Keskustelujen arkisto

In a message dated 7/27/98 2:36:55 PM Central Daylight Time, dcomics-

<< Legality aside, If we were to do something like
the Barks CDs, the hobby would die. I just read a message inwhich someone
mentioned that they counted no more than 5 beagles / panel and 15 #'s. Does
anyone really think they would spend the time to examine a detail to this
extent, if all of us had digital full sets of Walt Disney comics? I doubt
it. >>

While at first I was lulled into a fantasy of collected comic cd's, I hadn't
really thought about what attracts me to them. I like the feel, the smell,
the old pages, turning the page, recognizing covers as I sort through them.
Maybe we should have both.

Lynne in Illinois

That was a long but lovely day, we drove all the way
to Trondheim (3 hours). I was told that there was a
socalled antiquar (I don't know if we have this word in
english, but it is a store which sells old books, this one
sold comics too.) First I asked for the norwegian edition
of Donaldismen, which the not-in-the-best-mood owner
had not got in his store, oh bother! But thanks heaven I
found to newish editions of Donald Duck & Co.
The first one (from 1996) contained The Ten Avatars, D 95153 by
our friend Don Rosa, along with this great story there
was a text (preface?) to the story, which I had not read
before, very interesting; about the making of
such a story, and so on.
The other one was a 96-pages comic, because of $mD's
50th jubilee in 1997. It contained, among other things, the
story "A little something Special" (D 96325), and a two-sided
poster. First page was rd 9726, a page with Scrooge and friends,
which says congratulations and "rus 300 a" which I first
discovered the next day, it is a great page with Scrooge
and many of the people he has met. These three things
are of course by Rosa (thank you!), you can find the two pages
of the poster on the d.u.c.k.hunt page.
At another book store I found a new (?) issue of Walt Disney's
Comics (No. 624): (I guess there should be what you guys call
spoilers here?) It contains a story by William van Horn about a
fanatic caveman who behaves like Scrooge (D 97151).
Metaphorically Spanking (AR 119) is a great truant story by Don.
I also found a story which I have been wanting to read at its full
length, as someone removed 4 pages from the dansih issue
where I have it. does that sound strange, the story is by Barks,
called the Bear Tamer and the story code is GGOS 1095.
Gladstone plays a main role in it, as Gyro steps a little in the
background. After having seen the dome of the city, which
much by inspired by Notre Duck church in Duckburg!! ;-),
we were on our home, but I saw an antique store, but went
into a comic store. There was a great selection here (and I
think that is where you should go, instead of the other place,
at least if you want american comics, I do not remember the
addresses!) I bought two comics, although I would have bought
the whole selection if I had enough money on me!
Ducktales no. 13 contains some rather bad Ducktales comics,
so the reason I bought it was the two Gyro one-pagers by Barks
("The nose Knows" (OS 1184) and "Gyro's workshop" (GGOS 1047)
!Don, that's a Barks-whole-pager!, does that make it 3??
That comic also contained "A spicy tale" US 39 by Barks,
it has only been published splitted into three parts here,
and two panels were lost.
By the way I could not help noticing that finish person
getting depressed. You, who are in charge couldn't you
tell the publishers to put the "This has happened" on
the page before the continuation starts? ...they did that once!
The method they are still using, ruins the reading joy for us
scandinaves (and many others)
I also bought Donald Duck (Am.) no. 278 containing "Land of
the Totem Poles" (OS 263) by Barks and Daisy Duck (H 87112 -
Forget me not) by Rosa; wouldn't that by a great birthday story
for Daisy (or has it been published somewhere as such?).
Besides two one-page-gags the comic also has Mystery of the
Loch (WDC 237) by Barks and its' coverpage by Rosa. At the
end there's an indifferent western-story made by Gutenberghus
in DK. I've always wanted to read that story, because it was
mentioned in the next week column many years ago,
and I didn't buy that comic the following week.
When we got home to the youth hostel I bought a pocket book
(Donald Pocket no. 23) which has some great stories.
At the end I bought a Garfield-school-calendar (oops!)
To be continued from (Email removed)

Well over the border to Sweden I bought Kalle Anka
& C:o (Swedish Weekly, you knew that!) It had a
new time mashine about the year 1956. It should
be said about these time mashines, which are great,
that there is a little contest where you can win a Barks
or Rosa book, but you have to guess what Donald says
in a panel from a story made by Barks, published that year.
Spoilers:
The stories are The Night Mare House (D 97380) by Marco
Rota; something like "Pluto in live by Paul Murry, from1954;
A terrible battle ( D 96074) about Donald and neighbour Jones
and their apple tree; Migrating Millions (US 15 B) by Barks
1956, a great story about Scrooge who has to move his Bin
because of time progressing, HDL knows all the time, what
he should do, but he does not listen before at the end;
The two last stories are with Chip'n Dale and $crooge
(last part of a continued story).
Later that day I must have bought two more comics.
The Swedish Mickey Magazine (bimonthly) containing
stories I didn't read yet. And a Winnie the Pooh comic.
There's a story about this I think: both Sweden and Norway
has this comic (we don't) and now there's a new competitor,
a bigger magazine with the same name; but this one only
contains pictures and game-pages for small children. The
"good" Pooh-book that I bought contains some very nice
stories about this cute bear and his friends in the houndred-
acre-wood (isn't that what they call it?)

Anders Christian - (Email removed)

On this day we were at a big mall or whatever you call
it, after having looked for some time I decsided to spend
62.50 kr (9 $ or so) on another pocketbook. Kalle Ankas
Pocket no. 220 (It looks like the danish no. 207, but
contains what is in the socalled Mammutbook (Big, 512
pages) no. 4 from Denmark. The difference between their
pocket books and ours is that they use those books too,
to form the picture on the spines. I suppose it's a good
book too, but I haven't read it yet.
When we had said goodbye to the folks we drove to the
ferry. On the ferry, they still had the almost two weeks
old Swedish Disney Weekly, a bit bad is it not?
I suppose some of you would think now that
I have spended too many money on those
comics, but I only spended what I brought with me.
Today I received a package with 4 Barks stories in
Danish Weeklies, which I hadn't read before. (WDC
275, 278 and 281, and Mastering the Matterhorn),
I also received Barks Library in color no. 48 (wdc
275-279). That means that my collection of WDC-stories
of 10 pages made by Barks is completed! So if any
of you have any questions, just ask!

Hey g'day,

Ah ha! So the misspelling of Barks' Mythtic Mystery IS widespread! And
while we're talking about it . . . I know that two (?) pages were cut
from that story, and I don't think that they've been found - but could
anyone tell me exactly where the cuts were made, and if it is known
basically what was lost?

And it's been interesting to see how the title pun has been translated
(or not) into other languages. Tricky business, that. By the way, how
was the very funny "Coral Barques" line in Don Rosa's "Tresure Under
Glass" dealt with in various translations?

> From: (Email removed)
>>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.

I'd say that is more like Disney executives THINK that they're
protecting their stock. I don't believe that anyone at Disney actually
knows the first thing about comics (I mean, Don Rosa said in an
interview that when he had to submit his pencils for "His Majesty,
McDuck" to Disney, someone objected that one of the ducks was speaking
with his mouth shut!). An uninformed decision is never likely to be the
best one. I wouldn't actually go so far as to say that it affects
Disney's stock (and I don't think Rob was entirely serious), but it does
lower my opinion of Disney when I find out that a story (particularly
one of Rosa's) has been censored, edited or mangled (actually, I
shouldn't put genuine editing in that category). Y'see, I don't
particularly want to go to Disney World, I don't watch Disney cartoons
much and I don't eat at McDonalds just so I can buy their cheap plastic
Disney franchise figuirines. The only thing I have to do with Disney is
to buy Gladstone's comics, and finding out that comics have been
tampered with does not exactly make me jump up and down with joy.

Er, I think I made my point there, in between the ranting. "Disney may
be damaging, rather than protecting, its interests by censoring
stories." There, that's much more concise. BTW, how come foreign
editions don't have to be authorised by Disney? Are Americans really so
easily influenced that the sight of a gun will cause them to shoot
someone? (Obviously, I'm just an innocent Australian bystander here who
happened to get caught up by mistake.) What's the difference in other
countries?

And, while I'm at it, someone mentioned previously a story in which the
ducks visit Australia, and said they couldn't remember the country or
pseudo-country. It's not a big deal, but I'd just like to mention that
Australia is one country. States or Territories is the word you're
looking for . . . sorry for being so finnicky.

Cheers,

Owen

(And we don't have kangaroos hopping down our main streets, either!)

ANDERS CHRISTIAN (and Birte)

>You also wrote
>the one for number 3. There aren't any credits for number
>4 and 5, but they could be made by you.

Hmm... #5 was Gisle in both Denmark and Norway, right? And I'd hope that
mine wasn't used for #4 other than in Sweden. It must be the least
informative or interesting one of my prefaces for the Golden Books. I was
going to summarize what it's about, so you could check if it might be the
same one, but I can't find it really is about anything... I remember
reflecting on "Doom Diamond", one of Barks' very last stories, and
commenting that Barks was about as tired and resigned after many years of
work as many of his characters seemed to be at this time, like the Beagles
in the beginning of this story. But my editor found some of my remarks too
negative and cut them out of the text. She thought the preface should
promote the book rather than dwell on what might be bad in it! And I'm sure
she was right, even if I never meant that Barks latest stories are bad just
because the characters are somewhat bored at times. I didn't mean bor-ing!

However, after four such prefaces (## 2-5), I felt kind of stuck in the rut
myself, having said most of what I knew about Barks and his stories. So I
was relieved when Egmont Copenhagen submitted the excellent prefaces by
Steffen Kronborg from #6 and on. I could never reach his level of in-depth
analysis, preferring to write in a more leisurely style. Then again, after
his five prefaces, maybe the time was right to change the style again. I
think it's good to have different writers, with different styles and
outlooks, doing the prefaces. Actually, when I again was asked to do one or
two prefaces recently (## 12 and 13), this time "officially" for all of
Scandinavia, I felt rested and ready again (as well as honored, of course).
And again, after that, I was glad to have somebody else take over before I'd
get too bored and boring once more!

Another thing: In my prefaces, I often comment on the old Swedish
translations used in the book. I'd be interested to know what's done about
that in the Danish and Norwegian editions. I hope it's omitted and, if
possible, replaced with something that's relevant for that country's
readers. That's what I do when translating other writers' prefaces... if I
find that something needs to be said that pertains to the Swedish version
only, I make a footnote or even work it into the text. Creative
"translation", once again!

> Actually I don't now if the swedish
>"Groengoelingarne" means the same, or does it mean
>green peas???

No, it's the green woodpecker, just like in Denmark. (Greenpeace has nothing
to do with it!) But it's also a pun, since "grongoling" also means an inept
and inexperienced person, a "greenhorn". Is that the case in Denmark (and
Norway) as well?

This means, of course, that when writers like Don Rosa make gags about
confusing the Woodchucks with groundhogs or whatever, we have to put in
various kinds of woodpeckers, instead!

My apologies to all you non-Scandinavians out there for ranting on about
these local issues, but I'm sure you can scroll down when needed...

Stefan Dios
Malmo, Sweden

JUHANA KOUHIA, 27 June 1998:

> Of course, I could scan all the stories to CD-ROM from my copies of DD
> for my privat use. That is perfectly legal. But the magazines has a
> dot-raster and I would like to have the stories on CD-ROM without the
> raster. By the way, recently they published books with camera copies of
> DDs from years 195* and, of course, they didn't remove the old raster
> before making the new raster --- they look terrible.

I would love to see all the original comics being scanned into a high,
printable quality. No alterations, though previously unreleased material
should of course be included as 'bonus tracks' on the CD-Rom. For me, the
main reason is to have all Carl Barks stories as they were originally
published, but I would of course also like to see all the other material
of these comics included.

Maybe something like this should happen anyway, because over about 25
years no original comic will be left, or at least heavily yellowed and
deteriorated? Even though I like most new, fresh coloured reprints of
Carl Barks' stories (and also the b/w ones in the Carl Barks Library),
they don't stand for me as the definite versions and, within a century,
the only source.

If there is a volunteer - or should I say digital monk? - living in/around
Kentucky, maybe he/she could digitize Don Rosa's entire collection? :-)

Rasters getting distorted may be the result of the combination of old and
new rasters over each other. On television, at least in PAL, some patterns
on clothes can also look very distorted because of the 'rasters' of both.

JUHANA KOUHIA, 20 July 1998:

> Hmm.. I really hope my suggestion about CB CD-ROM will take a step
> forward because I would like to see the stories as CB drew them.
> If CB never colorized them, colorization can be added as additional
> (and optional) layer over the photos.

Great idea and I certainly vote for it. However, it will *never* be
possible to see Barks' stories as he drew them. Almost all original
art-work has been thrown away and what we have to live with are
(what's left of) the reproductions the editor made at the time.

What I would like to see is a complete reproduction of properly stored
original comics. Even for an amateur there is great colour-correcting
software on the market, the big problem is mostly the memory the
computer needs because of the much higher than average resolutions of
the scans. Great reproductions could be made of the old comics, with
their original colours as bright as if they were mint again.

Of course there could be extra options like chosing filtered b/w art
and - but that would make it even more expensive - chosing a new
coloured version.

A project like this may still be too expensive and too time-consuming, but
I hope that the new digital filter techniques will be used on stories of
which the photostats are lost.

At the end of 1996, a business gave me an example by using a colour-xerox
of the last panels of "Donald Duck's Atom Bomb". Donald's eye was as big
as the screen (to give an idea of how big the resolution was), but the
colours were as good as gone, while the black lines still were rather
strong. It looked very promising for just a quick example.

But maybe editors are too *old* to understand all that new software? :-)

Greetings,

--- Daniel