Keskustelujen arkisto

From: "Fernando Ventura"
>>>>Exactly, "Mylar"bags are made of what?

Mylar. Mylar bags are made of Mylar. It baffles science.
Mylar is a brand name for a totally *inert* plastic, unlike other types,
*particularly* the polyethylene types that all other "comic bags" are made
of. As I said, that polyethylene plastic has chemicals in it that will
damage the comics over the long run. You can easilly see this when you look
at the "comic bags" you bought 10 years back which, at that time, were
crystal clear, but are now foggy and yellowish (when you look at a stack of
them).

>>>I don't know if I can find it here in Brazil,

You can get them mail order from America. But as I said, they are only
needed if you handle the comics a lot. Otherwise, you have nothing to worry
about ... except the Brazilian humidity. Do not, repeat, do NOT store your
comics in the Amazonian rain forest. They will surely become damp and buggy
and unpleasant.
Well, I guess I need to be a shill and name at least one place where anyone
can obtain Mylar (Mylite) comic bags... I get mine from Jeff Hinds -- his
company doesn't seem to have a website, but you can send an inquiry to
jhcomics at aol.com .

Donald Duck & Co # 6 - 2000

Dutch front cover showing Gus Goose giving flowers and a box of chocolate
to Daisy Duck. In typical Gus manner, all but one of the chocolats are
eaten.

Story number one is a Donald Duck story (D 99077, 12 pages), written by
Lars Jensen and Chris Spencer, and drawn by Vicar.

Donald is trying to become an inventor again, but isn't very successfull.
But then suddenly (very suddenly, in fact) a new fuel seems promising.
He doesn't get time for further research, though, since an angry Scrooge
arrives with a job for him. Scrooge has made a deal with the counsil of
Duckburg, to remove all the ice from the harbour - and Donald gets the
job to implement it, with an old ice breaker called the "Silver Bell".
The "Bell" is an old, wooden steam powered thing with a paddle wheel at
the stern. In the preparations to get her into work, Donald more or
less accidentally teases a man (looking like a close relative to neighboor
Jones) to the extent that he comes on board and destroys the boiler.
Now when the ship's engine is out of function, Donald puts an old
outboard engine on the bow, and fills it with the super fuel he has
invented. The ship then moves astern with the paddle wheel working like
that thing on the front of a combine harvester. Very effective, but a
little hard to steer. A ceremony where Scrooge is given a medal for his
work for the city is soon destroyed. Then Donald throws over board the
rest of the fuel, since it starts to act a little threateningly. It
explodes, and a huge wave of water and ice is rolling in over Duckburg.
Scrooge gets the bill for cleaning up the city, and Donald and the nephews
go far away with "Silver Bell".

The story is quite uninteresting, but some of the art is pretty good.
Especially the picture where the wave is rolling in towards Duckburg.
The ice breaker on the other hand, isn't credible at all. And how can a
wooden boat be rusty?

Story number two is a one page Scrooge story (D 98013), written by
Per Hedman, and drawn by Alferez.

Scrooge walks around in a supermarket, enjoying all the free
demonstrations of food. Then he discovers that he owns the supermarket,
and orders them all to be closed.

Not so bad.

Story number three is a Mickey Mouse story (D 99039, 10 pages), written
by Stefan Petrucha, and drawn by Rodriques.

Mickey is in an area with farms, all covered in snow, looking for pieces
of a crashed comet. He has an accident with his snow scooter, and bangs
his head in a tree. He finds a farm which is not covered with snow, and
runs towards it to borrow a phone. Then he gets a surprise. The animals
of the farm have gotten the ability to talk and think like humans from a
strange stone (the comet) which landed there. The radiation from it also
keeps the snow away.
The animals show Mickey the farm, where the production has raised with
52 per cent since the animals took over (I wonder if that includes meat
production). Mickey wants to report this to the rest of the world, but
is prevented from it by the animals. They want it to be kept a secret.
When they have produced enough food and other things they need, they will
move north and build a farm of their own. If Mickey can prove that he's
usefull, well... they don't really say what will happen to him if he's
not. Anyway, he's given several tasks to show that he can work like an
animal. Pulling wagons like a horse and laying eggs are not within
the mouse's - sorry, human's abilities. And neither is getting rid of
garbage like a pig (eating it).
The animals conclude that he's not usable for anything, and since he tried
to cheat when laying eggs, he's not trustworthy either. When Mickey tries
to run away, he bangs his head in a way Donald would have found familiar.
And when he wakes up, he's lying besides the tree where he had the
accident with the scooter. The animals at the farm are walking around
like normal animals, and Mickey believes he dreamt it all. When he's
helped away by another snow scooter, the animals raise up, and put on
their clothes again.

I'm a bit ashamed that I've never read Animal Farm, although it has
been on the list for years. Another story comes to mind, though,
involving three small pigs ;-) Anyway, this is a very entertaining and
very well drawn story. I liked the end, where we for one moment are made
to believe that this was just another dream, and then are shown that it
actually happened.

Story number four is an old one-pager (KF 09-12-54).

Story number five is a Big Bad Wolf story (D 98008, 2 pages), written
by Peter Hardfeldt, and drawn by David.

The wolfs have no money for food, and the big bad one refuses to work
for Br'er Bear to earn some. Then the little nice one asks the bear to
give them the wood he wants cut. After the wood is cut, the wolfs sell it
to the bear for the same amount that he would have paid them to cut it
in the first place. Everyone is happy.

Not completely credible. It would have been better if the big bad one
had been made to believe that he stole the wood, and then sold it back
to the bear.

Story number six is a Donald Duck story (D 98218, 6 pages), written by
Gail Renard and Jack Sutter, and drawn by Manrique.

Donald has become coach for a rugby (the brutal sport Americans call
football) team, where his nephews are among the players. Donald is not a
very good coach, and the team decide to fire him. Instead they hire
another one, who's been an elite player. This new one completely takes
over Donald's role, and becomes his nephews hero. Donald becomes very
depressed, and the nephew's bad conscience is awakened. Soon after the
new coach is scared away by a mouse - he's afraid of them - and Donald
is put back in is old role (the mouse was put there by his nephews).

Cute.

Story number seven is another old one-pager (KF 1-24-54).
These old one-pagers are a constant reminder that the art of making
one-pagers must have been forgotten some time in the distant past. There
is so much going on in the old ones, and they end with a gag which is
actually funny.

Story number eight is a Goofy story (D 98284, 3 pages), written by
Stefan Petrucha, and drawn by David.

Accidentally Goofy attracts the anger of an old witch, and she casts a
spell on him. Everything he touches turn into chocolate (remember
King Midas?). In the beginning this is very nice, and he eats a big part
of his house, but when Pluto turns into chocolate, things are not so
funny anymore. He convinces the witch to take back the spell, but is
kicked away when he asks if she can make a touch of just one of his
fingers turn things into ice cream.

This is good. An entertaining story with several gags and a deeper
meaning in only three pages. This is an art known by too few writers.
And David's Goofy is good. This shows that he can do better than the
simple art of the Br'er Rabbit stories.

Story number nine is a Donald Duck one-pager (D 93023), without credits.
The art is Branca-style, possibly Colomer (early style).

Donald is at last finished with removing snow in front of his house.
Then a snow plough comes in high speed on the street outside, throwing
snow to both sides. Donald makes it slow down just before it fills his
garden with snow. Then he bangs the door, and a lot of snow falls from
the roof.

I have a hunch that this could have been funny, but I'm not sure how.
Maybe if one could remove a few of the other stories of the same kind.

Story number ten is the IT-Duckburg story, with Huey Louie and Dewey as
heroes (D 99103), no credits.

The ducklings and three other friends, among them a small computer genius,
are trying to make an artificial intelligence which can challenge the
genius in chess. To achieve this they need a very powerfull CPU (central
processing unit). Gyro's little helper tries to help them, but then the
CPU is taken by a bird. Little helper tries to get it back, and ends up
in the sewer. With help from a computer at the library, they find out
where the sewer ends up, and rescue him. Immediately after, the helper
rescues them all from being "eaten" by a dredger.
The artificial intelligence comes up, but shows up not to be too bright.
It can act as a translator between the humans and Gyro's little helper,
though, and the latter shows up to be a good chess player.

No more of this, please. I think I recognize elements from Duck Tales,
Tales Spin and such series. Now, those series weren't too bad, but this
is - at least if I'm to judge from the little I've seen so far.
First of all, if this is to be remotely credible, the writer should know
a little about computers, and not only the pseudo tech talk from sales
brochures. Secondly, the art with pictures appearing just about anywhere,
makes me tired only from finding out where the story continues.
One thing I applaud, though, and that's the girl. A tough, young girl
could be needed in the regular character gallery. The semi regular
characters April, May and June, and Minnie's three (2+1) nieces could
need a good replacement.

BTW, the concept of intelligent computers is mostly a past chapter now,
but I remember one story from the time when it was one of the big issues.
The story was about a VAX 11/750 at Caltech (imagine a cube with sides
1.5 meters, and you roughly have the size of an 11/750). The computer
was made sentient, and it was tought the phrase "I think, therefore I am."
Now that was a mistake, because every time the computer crashed, it
disappeared.

As eleventh and last story is an old one-pager (KF 03-18-51).

J?rgen

Hi all,

last time, I wrote to the list, I complained about the fact, that we do not have
such nice 'scientific' articles in our German titles, like they have them in the
Greek Komix, for example.

To that Anders Christian Sivebaek wrote:

> I understand you poor situation.
> But hey, you do have a Barks Library, and the Rosa albums you
> mentioned.
> And if I remember right you have 2 pages of articles in the DD
> Sonderheft (Extra magazine) every month. But maybe they aren't so good?

Anders Christian's mail made me realize, that I simply was not aware of some
places where such articles indeed are published. I cannot say anything about the
articles in the Barks Library, since I already own the American edition and thus
do not buy the German edition as well. I like the articles in the DD-Sonderheft,
however, and only had forgotten them, because I am not a regular buyer of this
series.

Adding to Anders Christian's list I now remember that also in our 'Lustige
Taschenbuecher' series there used to be some pages on the history of comics. But
now they are gone, I think. Maybe not enough readers of this series were
interested in such stuff. Does anybody have more information on that matter?

Admittedly, the situation here in Germany is not as bad as I thought in the
first place. I apologize for having described the situation too negatively,
although there surely is some margin for improvements.

> I suggest that you contact the german club of Donaldists. They published
> 107 or 108 fanzines about Duckburg and the inhabitants.

This is a good idea. I even had already thought about joining the Donaldists as
well, but was a little reluctant up to now, because I always thought they are
taking things too seriously. But at least I could try reading an issue or
another of their fanzine. Maybe I even get hooked on.

Are there many Donaldists on this list? No matter whether they are from Germany
or from some other country. I believe there are Donaldists or similar groups in
other countries than Germany as well, or am I wrong?

Bye for today
Sven

Thierry Fernand wrote:
> I have been uploading a few original 1947 Donald Duck
> Sunday Pages by Al Taliaferro at the
> following site
> http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Cinema/9080/index.html

Great site, thanks for the scans: one of them is now my desktop!

- Paolo

--
http://members.xoom.it/inducks mailto:p.castagno at libero.it

Didier Ghez wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I was just wondering who would attend this edition of Expocartoon and when.

I'll surely be there on Thursday morning, trying to buy the stuff
I still need, and then I'll return on Saturday. But, since I live
near the exibition, I can come and go whenever I like, so if
someone wants to arrange a meeting I'll be there... or better, I
can try to arrange it.

- Paolo

--
http://members.xoom.it/inducks mailto:p.castagno at libero.it

I like to thanks Anders Sivebaek and Don(again) about the most funny off-topic question that
I ask into this list. In fact I didn't think anymore that this is off-topic, I'm thinking now in speak about it during the rest off my life and off yours, Ha, Ha, HAAAAA! (C'mon Fernando, it is so ridiculous...)
Putting the stupid things out, I will try to find Mylar here in Brazil, because it is used to preserve photos too(sure, it is paper), so probably there are a place here, in S?o Paulo, where I can see it. In fact, I never think in guard my comics on the Amazon florest, because I never see the florest!I live, as I say, in S?o Paulo, so probably my bigger problem is not humidity, is pollution...But I love my city(there are many places to buy old comics).

Thanks again, AGAIN
Fernando!

On the DCML Vol 1 # 109, 11.03.00 Sven-Oliver Troschke wrote:

> Adding to Anders Christian's list I now remember that also in our 'Lustige
> Taschenbuecher' series there used to be some pages on the history of
comics. But
> now they are gone, I think. Maybe not enough readers of this series were
> interested in such stuff. Does anybody have more information on that matter?

I guess in LTB 172 there's something about the history of the LTB, up
to No. 245 there were some information about Mickey's birthday. And
in No. 255 - 266 there were informations about "Donald Duck in Comic-
strips" and "Donald Duck in Italy" - also with texts about Italian issues. I
really enjoy reading such things, but I think that most (younger)
readers just want to read comics, and not any informations for instance
about other publications or so. I hope that there'll be again such
information-texts..

Alex Goerig

(http://members.aol.com/dagofan/index.htm)