Keskustelujen arkisto

Regarding Barry's inquiry over the Big Bad Wolf vs. Orange Irish Hound Dog:

WDC & S Nr. 186 does not contain that story. Its story has Bad Wolf
bringing a hound home for his son, and then using the hound in an attempt
to track down the 3 little pigs by giving the hound the scent of pork
chops. I checked all the stories near that period 1954 - 1956, and it was
none of those. I remember having read the story in question faintly, but I
cannot remember in which book. I suspect it is a Danish production. I
don't remember it being a Dutch production. I think such a reference to
the Northern (Protestant Irish) vs. the Irish Republic (Eire) - (Catholic
Irish) is indicative of their political and religious struggle, and
therefore too political, religious and controversial to be brought up in a
story plot in a USA production. This problem would be made even more
objectionable by the Hound's violence towards Bad Wolf due to the latter's
insult of mistaking the Hound for a Republican rather than the Northerner
(Protestant) that he was. I really doubt that Western Publishing would
have allowed a story with such references (especially with the Hound's
violence related to the "wearing of the Green" vs "wearing of the Orange"
and the associated pride of the 2 sects or communities involved). Disney
USA would never have allowed that. They had 100% access to see what
Western printed. Western was thus, very careful not to irritate Disney.

In a similar situation, I remeber reading a mid 1960s WDC Donald Duck story
(drawn by Tony Strobl) which showed Donald and the Boys arriving in the
port of Haifa. The general location was refered to as "The Middle East"
"Middle Eastern port of Haifa" - rather than the location in "Israel" or
"Palestine".

The situation in Europe is very different. In our Dutch production there
is far more leeway regarding USA Disney's wishes, as they "inspect" only a
very small percentage of Dutch production. Thom Roep told me many years
ago, that under the Oberon/Disney franchise agreement, the Los Angeles
Disney publications office was to receive copies of at least 10% of the
Dutch production. He told me that that figure had NEVER been approached in
all the years of the franchise, and the Disney office never complained.
The only problem that would ever come to their attention would have to be a
VERY VERY flagrant breach of their rules or wishes.

It seems to me that I remember a high official of Editing at Gutenberghus
(now Egmont) - (Nancy Dejgaard) telling me a similar story (only a very
small percentage of Denmark's production was officially "checked" by the
Los Angeles Disney office). Perhaps David Gerstein can shed more light on
their current policy - and more to the point - can tell us if the story in
question was a Danish production. Hej Ole, you should remember such a
story, if it were, indeed, printed in Danmark, not so?

Begorra, Rob Klein

From: "Olivier" <mouse-ducks at wanadoo.fr>
>>>>Mr Don Rosa:
Thumbing through the pages of the Kalevala story to "answer"
Anders' question, one thing suddenly struck me, knowing there's
a lot of research in the making of your stories, and hidden references:
are the music bars we see throughout the story copied from some
Kalevala-related piece of music?

It certainly is. And it was obtained at no small effort, requiring trips to
search through the music libraries at the University of Louisville. Just
one of the many details that I spend extra time on just for fun, knowing
99.999% of the readers will never notice it, or even if they did, would
never dream of the time that went into it.
Those are actual lines from Sibelius' "Finlandia".

Anyway, this business about the color of the coins in $crooge's Bin -- I've
addressed this before, but I will again:
Those coins have always been colored gold in European editions. I don't
know what sort of thought originally went into that, but it is now a
tradition. It's very important to continue such traditions in comics that
so many kids grew up with. I would not think it's a good idea that they
should ever tamper with that tradition, or others. Still, I'm pleased when
some publishers color the coins correctly when they print my stories,
because I want them colored as they should be, and often I make references
to the coins that require them to be colored that way. Even so, I hope they
continue to color the coins in their traditional way in all other stories
where the writers/artists have no special preference (but who actually
probably *prefer* the coins be colored gold since they are not Americans
and thought they were supposed to be gold).

However the European coloring, I suspect, was originally done by a colorist
who was not reading the stories. They thought that this zillionaire would
have a bin of gold coins. But this misses the entire point of the Barks'
original humor of $crooge's Money Bin -- it is filled with ordinary pocket
change. Pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters and silver dollars and
$1 bills, etc. That means *very* little other than silver coins (only our
pennies are copper). No, this does not mean it should be colored "gray and
brown" (???)... it should be (and was) colored silver (white with light
blue highlights) with a sparse sprinkling of copper-tan spots.
As for Barks' paintings, the color of the coins which is used is picked
because it makes the most stunning painting. These paintings and lithos,
more often than not, are being done for buyers who never read the comics,
and who would prefer to see GOLD coins filling the background. Also, those
scenes don't actually even seem to be taking place in the Money Bin we are
familiar with -- the background, the vault door, everything is recreated
for the sake of the painting. The paintings are wonderful, but their
accuracy to the original comics was secondary to creating a colorful,
intricate scene.

When was it decided that Duckburg was in Denmark? All this time I
thought it was in Calisota, which was a state that was made up by Carl
Barks combining California and Minnesota...........both states in the
USA. That makes it pretty clear to me where Duckburg was thought to be,
at least in the beginning.

Rodney

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Nils:
>>I was responsible for the finnougrorunometricisms, and also convinced
>>the editors that the many special and unusual elements of the story
>>warranted a separate introduction, as well as _footnotes_.
Wow!
That's one thing I told Don Rosa about in an e-mail last month:
I think it would be highly interesting to have editions of such stories
as "Ancient Persia" or "The Sharpie of the Culebra Cut" with
ffotnotes & in-depth articles about the cultural background-- architecture,
story of the canal, ...

Francesco:
>>That means "Carl Barks, the Duck Man" and is the title of an Italian new
>>book dedicated to the Master (for his 100th birthday). It's a 322 page paperback
What is the name of the publisher, please?

Olivier

This email contains links to rare/original/unpublished Barks items for
sale on internet. I do not have any connection with the sellers or the
sites.

If you've seen items I must have missed or other sites with rare/original/
unpublished Barks items, then I hope you will post it to this list as well.

- Carl Barks 1976 drawing for Jerry Osborne
- Carl Barks visiting card with Scrooge sketch
http://www.jerryosborne.com/comics.htm

Item at Ebay:

Descriptions are by the sellers, except where noted ("DvE").

1131908871
Carl Barks LastTale w/INKED ART FromStory NR
Quoted from the seller: "Here is an excised panel from the story, featuring
a really wonderful large image of Donald. There was supposed to be some
"ice fog" in this panel which Block forgot to put in, and the panel was
redrawn. This is Block's original rendition, with a note in light blue
pencil, "ice fog per Carl". I am also including with this drawing a xerox
of Carl's original notes for this page with "Is there supposed to be some
ice fog here that is blinding Donald?" handwritten by Carl about this
same panel."
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1131908871
("Somewhere in Nowhere", DvE.)

Best wishes,

--- Daniel

"Everything looks all right here! Go see if the propellor is turning!"
(Which story?) :-)

PS. Winner of the previous quiz is Olivier, who guessed the answer
("A penny SAVED is a penny EARNED!" in WDC 124) within a few hours!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Olivier" <mouse-ducks at wanadoo.fr>
To: "x DCML" <dcml at stp.ling.uu.se>
Sent: Friday, April 06, 2001 9:08 PM
Subject: Re: Kalevala (2)

> Right, that was pretty dumb. It should have been:
>
> Louhi: (like nephew Louie? or all letters pronounced?)

I'm pretty sure that the 'h' is pronunciated. Like "loo", "he", I'd say.

> Ilmarinen: (like "ill", "marine", "hen" ?)

Then I think it'd have been spelled "Illm?riinhen". And I'm not sure that it
is possible to have an 'h' after an 'n'... Like French "?le" (island),
Italian "ma" (but), French "rit" (laugh[ed]), Japanese "nen" (year), I'd
say. But I'm sure the Finns on this list will correct me...

Stefan

From: Nils Lid Hjort <nils at math.uio.no>
>>>>>Another footnote reads:
"The music played by the Pohjola Woman [I actually used "kjerring"]
here is from the march of the valkuerien, by Wagner. Don Rosa
has actually used this musical quotation once before in a Donald Duck
story ..."

Oh, yeah, even *I* had forgotten I'd done that.
I was figuring that Louhi ("Pohjola Woman") was the story's villain,
wanting to conquer the world, and I knew that the people in Europe who
usually get that notion have a special fondness for Wagner's "Die Walkure"
("Ride of the Valkyries").

Don wrote: "As for Barks' paintings, the color of the coins which is used is picked
because it makes the most stunning painting. These paintings and lithos,
more often than not, are being done for buyers who never read the comics,
and who would prefer to see GOLD coins filling the background. Also, those
scenes don't actually even seem to be taking place in the Money Bin we are
familiar with -- the background, the vault door, everything is recreated
for the sake of the painting. The paintings are wonderful, but their
accuracy to the original comics was secondary to creating a colorful,
intricate scene."

I don't have hard facts, anymore than Don has, as to the demographics of litho buyers,
but I suspect he is wrong and that most of the moneybin lithos ARE in the hands of fans
of the comics. I'd bet that the lithos that non-comics fans gravitate towards are the
"Disney Character" ensembles, such as "In Uncle Walts Collectery." I own an original
copy of almost every Uncle Scrooge and Donald duck comic created, and I certainly do
not mind that the coins are colored gold in the paintings, and silver in the comics.
And I disagree that the paintings aren't drawn directly from the comics, because there
are many elements taken directly from comic panels: the piles of cash, the depth gauge,
the square door and ladder, the tractor, the shovels, the ledger books, Scrooge's
diving about like a porpoise. Further, Don points out that the European versions were
colored by folks who did not read the comics: you know what? so were the American
versions. I know for certain that Barks had nothing to do with the coloring except in
very specific cases (Barks made that very clear in numerous interviews), and there is
ample evidence that the colorists could be very arbitrary in their choices (see
Scrooge's GREEN coat in FC 456, or the sea of GOLD coins on the cover of FC 386). So
where is the evidence that Barks intended the coins to be silver? Flipping through my
issues of Uncle Scrooge, I find no instance of Scrooge refering to his piles of coins
by denomination. It would be interesting, I think, for someone to go through and do an
exhaustive reference. Underlying Don's comments, I think, is a belief that Scrooge is
keeping hordes of nickels, dimes, pennys, and quarters, for sentimental reasons, and
that to make the coins gold lessens this sentimental attatchment. This is fine for Don
and his stories, but as he repeatedly states, Don's views are his own. I find no such
sentiment in Barks stories. Indeed, the fact of the matter is that American currency
has lots of varieties of gold coins and it is entirely possible that Scrooge would keep
a substantial number of them in his bin, just like Barks showed when he *did* have
control of the color.