Keskustelujen arkisto

I'm on my way to bed for the night, but I have a few quick things to say...
Thanks for the good wishes! And, yes, many of my friends are moving away, so I will definitely miss them. But it's an exciting time!
Thanks also for the Ludvig information.
Regarding that picture of Goldie at http://www2.fortunecity.com/lavendar/ridleyford/112/gfancy.jpg...
I realize she looks tall in this one, and several other pictures I have drawn. I tend to make them took a bit too human, something I'm working on...

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I'm too sleepy to remember it. :-)
Good night!
Katie Q
zzzz....

SOEREN KRARUP OLESEN --
Uh, please don't take what I said about "mean ol' Byron"
too seriously. He's made a perfectly ordinary editorial decision
about some characters that he considers useless baggage -- ones
that have outlived their ability to enhance the Disney pantheon,
and should be shuffled aside in favor of fresher ones.
It's only natural that some people will disagree with his
ideas of which ones should be dis-included. I do, myself. But
you can't have two people making those decisions for the same
group of stories, and he's the editor.
Fans of Disney comics are more fortunate than those of
most large sets of characters that have expanded for decades and
need occasional pruning. In the Disney Universe, more than one
point of view can be accommodated. If a certain character isn't
being used in Denmark, that's okay, because maybe (as in the case
of Ludwig von Drake) he is in Italy.
Bottom line for any editor or publisher is, how good is
the stuff that winds up on the stands? I think the quality of the
Egmont output speaks for itself.

Quack, Don

Hi folks,
I've just started seriously collecting Disney comics recently, having been
lucky a few months ago to have come across some "loose", discounted,
individual volumes of the hardcover Carl Barks Library! Prior to that, I did
have the (Barks) Uncle $crooge Life and Times collection, Mickey Mouse in
Color hardcover, and several of the new Gladstone (WDC&S) In fact, I did have
a letter published in WDC&S 606 (asking about a Carl Barks oil painting and
complaining that I didn't like alterations/colorization in the "historical"
features) I hadn't started seeking out particular stories, however, until I
discovered the CBL.

Having ultimately discovered that Barks isn't the only great Duck artist (I've
found that I absolutely love Don Rosa's work) I'd like to try some Van Horn,
but I've been buying so many books lately I want to start with *one* of the
four Van Horn albums. I have some of his ten-pagers in WDC&S, but have never
seen any of his longer stories. Considering that I very much prefer Barks's
long adverture stories to the ten-pagers, and that I love Rosa's work for the
"hidden" jokes and clever references (eg. Monty Python quotes and hidden
Mickeys), which of the four Van Horn albums would people recommend to me? (The
contents are listed on the Gladstone webpage) Also, could some of you comment
on your reactions to Van Horn's stories and art and how you feel they differ
or are similar to Barks and Rosa.

Thanks!
Bob Kass
Arlington, MA

BOB KASS --
I believe this first Van Horn album series covers only the
stories he did for Gladstone's first incarnation. Of those, only
two qualify as "longer", and one of those is marginal. (A
16-pager and a 24-pager, neither of which is in the first two
albums.) Which is okay by me, because to my way of thinking, he's
at his zany best in the shorter pieces.
It's kind of hard to compare him with Barks and Rosa. He
takes a more exaggerated approach to facial expressions and
poses, which can be either good or not so good -- good because
the stories call for it, not so good because sometimes the
contrast between exaggerated situations and less-exaggerated art
can provide humorous counterpoint of its own.
Personally, I like all three approaches. Rosa is great on
the longer stuff, Van Horn on the shorter, and Barks (of course)
on both.

Quack, Don

JOHN:
> I know there was at least one more long story ("The Pauper's Glass"), but
I
> don't see it in the index I'm referring to. Maybe someone can supply the
data.

Yep!

"The Pauper's Glass" (22 pages) was published in Uncle Scrooge #298. If a
16-pager qualifies as a long story,
"The Saphead Factor"(DDA 48) and "The Whistling Ghost"(DT 10) should also
be on the list.
One of the issues containing one of Van Horn's longer stories "offers" a
little more Van Horn than the others, DDA #20. Besides "The Amazon Queen,"
it contains an interview ("Behing the Scenes on the Amazon Queen") with Van
Horn and John Lustig, conducted by Geoffrey Blum.

Best,
Per-Erik

CHRISTOPHER BARAT to KATHY SULLIVAN, 05-06-1998:

>> Getting even more on-topic...I read somewhere (probably several
>> somewheres) that Barks worked on Donald animation before moving to
>> comics. Does anyone know the details? Cartoon titles? Dates?
>> Anything?

> If you have the BARKS LIBRARY, one of the sets contains a detailed
> description of Barks' work on the Donald Duck shorts.

Though he did Duck cartoons mostly, he also did some work on cartoons
containing Goofy, Mickey and Pluto. This all also contains work for
unproduced cartoons.

In the mid-50s he made a script for a Scrooge cartoon which was never
made. The nine pages of drawings are gone, but the text is published in
the Carl Barks Library.

He also did some work for the movies "Snow White", "Bambi" and "Fantasia".
His work for the first two has been printed by Gladstone, one in a comic
and one in an album.

For Fantasia a very very small picture was used for a drawing in which
Mickey the sorcerer's apprentice apparantly orders the water to raise up.
Hopefully there will be more attention to his work on this movie in the
future (at least a larger picture of the drawing).

BTW. As can be seen in the "Unexpurgated Carl Barks" album, Barks also did
a 'cartoon' during his magazine work before Disney. For this you have to
let the pages slip through your fingers (don't know how to describe this)
to see the animation.

Greetings,

--- Daniel

--------------------------------
End of Disney comics Digest V98 Issue #140
******************************************

MICHAEL NAIMAN, 05-05-1998:

> For those bemoaning the fact that they've never seen the Wendigo story in
> English...please refer to the Mike Schneiderath's Don Rosa page...
> www.geocities.com/soho/8024

I like the page, but what happened with the colours of the scans? I get
them as looking purple-ish with some other unnatural looking varitions.
Since the original seems to be the Dutch Montly (which is a clear
reproduction) *and* since I'm interested in scanning myself, I'm very
curious why the colours look this way.

TARJEI KIDD OLSEN, 07-05-1998:

> there's been some complaints about the way Gladstone splits some
> lo=nger stories into 2 or 3 parts. At the same time, these people
> obviously are very much into these comics, and wouldn't want them to
> go away. Now, th=e way I've understood it, the point of splitting
> up stories like this is =to make people come back for more. They
> want to see what happens, and so t=hey buy the next issue, and the
> next, and the next.....I don't know HOW effective this tecnique is,
> but if it works, then surely it's worth it =

It would be nice to know effective it is, because there's also a dark
side on this technique: How do people react if they enter *half-way* in a
continued story when they decide to pick up (buy?) a comic and how do they
react if they just want to have *one* comic and then realise they have to
search / wait for a next part?

Have there ever been investigations on this in the past, like comparing
the sales of 'independent' Disney comics with the ones containing
serialized stories? If so, could someone tell what the results were?

FRANCOIS WILLOT, 08-05-1998:

> I also have another question regarding Barks classic stories: does
> someone know why are there almost no "space" around the last panel of
> Barks's "Old California"?

I've looked it up and it does indeed look strange, are there other cases
like this in Barks' stories? The only reason I can think of now is that
he needed the room and that the same panel-construction with normal borders
wouldn't have given both panels enough room to do their show without
looking cramped in their internal composition?

OLE REICHSTEIN NIELSSEN, 29-05-1998:

> (Why isn't my name in the digest headlines?)

Looking at the "from"-field of your letter, you have no real name filled
besides your e-mail address. I think that's the reason.

What *I* would like to know is why my subjects in the contents-list of
a digest are always shown a step more indented than the others! :-)

Greetings,

--- Daniel

"Don't hate nothing at all, except hatred"
Bob Dylan, Gates of Eden

This is something I wrote some time ago, when someone else needed the main
computer. It was either the dustbin or just sending it, so here it is! ;-)

WALT DISNEY COMICS AND STORIES 620

"CAUGHT IN THE GOLD RUSH" is a funny story, the idea of a woman walking
through the city being eager to sue anyone for just about anything is very
original. The only thing I find a bit 'wandering' is the shovels-sequence
on page 5 to 7, while IMO the laser sequence and the confrontation between
Donald and Wanda at the end of the story could have been more extensive.

"THE IDOL OF MOANING ISLAND" is the second part of a story. The first part
lays somewhere in a cupboard which I can't reach from here. In other words:
I don't like stories being continued! :-)

"HOCUS POCUS HYPNOSIS" also is a funny story (read on for the art). The
action in the first panel really made me want to read it, which is not
very usual with Mickey for me.
In the CBL, Carl Barks is quoted on his hypnosis tenpager saying: "this
is the sort of story that only Donald can portray convincingly. Mickey
could never be 'hypnotized' by such a simple gadget and Goofy could be
hypnotized too easily. A good example of Donald's versatility as an
'actor'." To me, this story shows that it *is* possible to have a funny
and believable story with Goofy under hypnosis, *only*... why is Goofy
drawn so flat?? The story could have had great expressive movements in
the art, but IMO it doesn't really happen and it even does the story
harm. A pity, because the art itself looks very good.

"THE RELUCANT DRAGON" is a pleasure to read as variation on the duck
stories I usually read. Great colouring. (Except for the purple-instead-
of-red radish of course! :-)

WALT DISNEY COMICS AND STORIES 621

"ROOM AND BORED": What's exciting in - being bored - picking up a comic and
then read a story with *nine* (out of ten) pages about a duck who's even
*more* bored than me? Having read that, I expected something *very*
surprising on the last page to make it up, but what actually came reminded
me very much of an old Barks tenpager. Maybe I didn't quite get it?

Looking at the art "TWO-WAY FRAY" is very attractive, the story, however,
isn't. (I usually like Big Bad Wolf stories.)

"THE EARLY YEARS ENDS" fortunately didn't mean what I thought, because I
think these articles are very-very-very interesting!

"LIFE SAVERS" is a Woodchuck-story I don't like and I don't think I quite
get it. The Woodchuck's rescue make a fake accident a real one and this is
*rewarded*?

I like "MORRIS THE MIDGET MOOSE" very much. Al Hubbart's work really should
be reprinted more, especially the expressive artistic Fethry ones! The
story may not be very 'deep' and may even be a bit preachy, but the art
really makes up for that.

"THE FOSSIL HUNTERS" is a good story, but looking at the art I really miss
some camera movement. There are almost no close-ups and the panels mainly
show an action in overview. Besides that, I like the art and the way Mickey
is drawn.

"THE PIED PIPER OF DUCKBURG" is a great story, using one of the 'money-bin
overview variations' Don Rosa has used in his work (like the ancient one
and the upside-down one).

WALT DISNEY COMICS AND STORIES 622

This cover is one of the best Barks-painted ones I've seen.

On the recent discussion on Paul Murry I can say that I do like some of
his stories. However, the first panel of "THE SECRET OF THE ANCIENT
INCA'S" already strikes against me before wanting to see the second.
Goofy comes by with his goofy walk and Mickey stands outside with his
hands behind his back, having a look like "Wonder what kind of silly
thing Goofy's doing this time! What do I have to show off my knowlegde
on today?" I think Murry's work would have been a lot better if the
characters weren't so two-dimensional (Mickey smart, Goofy stupid,
O'hara desperate, etc.) It's for this reason why I haven't read the
story yet and why I have difficulties reading Murry's work. (One other
reason is that it's continued. :-)

David Gerstein's story "PORK BARREL POLITICS" is a great one and I hope to
see more by him. Normally I don't like Donald fooling around with animals,
but this is an exception! (Funny that using pigs, which I found a bit
far-fetched at first, turned out to be based on reality!)

The old COUSIN BERTIE story is fun to read. I hope more old stories like
this one get reprinted. The end of this story seems to be a recommendation
for spanking children, btw. :-)

AN EYE FOR DETAIL is a great story. The emphasis on Donald's ability on
recognizing each nephew is very original and I also like it that it remains
a bit mysterious in the end. The background- and side-jokes are very great.
The end-joke is a bit faint and dry (right words?), but that is what makes
it so funny to me. (I like dry humor, like for example in "Monthy Python's
Flying Circus".) Since quite a lot of my favourite Rosa-stories are ten-
pagers, I hope there will be more (new) of them in the future.

WALT DISNEY COMICS AND STORIES 623

"ALL QUACKED UP": I've never understood why Launchpad seems so proud of his
image as destructive and careless pilot, for that reason I have the same
feeling for him as someone else here expressed about seeing domes on money-
bins.

Is "THE SECRET OF THE ANCIENT INCAS" from the area in the early 60s when
the editor wanted a new format with wider borders (like in Uncle $crooge
40)? Does someone here know which comics and issue-numbers had that format?

"NEW YEAR'S REVOLUTIONS" is one of my favourite Barks tenpagers. One year
later, Barks referred back to this story in another one about new year
resolutions (WDC 185).

"THE MONEY PIT" has been the reason for me to just take that collectors-
item-of-a-Carl-Barks-Library and press it flat against my scanner's glass
whenever I need a picture. Since then I really *enjoy* having it, before
that I was only *afraid* of damaging the books. Yes, indeed, what's the
use of sealing books away while they're intended to be *enjoyed*? Is the
mint price (compared to, for example, "very good") really worth missing
YEARS OF FUN? Ha! Not anymore! Not for me! Hee-hee-hee! :-)

"COMMANDOS" is very funny. The art is good (but a bit flat when it comes
to emotions) and the end is very original.

"COUNTRY COUSIN" has very nice art. If I rembember well, the cartoon
version has a sequence in which the countrymouse gets drunk. Has this been
ommited during the making of the story or this this a shorter (censored)
version?

I like the rhyming in "THE FLOOD", though it took some time to get used
to it because of the different 'normal-talk' approach in its original.
The rhymes are done very catchy and flexible. Should it be read with a
certain music style in mind? It reminds me a bit of jazzy Disney films
with question-and-answer type of lyrics, is this intended?

I like the AL TALIAFERRO DAILY AND SUNDAY STRIPS, but I hope they will be
printed in a collection soon, instead of as fillers. I also hope to see
more of the later Taliaferro-pages (late 40s, the 50s and 60s).

Greetings,

--- Daniel

"Coin collector's make me *sick*! They collect their coins only
because *other* pleople put a value on them!"

(Uncle Scrooge, "The Money Pit")