Keskustelujen arkisto

I am working on a Carl Barks webpage and for the chapter "Retirement
years" I would like to have this article checked by people who've attended
Barks' 96th birthday celebration. Corrections and additions are very
welcome!

[Information is taken from e-mails by Wilmer Rivers, 19 February 1997 and
Harald Havas, 30 April 1997.]

BTW. Can someone send me a scan of the "Barks' Treasury"-book? Scans of
some of the drawings and of photo's of the celebration would also be very
welcome (I want to use them as illustrations for this article and the
bibliography-page).

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On Saturday April 12, 1997, Barks 96th birthday was celebrated with a
banquet at the California Grill at Disney's Contemporary Resort. Life-
sized figures of some Duck and DuckTales characters attended and there was
a special Scrooge cake and lots of good stuff. There also were some
special custom made Disney items on exhibition, like Donald carved in a
flat piece of glass illuminated from below...

The evening included an exclusive gallery featuring a selection of works
by Carl Barks and a gourmet dinner. Premiering was a collection of
75 original colored drawings created by Carl Barks especially for this
event, a limited edition serigraph honoring 50 years of Scrooge McDuck
titled, "I May Have To Spend Some of This Stuff", and a variety of other
pieces by Carl Barks. 75 pieces of new Barks drawings (colour-pencils)
were exhibited, on which Barks has worked non-stop for six months for his
96th birthday event. The drawings mostly had scenes from old stories and
single new jokes like in a daily cartoon, featuring all his characters.

The art was sold by Disney [not by the Barks Studio?, DvE] with a price
range that included pieces in four range categories: $1500 - $3000 - $5000
- $7000. Everybody got a numbered coin he/she could put in a box besides
the pictures if he/she wanted to buy it. If more than one coin was
found, chance decided who got it (no bidding).

In addition, many of these works were commemorated in a hardback book
called "Barks' Treasury" (price $250), limited to an edition of 1000. This
book contains a high-class reproduction of 40 drawings, together with a
five-language description. It was presented in a nice box resembling a
safe, filled with shredded Duck-Dollars (with a Barks portrait on them).

The next day, a selection of fans, old friends and foreign visitors had
brunch with Barks in his suite in the (restricted) top floor of the hotel.
In the afternoon Barks was driven, escorted by a marching band, in an open
cabriolet to the "Chinese Theater"-copy at the MGM-Studio. On his car it
said "Carl Barks - Disney legend" an official title he is allowed to carry
since 1991. Beside him sat his 50 year old son... In front of the theater
he signed and put his palms into concrete to be put up there for posterity.
A bunch of journalists attended, but no TV-crew... Tourists cheered, mostly
not knowing who this man was. (In Europe this would have been top-news on
all channels...)

Barks looked good, walked with a stick but could do without, he was well-
mannered as always and chatted jokingly with everybody.

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Greetings,

--- Daniel

On Oct 26, 6:41pm, Kriton Kyrimis wrote:

> > Can't resist sidetracking here for a moment, to reveal the well known fact
> > that Dupond & Dupont can be identified by their different moustaches
> (Dupond's
> > is D-shaped), and the less well-known fact, that it is always the same one
> > (Dupont?) driving their car.
>
> Would you believe that until now I had never noticed? Dupond's mustache
> is, indeed, D-shaped, as opposed to Dupont's bell-shaped one, but the
> difference is very subtle--just a few extra hairs!

Wow! I never noticed either! But I just yanked out my copy of
Objectif Lune, and -- you're right! One mustache curves in and
the other curves out! I never noticed before! Gosh!

--Dwight Decker

The list has among other things been discussing _prunes_ lately.
David Gerstein said, in this connection:
<< THE PRUNE DEBATE:
I love the notion of a Beagle Boy liking prunes simply because
prunes are an intrinsically funny fruit. They look funny and the name
sounds funny (luckily, for all that, they taste good ;-) ). >>

I was reminded of a splendid little essay by celebrated philosopher and
prolific writer Bertrand Russell from the mid 1930-ies, called
"`useless' knowledge". He attacks beautifully the simplistic notion that
all the things we need to learn in school and so on must be `immediately
useful'; we need all the other stuff too! This list surely knows that --
filling itself to the brim with... well, not-so-immediately-useful knowledge.
Russell's praise of `useless' knowledge will feel relevant to all readers of
this maillist, and is recommended reading!

The little Russell paragraph that came to mind in connection with Gerstein's
and the other prune contributions is as follows:

<<Curious learning not only makes unpleasant things less unpleasant, but also
makes pleasant things more pleasant. I have enjoyed peaches and apricots more
since I have known that they were first cultivated in China in the early days
of the Han dynasti; that Chinese hostages held by the great King Kaniska
introduced them into India, whence they spread to Persia, reaching the Roman
Empire in the first century of our era; that the word "apricot" is derived from
the same Latin source as the word "precocious", because the apricot ripens
early; and the A at the beginning was added by mistake, owing to a false
etymology. All this makes the fruit taste much sweeter.>>

Nils Lid Hjort

Before leaving, Harry sent me a new version of the Disney comics
Database and now I've put that on the ftp server.

That is it's available at <URL:ftp://ftp.update.uu.se/comics/disney/index/>.
The zip files that everything was made from are in the "zip"
subdirectory.

The web searches does NOT use the new version yet.

DWIGHT:

>Question. Outside of the hard-core dedicated fan contingent, are
>there enough people in Europe who read English well enough to
>buy US imports that sales of local translated editions would be at
>affected?

I doubt so. In Germany, English is the most common foreign language taught
in schools nowadays; practically everybody who went to school after WW II
(in West Germany, at least) has had some English, and among the younger
population quite a number speak / read it quite well. But "quite a number"
is far from "many, many, many", and it certainly doesn't mean those people
would all want to read their comic books in English. After all, it IS
harder to read, and the albums are also more expensive in English, so I
think most would stick to the German versions, which (in case of the Barks
Library) continually pop up on the list of "best-sold comic album of the
month", not rarely even in the nr. 1 spot.
I think a large number of the sales of Gladstones comes from people who,
like me, buy both versions; the original because it's the original, the
German version because of the German text, which is often a literary piece
of art in its own. And those people won't buy one local edition more when
Gladstones aren't on sale in shops any more.
So I really doubt that the sales figures, which are already very good for
the German edition of the Barks Library, can be pushed further by banishing
the Gladstone editions from German shops. This is true even more for the
weekly and other newsstand material, where sales figures are so high that
the figures for the Gladstone newsstand (non-album) titles pale by
comparison. Even more, someone who buys Gladstones exclusively does so for
a purpose, and won't switch to the weekly, which is very obviously (and
sometimes nauseatingly) aimed at kids, but find other ways to get the
Gladstones instead.
In conclusion, I think that when better sales figures are the goal behind
what is going on right now, this measures will backfire. Not only will they
not achieve that goal, but they will also damage the reputation of whomever
is behind this; be it Ehapa or Disney Germany or another European license
holder (though in that case I wonder why seemingly only German customs
seized Gladstones).
I hope Gladstone won't have any lasting damage from this, beyond the damage
they invariably have already. They really don't deserve this. My (moral, at
least) support is with you.

Best regards, Frank
****************************************************************************
*******************
Wuerttembergische Landesbibliothek Frank Fabian
Abt. Katalogisierung Periodika (KaP) Tel.: +49
711/212- 4383
Konrad-Adenauer Str. 8 / Postfach 10 54 41 Fax.: +49 711/212-4437
70173 Stuttgart / 70047 Stuttgart mail:
(Email removed)
WWW: http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de
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TO: (Email removed)

Hi!

Does anybody know of a location on the net or in Connecticut or Ontario
that would be a good source for older Uncle $crooge comics. I'm trying to
add to my collection and I am having trouble finding anything pre-Gladstone.

Andrew

Hi!

I'm doing to a project in school about the censorship of Disney comics
and was wondering if you people could help me. I haven't been able to
aquire enough information and I've got a week to finish the project! So
if you know any useful web sites (I did find the one about Don Rosa, it
was great), books (...?) or just would like to share your knowledge with
me (like names of banned stories) please mail me!

I should propably introduce myself shortly. My name is Anna-Maija, I'm
generally known as Unski, and I'm a 17-year-old girl from Naantali,
Finland. I've been on this list for 2 weeks.

Bye & thanks in advance :D!

Unski

------------------------------------------------
Anna-Maija Ihander
(Email removed)

Reality is for people who can't handle Star Trek

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DAVID:

>commissioning *new* scripts as yet. If you or anyone you know wants to
>write stories for Egmont,

Hmm..now that you mention it, I would find that interesting. any idea who I
should contact? Any web pages on the subject?