Keskustelujen arkisto

"Doggone it" is and has been for many years a common slang expression -- a
mild exclamation, equal to "darn it" -- which is a non-profane way to say
"Damn it." It is not considered cursing, and saying "doggone it" to native
English speakers now would indicate that you are VERY outdated in American
slang -- or that you have watched a lot of Westerns. (John Wayne and other
cowboy heroes have been known to say "doggone it.")

A couple of comments to recent mails (sorry, there've been too many digests
recently for me to go back and check the exact references).

Barksisms: I remember lots and lots of quotes from my childhood reading, but
brilliant though many of these are, they are more accurately termed
"Rindomisms", from the Danish translator of the stories, Sonja Rindom. When,
as an adult, I started reading Barks in the original American versions, I
was surprised at the difference in tone. Barks' lines sound to me much more
colloquial - more slang it seems. Or at least a very different kind of slang
from the Danish ones.

However, some of Barks phrases original phrases have also stuck with me. One
of them is "Oh my stars and little comets!". Another is "Well doesn't that
take the cake" (Scrooge's reaction upon seeing the seven cities of Cibola,
as I recall). Although I suppose "That takes the cake" was a fairly common
expression long before Barks.

Question: Somebody recently mentioned the Uncle Scrooge story - the one with
the "Wages of Fear"-trucks - in which Donald is suspended by ropes over a
collapsed bridge and swings into the side of a llama. I've been meaning to
ask about that scene: from the nephews' calculations, shown in close-up, it
would seem to be the case that Donald weighs 23 kg (or at least that *they*
estimate this mass!) Is this a 'Barksian Fact', I wonder, or did Don Rosa
make it up himself? The mass actually cancels out in the calculation, so
there would've been no need to use a specific number!

Best regards,
Kristian

Soeren, I forgot that your Raptus site probably has the most samples of
Disney comic artist's work. Should the rest of us who have the work of
other artists, and can identify it, send labeled scans to you for YOU to
compile on Raptus?

I remember seeing a few other sites with some Italian artists' work samples
and biographies (Alex Goerig, etc.) I don't remember seeing one with the
Western Publishing, Dutch, French, or Brasilian productions artists.

I have seen some printed sources such as "Striprofiel" a Dutch fanzine,
which in 1974 (or was it 1976?) printed articles identifying many Disney
comics artists' work with an example panel. They may have been only the
Dutch artists (but that would be ALL of them at that time). Also, a German
fanzine had a similar format for Italian and US artists (from the late
1970s). I have both of those fanzines, but I may not be able to access
them until I return to Europe a little over a month from now. Perhaps
people with connections to the Disney Office or Franchisee in each country
could help us identify examples of the more obscure artists.

Rob Klein

Harry:
> Indeed! Welcome here!
Thank you!

> I think this is a general thing. In my youth, I had the opposite: I grew up
> with the weeklies (in Holland), and considered the pocket books crap stuff.
> Even a few years ago, when we started Inducks, I didn't think it was
> necessary to index all the Italian junk! 8-)

Actually, this is not what happened to me. I liked these Egmont by Vicar,
Branca, Tello et cet. when I was little, but got bored with them. Italian
stories had so much more action than Egmont stories. So now I'm trying to
cut down reading Egmont stories so I might get that old spark back.

> Since then, I became a fan of Scarpa (or a "ventilator of Shoe"), and I
fell
> in love with the artwork of Cavazzano. I'm in the process of recognising
> (and enjoying) Bottaro, Carpi, and Massimo de Vita.
> (And I'm still hating the work of Perego and P.L. De Vita...)
Now, this sounds like a healthy young man ;-)

> I think the origin was a reader's investigation, which showed that readers
> didn't like the "boring" Mickey stories where he is a detective, in the
> Murry/Tello style.
Hmmm, they didn't ask me...

> Egmont was smart enough to use the *best* artists for these stories, like
> Ferioli!

Yes, he is good enough, but I just can't stand the trousers. I am
constantly amazed how they can ruin a perfectly good story and art for me.
Mayby I associate them with some childhood trauma or something? :-)

> > It's not the Mickey I grew with.
>
> Same problem again! 8-)
> Did you ever read the good Gottfredson stories from the mid- to late 1930s?
> They should give you the atmosphere and characters that Egmont is re-using
> (or trying to). I see that same atmosphere in the Tintin comics.

Yes, I have read many of the Gottfredson strips. Indeed, at the moment I'm
waiting for a packet that contains a lot of strips from 1930-33 and a book
I, Goofy (the big white book). The problem is that I got my first
experiance with Gottfredson when my Disney interest was subsiding. It just
wasn't cool to be 14 and a Disney-fan. So I didn't get to know he's works
too well at that time. Lately I have reread all Gottfredson stories I
already have (two big white books and one with strips from late 40's) and
learned to appreciate them.
The problem as I see it (other then my nostalgic mind) is that Gottfredson
stories were long and massive and today's Mickey stories are only some 10
pages long. They don't have the same feel of adventure as the old ones
have. I would love to have a resurrection of daily strips with a continous
plot.

> I guess you can't say much about Dutch comics either. 8-)
> There are some very good Hiawatha stories from the 1960s. At least *I* think
> they are very good - I grew up with them... 8-)

Oh heck, I totally forgot the Dutch stories. Sorry! I like them. When they
started to print them in the weekly, I was just ecstatic. They brought
that something new that I had missed for so long. The great thing is that
they started to publish a supplement to Aku Ankka (Kuukauden sarjisekstra)
that nowadays contains Dutch stories and occasionally a short Gottfredson
story. Most of these stories haven't been published anywhere but in
Holland and Finland (according to Inducks), so we in Finland are at great
position with Dutch stories.

--
Petri Kanninen (pkannine at cc.hut.fi)
"El?m? muodostaa komplekseja."
Aku Ankan taskukirja -tietokanta:
http://www.perunamaa.net/taskarit/

Hi Olaf!

>>I have read somewhere that her name is Gar?

Right. The accent is the other way round: Gar?
(clock hand pointing to -- wow! guess what time it is as I'm writing
this? 1:07 pm. And that's exactly how it looks!)

>>HOW was Little Helper invented?

Geoffrey Blum wrote something about Helper in GG album 6
of the CBL in Color ("A Glance at Gyro's Helper"):

"Did Gyro invent Helper? In Barks' tales the subject never arises.
Yet when Gyro attempts to constryct other mecahnical men he
comes up with much clunkier, more limited creations. The implicit
sophistication of Helper's design and programming would seem
to be far beyond what Gyro is capable of in this area. Given this, one
might wonder if maybe Helper just showed up on Gyro's doorstep,
an electromechanical foundling of unknown origin that the inventor
welcomed into his home."

I'm very curious to see your version will be-- and hope I will get to see it.

>>Gearloose-inventions [...] WHICH ONES SHOULD I USE?

0/ Problem: Helper appears in most of the stories, so the inventions he "whips up"
in those are post-Helper. So it would have to be things that appear in
the background of these stories which may have been discarded for
quite a while. Here are the inventions we see in previous stories.
(I hope I'm not forgetting anything)
00/ May 1952 (WDC&S 140, "Gladstone's Terrible Secret"): Enter Gyro Gearloose,
hopping around on a pogo stick-- but he did not invent it and gave it away to Gladstone.
1/ Naturally, there's the Think-Boxes of WDC&S 141 (June '52). But we first see
Gyro driving "[his] new jet-powered *baggage buggy*", "[which] runs two blocks on a
a quart of fire-crakers" tied to the(single) huge back wheel.
2/ DD 26: "Hobblin' Goblins" (Nov '56). Gyro invents a Goblin foiler. And there's this
huge machinery he uses to make it that might be used for something else.
3/ WDC&S 152: "The Talking Dog" (May '53).
4/ WDC&S 153: "Worm Weary" (June '53)-- worm farm.
5/ In WDC&S 171 ("The Too-Safe Safe", Dec '54), Gyro invents Impervi-Wax,
a super wax nothing can pierce, tear or burn into. U$ uses it to make an Impervi-Wax
"Money Case".
6/ WDC&S 183: "The Custard Gun"-- a harmless gun for hunting (Dec '55).
7/ There's also the "Power Plant" box that traps lightning (U$ 13, March '56).
8/ The bubble-gum bush (I like that one), the foam stone he uses to build a wall,
and the the "super-speed gasoline" he invents for his friend Speedy in U$ 14
(June '56, "Inventor of Anything")
9/ Helper makes his first entrance in the next issue of U$ (15, Sept '56, "The Cat Box").

Hope it can be of some help.

Olivier

PS:
How are you going to draw Gyro? As he looks now or as he looked in the earlier stories?
We could imagine he really did change a bit (lost weight), and it might help root the story
in the past.

PS #2:
Scans when I can (catchy little phrase, ain't it?).
Might as well use them to open a "Gyro's Workshop" section on my site...
I had thought of this at some point, actually.

Hi!
I need some help.
I remember a onepage Barksian story where Daisy's phone number is given, but
I can't remember where. could somebody help me?
A few time ago, I asked the differences between H,D, and L, I meant what
differences Donald seen between them, in a story of DonRosa (I don't have
the time to search the title, but I think there are the word "sense" and
"detail" in it.) I wanted to know also Daisy's address, in the US version of
the story by DonRosa where is spoken about Donald's school reports...
also, in a PM, I saw that Donald's from number were (3) 9720.
where do they have taken that?

>I remember a onepage Barksian story where Daisy's phone number is given,
>but I can't remember where. could somebody help me?

It is the one-pager in US #7 called "Wrong Number".

Francois

FERNANDO:

> About the "S-coded", I can confirm some of then as made by Igayara:
>
> S 69076 8 SG Super-"gooberoobas"
> Super Amendoizadas-Writer, drawer and inker
> [...]

Thanks for your time, Fernando! :-)

I have another more delicate question for you. Do you think you can
provide a scan of the following two stories, published in Brazil in
"Mickey" in 1971 (just a single page from each):

MK 224c S 69067 4 DD Castelos no gelo [xapp:DD,HDL,US]
MK 226i S 69070 3 DD Só compra quem escorrega [xapp:DD,HDL]

If you don't have a scanner, you might like to compare the art with
that of former Gutenberghus artist Einar Lagerwall, to be found under

http://raptus.dk/l.html

The question is, could these two stories have been drawn by Lagerwall?

Thanks in advance! :-)

Søren