Keskustelujen arkisto

I was about to submit to this list my thoughs concerning the criteria that
contribute to the status of a comic edition,but Don's assiduous statement as
well as Archontis's remarks covered me absolutely.
I think there are a great variety of preferences and personal tastes.
In my opinion language is not a first rank criterion that will confine the
status of a comic magazine.
In GREECE ,as AC mentioned before , there are many other Disney editions
(Megalo Miky, Classika, Miky Maous etc) mostly with reprints of new Italian
stories. These stories do not fit my taste, but I can understand my fellow
members of the list that like these modern approaches of Disney characters.
But there is a difference between this kind of magazines as KOMIX, ZIO
PAPERONE,PICSOU..... and the other mentioned before.
We can characterized them as "Classics", because of their quality in every
level and the very carefully selected stories with more sophisticated plots
, art and editorials.
This is the critical point that distinguishes the usual weeklies from these
editions.

Georgios Balanikas

I have uploaded a scan of a story recently published in "P'tit Loup"
(made by Anders Chr. S.). It features Marie-Loup, Zeke's fiancée, and
Mina :

http://eclip2.ec-lille.fr/~willot/coa/div/at/loup.htm

Francois

While waiting for Vic to ask whatever Super Duck question he has,
it occuried to me that there is a Disney artist who drew Super Duck!

I know who it is, anybody else know?

Hint: other than comic strips, his only Disney comic book work was during
world War 2.

Steven Rowe

Frank Stajano
> Yeah, that must be it, he says answering his own silly question.
I don't think it's that silly. but the latter might be correct. I just
told me father about it,
he taught it was quite a good sale too:-)
If we had in the book-business what they have in the music-business,
gold-racords and platin following with how many thousands of records
you sell. what would Don have now? I don't know how many records those
silly music-stars have to sell before they get a gold-record. anyone??

This is the first time for a long period that I got two dcml's in one
day...

Søren Krarup Olesen a écrit:
>
> > If I had to vote for the best Hachette publication, it may be "Super
> > Picsou"! It publishes new Danish stories, together with very old Italian
> > stories, and Western stories. And Cavazzano do all covers.
>
> The way you describe it, I am sure it would push JM out from my Top-3
> :-)

Today's "Journal de Mickey" is not a very "original" Disney publication.
New stories from Denmark (but not that much actually), and less Dutch
stories. Many average French gags (in my opinion). There are only a few
very interesting issues each year (with Gottfredson stories with very
good translations, or unpublished Scarpa stories - "Brigaboom" was
published not so long ago, for the 1st time in France).
Sometimes, articles or editorials on Disney events are published too.

Don Rosa summed up very well what makes a good comic book.
Much better than I did in the same digest, and surely paper
quality is of very little importance - something the first
run of Gladstones show in spades.

One word I would have used in my critic, if English had
been my first language, and I could remember all the words
when I need them, is 'periodical'.

My major gripe with the reprint policy of the quality comic
books is that they publish stories already available in so
many editions, many of which are readily available; not only
on the re-sale market, but also in regular book format or
album series, that you can buy in any well-assorted book or
comic shop. Excluding Finland in the afternoon. :-)

But these stories became known and popular only because they
were first published in a periodical - here today gone next
month again, replaced by a new batch of stories to love or
forget. That is imo the purpose of a periodical: to entertain
the audience with a variety of new stories; some of which will
in time become classics and others not.

Carl Barks himself had a letter in a Gladstone comic book,
where he although flattered by the interest in his stories
also expressed concern on behalf of the new talents, who he
thought should be given a chance to show their worth, like
he had when the comic books were running out of newspaper
strips to reprint. How else are we going to know if they
are any good? Suppose Gladstone had just kept up with their
reprinting of Barks and other time honored classics, and
never given Don Rosa a shot with his "Son of the Sun"?
(A moment here to stop and shudder at the thought.)

As long as a market has room for both a testing ground and
a hall of fame in their publication line, all is well. It
is very much so in Greece and Italy with a couple of dozen
different periodical titles. But in other countries with
small readership, like Denmark and the US, the total sum
of published pages per year is much smaller. How sad it
would be if they all got spent on stories that could be
found in the back-issue catalogs.

So, to turn this long but interesting debate about quality
over to it's opposite: quantity. How many pages of Disney
comics have been published in YOUR country in 1999?
And how many of them hadn't already seen print there?

Stats for Denmark:

stories (excluding covers, illustrations, etc.):
new: 651, old: 239 (total:890)

Total number of pages (strips = a quarter of a page):
new: 8234,75, old: 3514 (total:11.748,75)

I didn't even check all the dailies and Sunday strips, and
two 'new' long stories are actually only in new lay-out. So
it's really more than one third of the published pages that
are reprints.

Consider also that in 1997 Egmont produced 6042 pages worth
of new stories and Topolino (only one of several Italian books)
had 6105 new story pages in 1998. There's a lot more from Italy,
and then there's Holland...

Unless you happen to think that all these new stories aren't
worth a damn anyway, it gives an odd perspective to the way
Gladstone has been administering those 1536 pages a year
in the two monthly books. Without bothering to calculate it,
I'd guess only one third was new stories - mostly by the two
original Gladstone-discoveries, Don Rosa and William Van Horn.

All those figures, and what does it tell anyway?
I think it means that we are missing a lot of good stories,
by choosing to ask for what we already know and like. By
asking for re-runs of every single story Barks ever did,
over and over, we're barring ourselves from new experiences.

Someone recently said to me that Barks did maybe fifty really
fantastic stories, but the rest aren't so much better than
many others. So ask yourselves if someone, whose name you
don't even know yet, may have done one great story, and if
it may be better than Barks' 'worst'. And ask if it makes
a difference in which one you'd like to read in the next
WDC&S.

-Ole

SOEREN
> Couldn't agree more, however AC wrote (to Stefan):
> > > The only bad thing is the colouring of the story. Why can't
> > > Egmont do as good colouring as the French publishers?
> > That is not only the only problem, that's the always returning
> > problem... It seems they use
> > a colouring method that is called flood fill! They aren't able to
make
> > a colur change from the top of the panel to the bottom (skies eg.).
> > Picsou and other mags do that... Picsou does it very nice with the
new
> > story the Coin.
> So, AC, you'd actually prefere these IMO "fake" colour changes we see
in
> Journal de Mickey, KLASIKA and KOMIX?
No, I don't think I made myself clear. I like the way Picsou is
printing ( though their paper is more white now, than it used to be)
Journal de Mickey and Klassika has the glossy paper-
style. like the last pages of the danish AA has. (actually it's a
left-over from when they went from 48 to 64 pages... and they haven't
corrected it yet... This results in the fact that some of the nice
surprises were put in the middle of stories, gluening the page... which
doesn't make a nice scan!

> If the glossy paper in itself
> "overpowers" the art, those fading colours most certainly
overdramatise
> the sensation of the stories. Apparently they all use the same
standard
> procedure; lightblue/white in the bottom fading to darkblue sky on
top.
Oh? well, but Picsou- the coin is faded allover. The new weekly has
only fadings when light comes down. shades you have to make yourself.

> I haven't seen Don's "The Coin"-story
> yet, but I would guess that the art is less fragile towards computer
> colouring--
Maybe. the editors coloured it very nicely. maybe with a computer, but
not with just filling the white places. they now how to use the effects
of fading and other things, and they use handwriting.

Talking about The Coin. It's the first time I see that kind of panels,
4 in a lkine and blue around a large group of the panels. it's very
nice and someway makes the story flow. The camera-angling is great too.

Georgias

> In GREECE ,as AC mentioned before , there are many other Disney
editions
> (Megalo Miky, Classika, Miky Maous etc) mostly with reprints of new
Italian
> stories. These stories do not fit my taste,
I haven't allways like italian stories either, but since I got to know
my danishg friends on this list I learned about some talented Italians,
and it made me want to complete my collection of danish pockets. So I
can start to read now. sadly many stories aren't published in the
danish pockets, but they are in germany because they started before us.

Georgias, if you don't like those stories, may I ask if you liked the
summer-specials with Scrooge, mickey, Donald and the others? 6 issues
they published, with D-coded stories.
I learned from one of the editors that they thought the series was
going to be published on the same kind of paper as Komix (seems they
like that kind...), but it wasn't. it was published on some special
kind of paper so the colours weren't as they should've been... a bit
darker than normal.
A pleed: If any of you greek friends have spotted a remaining issue of
this series, and it was *MINNI* please buy it. I would like to swap it,
or I know Søren would (so I'm just making the deal)
Please mail me in private if you find it. It has some d-coded stories
that hasn't been published here, and as Soeren has an index of those
maybe he would like to see them.

> We can characterized them as "Classics", because of their quality in
every
> level and the very carefully selected stories with more
sophisticated plots
> , art and editorials.
That might be the difference between the publishers. The ones at Komix,
and surely at ZP and Picsou too, love what they do. they were fans of
Barks and Rosa. quote: Rosa is the Barks of the new millenium: unquote.
This was said by the high editor, not the one in the military-clothes,
but he agreed. I'm not sure when they set their millenium to be
though... the 2000-issue insinuates something, and stories are in the
weekly with a socalled millenium-ball. Haha... I don't think it's on
porpouse, but the ball has changed colour from issue to issue... It's
crystal-like in one, crystal-like fading to purple in another. and in
the ads for the next story 8usually on the back of the comic) the ball
is green!!

Francois
> http://eclip2.ec-lille.fr/~willot/coa/div/at/loup.uk.htm
So you translated it to english? it's a tough job for eg. me to
translate from french to english or german to english... because the
stories I translate (for the two worlds of don rosa-page) were
origianally english...

The person who wrote this:
> > What the heck are these messages about?????
said this:
> (with possible exception to the message asking us
> to join a Backstreet Boys fan club.)
?! can't we throw people of the list when they don't do as they are
told?
It's like the one that write unsubscribe to the wrong address...
this person probably joined the list by mistake... but then he should
just read the welcome-message and get on another list, about backstreet
Boys or something!

Good going Rodney.
> (owner of 20 wonderful issues of KOMIX)
and hey, that's great:-)

Francois

> BTW, as all of you know very well, one of the pin-up is not an
original drawing.
which one is that??

> > > - presentation of the Disney cartoon "Il etait une fois Noel"
> > > (this is a cartoon that was sheduled on TV in the US, introducing
a
> > fat
> > > Duck lady. Picsou says she is Hewey, Dewey and Louie's aunt, and
that
> > > she could be a parent of Gus Goose).
> > That's the one we talked about... she's not their aunt! Disney just
> > took her from some s-coded story, where she's a friend of
Scrooge...

> What character are you referring to? Bella Duck?
yes.

> But Bella Duck isn't that fat. The Duck lady in the cartoon looks
different.
That doesn't necessarily say it isn't her. I blame that totally on
disney, they made the cartoon, they probably made a mistake... they
don't know what they are doing, IMO, they just take a comic from the
stack, and say we can use this one. make her a bit fatter and call
someone so we can be sure she's HDL's aunt...

I'm considering buying the danish version of the cartoon. it sounds
worth it, in some way...
It's just that on the videocover it doesn't saw that she's there or
picture her... Mickey's christmas something, right? Not carol, cause
that's from the early 80'es and featured Scrooge as ... Scrooge (I
can't forgive that they made him Mister Angry in the danish version...)

Stefan
Harry.
> >(I gave up trying rhyming after "Belgium" 8-)
> Rune-o-meter shouldn't be rhyming.
No, but it was Sinterklas-rhyming.
BTW I now counted the beats in the kalevala-quotes in the danish
version of the story.
It's not rune-o-meter. It might not even be an official translation
they used, and they didn't print it in a nice font like they did in
sweden... maybe because they are emberrassed they couldn't make
rune-o-meter... I have the danish kalevala from the library and it
shows rune-o-meter. but the book is published by a museum and the
University in Copenhagen. And Egmont doesn't own that, so they couldn't
copy it. Maybe in sweden there is a connection between the poblisher of
the kalevla and the the Kalle Anka-publisher?

Don gets the last word, and IMO you're right. I'm going to part myself
in four and move to France, Greece, Italy and take a time-mashine some
years to when Gladstone was publishing.

All of this controversy over KOMIX is making me think that I was definately
born in the wrong country. I would give an awful lot just to be able to
subscribe to ANY donald duck title whether it was mostly reprints or
whatever. It's a tragedy that Don Rosa's work is appeciated in just about
every language except his own. What's wrong with us Americans anyway?!! I
think someday I ought to move to Greece or Finland.....

Anyone on this list live near the Baltimore area? we ought to get together
and lobby Geppi to try and get the license agreements for Gladstone moving
(actually, I don't know if Geppi could do anything about it, but it's worth
a shot).

I agree with Don's opinion of color looking best on newsprint. I think that
the coloring in Gladstone was absolutely brilliant. Good coloring can really
enhance a story (as bad can detract from it). I really like when the colors
are faded into each other and so forth, but only up to a point. I have to
draw the line when the colorist gets carried away and starts adding graining
on the wood behind donald's head. That gets extremely distracting and takes
a lot away from the artwork.

Comic books need to keep repeating the realy good Barks and Rosa stories.
Even in countries that have already reprinted them before, don't forget that
there are new readers discovering them all the time. I didn't grow up in the
fifties and I wasn't lucky enough to get to read the Barks stories the first
time around. I even missed a lot of the earlier Rosa stories of the
eighties. I can't afford the big albums and such, so if Gladstone hadn't
reprinted so many of the classic stories I would have missed most of them
and would have never fallen in love with these comic books. It seems that
when it comes to comic books the younger people are pretty much forgotten. I
think a nice balance for a comic book would be about 50/50 of new stuff and
classic stuff.

Anyway, in the mean time I guess all I can do is just keep my fingures
crossed, and hope that we'll finally be able to get an english comic book
going...

rebecca