Keskustelujen arkisto

>Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 20:42:10 -0700
>From: rob gibson <(Email removed)>
>
>As a stockholder in Disney, I am offended by what seems to me to be
>heavy handed micromanagement of our creative assets(comic book writers).
>It is affecting the value of my stock!!!

You must be kidding. Disney executives do what they do to try to protect
your stock. They are very protective of the Disney family-friendly image,
particularly during this era of conservative influences.

> Imagine what would happen to the popularity of cartoons if they were
>censored as Disney comics are now censored. Can you imagine the wildly
>popular Roadrunner cartoons after they passed through Disney's US comic
>book censors? Can anyone come up with a legitimate reason why cartoons
>and comics should have such dramatically different standards?

Compare the Disney cartoons of that era. Of course, Walt Disney demanded a
certain type of cartoon and these were much different than Warner Bros.
cartoons.

> IMHO, Disney is shooting itself in the foot( no pun intended concerning
>the recent gun related discussion)) in this arena by unnecessarily
>interfering in the creative communication between its writers and US
>readers(I'm only familiar with Disney's US comics, hence this discussion
>is relevant only to the US market). I look at the robustness of the
>forties/early fifties stories (when US WDCS circulation was upwards of
>three million) and I know many of them would have trouble getting past
>the censors today. What is US circulation today, 60 thousand or so? 2
>percent of what it was? MAYBE there is a connection. MAYBE unnecessary
>censorship equals lower circulation. There are, I expect, other issues
>in the circulation decline, but this is the big one.

Comic in all cases sell much less than comics did in the 50s. The Roy
Rogers comic sold in the millions per month in the 50s. Do you seriously
suggest that it would sell as well today. Disney comics have lost
followers for many reasons, but censorship is the LEAST of them.

B. Martin

Hi, everyone. I've been looking and searching in every possible way for
ages, and I simply *can't* find the list of Scrooge's girlfriends that
we compiled a few months ago.
Can you please help me fill in the blanks? I know I'm forgetting
someone!

Goldie
Brigitta
Tilly (From "The Flowers")
Minny Pearl (From "I.O.U...but Who?")
Millionera Vanderbucks (from the DuckTales episode "Til Nephews do us
Part")
Bella Quack/Belle Duck (???) (Rich B...did you ever get another scan of
her online?)
Money Quack (I don't remember anything about her. Is she the same as
Bella?)

*Please give me corrections and additions. Also, I really need a
picture of Millionera from DuckTales. ( I realize that's a bit hard to
come by, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? ;-)

This is all needed for yet another webpage that I'm working on. More
announcements to come...

:-)

Katie Quackfaster

--

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
~~~~Planet Sullivan http://www.execpc.com/~sulliva1/ ~~~~
~~~With Redwall, Disney ducks, humor and more!~~~
"I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy I every minute of it."
"Normal people worry me."
:-)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ETA BETA said:

> Actually, it's a common belief in the Disney world that the
> Blot was modelled after Walter Elias Disney himself...:-)
>

PAOLO CASTAGNO said:

> Did you ever comparised the unmasked Blot to Walt Disney?
> They ARE the same person!

For folks wishing to see physical evidence check out:
http://www.jps.net/xephyr/rich/dzone/images/WhoisBlot.gif

Perhaps it's an Italian-thing that this deduction comes easily? :-)

Hello evr'ybody!

DAVID GERSTEIN wrote:
>>Still, I can't help but wondering what happened to page 3...;-)
> Here's my explanation, the only one I've got.

Personally, that discussed page 3 was one of my favourites, since I found
it so funny - it literally made me laugh to tears! But maybe you are right
about it causing a drop in dramatic intensity. I just mean that I see your
point here, though probably I would not have made the cut if I had to
choose.

ANGERS ENGWALL gave us a list of stories with BBW and other disney characters:
>Also I recall that there have been quite a few wolf-duck crossovers, and
>also some mouse-wolf ones.

Also, there is "Mickey and Donald in Vacationland", (which was discussed on
this list some time ago - is the code WDG 47-01 ?) where BBW meets both
Mickey and Donald. But the story is not set in Duckburg nor Mouseton (if it
exixts) nor in the BBW forest, so maybe it does not count...

(((( --------------------------------------------------
jgs { '> Few women admit their age. Few men act theirs.
/ ,\ --------------------------------------------------
/_/ / Claudia Rege Cambrin ((Email removed))
===//="==== Corso Nazionale 161, 19125 La Spezia (SP) - ITALY
/ --------------------------------------------------

ALL:

> Claudia, Katie, Kriton and others:
>
> >To all those collectors with meters after meters (feet after feet) of
> >comics I have a question: where do you keep them?

Since I was one of those who mentioned the "length" of their
collection, I might as well answer this question as well:

I have covered most of the wall space in my bedroom with shelves and
bookcases, and the comics take several of those shelves, with the
original B&W CBL placed in a prominent position at the top of the main
bookcase. Most of my Gladstone albums are in a shelf right over the
head of my bed, so if there is an earthquake in Athens at night-time,
do not be surprised if you stop hearing from me!

An interesting fact I've discovered by storing comic books in
bookshelves is their compressibility: although I keep adding to the
collection, its total length has not increased by much, as most of the
time I find that I can squeeze one more comic book in the existing
space. I guess that the McDuck Foundation's research in storing dollar
bills in the smallest possible space has found at least one
application!

DAVID GERSTEIN:

> So what *does* happen on the original Page 3? The story stops
> dead. The crisis is forgotten. The ministers could care less about
> Ramses' colossus as they become silly little children, playing with toy
> boats in the wading pool. We can no longer believe in the seriousness of
> their plight, because they don't believe in it themselves. When (what
> was originally) Page 4 begins and the plot shifts back into high gear, a
> sense of urgency has been lost, and it can *never* be regained.

Either you are lucky enough to have an efficient government, or you are
very naive. Ignoring the issue / being unable to deal with it, and
doing trivial things that do not address it is common practice where I
come from, and I suspect it was (still is?) the same in Italy when
Scarpa wrote the story. I'm fairly certain that Scarpa was making a
political statement there, saying that governments, by their nature,
are unable to address such colossal (if you pardon the pun) tasks, and
that the only one who can deal with such a task is a private
entrepreneur like Scrooge McDuck. Wasn't it mentioned in the story that
those officials had spent their entire budget on that model, which, as
Scarpa so ingeniously showed us in page 3, was only good for playing
with?

DONALD D. MARKSTEIN:

> I'm not sure what the maximum number of Beagle
> Boys ever to appear in a Barks story is, but in
> "Hawaiian Holiday", Scrooge claims to have been forced
> to wash dishes for 30 of them. (A maximum of five
> appear in any one panel in that story, but 15 different
> numbers are used.)

You can take it as literally meaning "30", or meaning "many". After
all, the Beagles did nothing but eat in that island, so those dishes
must have kept piling up, and Scrooge must have felt as if he had
washed a lot more dishes (say, twice, the amount) than would have
corresponded to the actual number of Beagle Boys. After all,
mentioning a large number instead of "many", is common practice: we
have "101" and "dozens" in English, "1001" in Greek, and to add to the
confusion, my mother keeps saying "25" when she wants to say "lots"!

Even if we lierally take 30 as the number of Beagles, my original
objection was to someone mentioning "36" as the total number of
Beagles.

Has anyone ever made a list of all Beagle Boy numbers that have ever
appeared in Barks' stories? I know that in later stories Barks always
used 176-xxx, where xxx was a permutation of 176, but in early stories
he didn't, so this might give us another indication of how many Beagle
Boys are out there.

XAVIER METCALF:

> For folks wishing to see physical evidence check out:
> http://www.jps.net/xephyr/rich/dzone/images/WhoisBlot.gif

According to Disney's interpretation of Copyright law, this image now
makes *Walt Disney himself* the property of Disney the company!!! :-)

Kriton (e-mail: (Email removed))
(WWW: http://cti.gr/~kyrimis
-----
"Circular logic will only make you dizzy!"
-----

Katie:
> I simply *can't* find the list of Scrooge's girlfriends that
> we compiled a few months ago.
> Can you please help me fill in the blanks? I know I'm forgetting
> someone!

What about miss Penny Wise?

--Harry.

DONALD D. MARKSTEIN pointed out (re Clarabelle and Horace):

<<I think you mean "tied the knot". They may very well have done the deed
already, but that, of course, is a question too delicate to be answered with
any certainty on the basis of the stories we've seen.>>

I'll just mention briefly the obvious place this thread might go, ie. the
mechanics of mating with no obvious external geinitals and the convention of
catoon animals not wearing pants. (Although I remember a story in which Donald
is embarassed to be seen naked in a bathtub(!)) Birds in our world have very
different "equipment" from mammals and mate just fine, thank you. As far as
poor Horace however..........

My big question is: Would the ducks lay eggs, or give birth live, like
mammals?
I realize this is probably far beyond what Disney wants us to worry about, but
why not have some fun with it. Personally, I think that because the Ducks are
so anthropomorphic, and have a society so much like a human society, live
birth would make the most sense. In Don Rosa's "Triple Distelfink", the
painter mentions that Grandma (or should I say, "the future-Grandma', Elviry?)
Duck is "expecting". I guess that could mean incubating an egg, but I think
that would conflict with her "human" activities on the farm. Therefore, I
would like to think of her as having been pregnant. Perhaps some people could
name stories in which eggs are mentioned regarding "our" ducks, but I propose
that if the story is not by Barks or Rosa, we should consider it to be
apocryphal.

Other thoughts?
Bob Kass
Arlington, MA

Donald D. Markstein wrote:

>KRITON KYRIMIS --
> I'm not sure what the maximum number of Beagle
> Boys ever to appear in a Barks story is, but in
> "Hawaiian Holiday", Scrooge claims to have been forced
> to wash dishes for 30 of them. (A maximum of five
> appear in any one panel in that story, but 15 different
> numbers are used.)

M. Angot and D. Petitfaux conducted a mini-interview with Carl Barks
when he visited Paris in 1994 and one of the question was "could you
tell us how many Beagle Boys there are? The number vary in the
stories!". Here's Barks' reply (re-translated from French):

<<They're from two to height of them but they're all different: for
instance the group of 6 Beagles is not the group of 8 with two absents.
If you count all these groups, you'll find that there are 35 Beagle
Boys!>>

Acc. to Barks, the number of Beagle Boys is 2 + 3 + ... + 8 = 35 !

Someone in this list (it was months ago) found a panel of a Barks story
where there are 13 Beagles. It is in OS 1184, "Mighty but Miserable"
(page 4).

I also remember an Italian story where it is assumed that there are
Beagle Boys all over the world. When Scrooge goes to Australia (I don't
recall the country or pseudo-country), the Beagles of Duckburg simply
tell their Australian cousins that Scrooge is in Australia.

Of course, I consider these stories as "fictions", while the Barks' ones
are "facts" for me (or some of them at least).

Katie:

>Money Quack (I don't remember anything about her. Is she the same as
>Bella?)

No, Money Quack (the Italian original name ;-) is a business-woman (like
$crooge in Italian stories), who appeared in a few stories made for
"Topolino".

Bob Kass:

>Perhaps some people could name stories in which eggs are mentioned
>regarding "our" ducks, but I propose that if the story is not by Barks
>or Rosa, we should consider it to be apocryphal.

There is at least that famous story drawn by Rota for Donald's birthday
in 1984. In this story, Scrooge is Grandma's brother (in the French
translation at least). I also treat this story as apocryphal.

Harry:

>> when Donald wants to escape of Duckburg, he always goes
>> to Goosville.
>
>You mean he doesn't go to the North Pole, or Timbooctoo, but to
>Gooseville in stead? Isn't Gooseville supposed to be close to Duckburg?

You're right, Donald usually goes to Tumbooctoo or to the North Pole or
in any other place which is far away from Duckburg. But in some Danish
stories he also goes in the direction of a close city, at least in the
French translation. I wanted to say that this close city was always
Gooseville and never Mickeyville.

Francois