and
worthwhile. The game would probably have to involve quite alot of treasure
hunting and adventuring and less drama or soap. The problem here would be
the fact, that most of the obvious treasures have been long found by Uncle
Scrooge. The adventures would be rather hard to think of.

Obviously the player characters would have to be such people who haven't
been seen in the comics. They could of course interact with Uncle Scrooge,
Donald and others. The interaction with the characters we all know and
love would be the only reason I can think of to create such a game, but as
writing proper dialogue for them has proven very hard for most
professional writers, it would be almost impossible for the game master to
improvize conversations with them. With that in mind, there wouldn't
really be any good reason to play such a game. It would be much more
interesting to play in a 'real' world. To search all the treasures, and
visit all the mystical places for the first time! Most rpg rules can be
bent so that they'd allow replacing the people with talking ducks if
somebody sees that essential in Disney comics.

DAVID:

Could you please tell us what exactly is your current job at Egmont (story
editor) and what does it involve?

Mike - The Finnish Trekkie