Keskustelujen arkisto

Hi all

Olaf wrote:

> It is impossible to believe in every story that is
> written. You must make up your mind in lots of
cases:

You made some interesting questions, so here's which
are IMO the logical answers:

> - Are the ducks immortal, or does all the stories
> find place in the fifties?
&
> - If Carl Barks writes a story in 1956, does it mean

> that it happened in 1956?

Disney characters are immortal since deaths and
suicides are not allowed in these comics. BUT,
Duckburg's world is near to our world. So maybe the
ducks are not immortal (Remember Scrooge's father? He
died in 1902).
Carl Barks wrote the Duck-stories in the period 1943
(Donald Duck finds Pirate Gold) - 1967 (King Scrooge
the First). Every story is written in a different
date. He never told us when the stories are taking
place in real. According to Don Rosa, all the stories
are taking place in the 50s. The nephews are always in
the same age (and height) which means that all these
stories are taking place in a period between 1950 and
1960.

> - Does Mickey and his pals exist?
&
> - If so, does he live in the same town as Donald?

Why not? They live in another city, Mousetown, Mickey
City or whatever is called it. Barks wrote a story
with Mickey (The Riddle of the Red Hat) if you
remember, which means that Barks actually accept
Mickey as a character. BUT, I don't think Mickey lives
in Duckburg. We never saw him in the Money Bin :-)

> - And are they friends of Donald?
&
> - Does Fethry exist?

I don't know... maybe they are, maybe not.
I don't know either if Barks ever used Fethry in one
of his stories... I like Fethry, he's a very funny
character and together with Donald they are a deadly
twin :-)

> - Where is Duckburg?

Well, Duckburg is situated somewhere in California and
near Missouri's borders.

> - Should I believe in Rosa's Life of Scrooge?

Yes because the facts that Don "narrates" in his
series are real: all of them are facts from Barks's
stories, placed in chronological order. He even "copy"
(actually re-drawed) some panels from the original
Barks' stories (as a homage maybe?). Remember the
punch that Scrooge is giving to Soapy? Don take those
panels from the "North of the Yukon" story. So, I
strongly believe that Lo$ is an authentic piece of
Scrooge's history.

> - Should I believe that the Money Bin Blueprints are
the original blueprints of the Money Bin?

Yes because all the rooms that Don add to the
blueprints are really exist. The blueprints are based
on Barks' stories. We're not sure that these are the
100% correct blueprints but still it's the best we
have. :-)

> - Was the Money bin built in 1902 or 50 years later?

Well, I'm not sure but I think the Money Bin is built
in 1902.

> Love the art, not the artist!!! Carl Barks has
> written tons of GREAT stories, and I love them!

Well, you're right on that. I love both Carl and Don's
work, but I never met them! How is possible to love
them so much? But after so many years of reading their
stories, I sometimes feel that these two great men are
friends of mine...and I thank them for giving me so
many things, while I never gave them something (except
maybe for the money I spend to buy their amazing
stories) :-)
Best Wishes

=====
Apostolis Trikourakis, Athens, Greece
E-mail: komixgreekpage at yahoo.com
Web Site: http://www.geocities.com/komixgreekpage

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(I'm writing this not in an awful hurry, so please forgive any
typographical errors.)
Before I leave for Aix-en-Provence on June 13 to teach a course in
international comics (including sessions on French and English versions of
many Barks stories), I felt the need to contextualize a few of the comments
that have been made recently about Carl Barks' late stories and his
paintings. Much of this will soon appear in my books "The Comic Vision of
Carl Barks" and "Conversations: Carl Barks," both from Mississippi Press:

I agree that there is a very complex methodological relationship between
artists' statements about their work and the accurate and imaginative
interpretations that must be given to them by scholars and readers if they
are to remain a part of scholarly (and popular)discourse. I would like to
suggest that there is a kind of proportional equation between "intensity of
intention" and the emergence of legitimate "unintended interpretive
consequences" from works of great narrative art:

"The greater the intensity or focus of intention, the greater the
possibility for unintended interpretive consequences."

Barks had a prodigious capacity for focusing his attention on his conscious
intentions--for example, timing gags "to the split second" ("You have to do
it like you were directing a play and phone up all the actors and tell them
exactly what to do. Everything has to be timed down to the split second."
[Ault phone conversation with Barks, May 20,1996]). His attention was so
great that after he mailed off a story, thrown away his minimalist notes for
it, and started another, he couldn't even remember what the previous story
was about! (Phone conversation with Ault, date temporarily misplaced)
Because he was such a great narrative artist (and this tends to be true of
all great narrative artists), his attention on what he was intensely aware
of doing allowed a whole domain of "something else" (multiple unintended
interpretive consequences) to show up. I do feel it is important to take
into account what Barks thought he was doing, because it is often an index
to what he was doing "accidentally," which was often a lot more complex than
he thought it was: "Actually it is interesting that it's possible to find
such construction in my stories, because so much of it was done
instinctively by me that I didn't have time to stop and think of the
construction that I was building. It just came out and fell in place, and I
had to work fast, had to turn out so many pages a month, so an awful lot of
the stuff that looks like it was carefully planned was really accidental."
(Barks interview with Donald and Lynda Ault, 6-13,99)

Here are some interview excerpts (some of which appeared in the Comics
Journal Barks commemorative issue):

Barks interview 6-13-97 (with Donald and Lynda Ault)

"I believe that as time goes by people will realize those paintings I've
done are all based on stories, and if they don't know the story, the
painting will be kind of meaningless, and so I believe the stories will be
the thing that lives on into posterity. If a couple of generations come
along that have never read my stories, those paintings will become just
meaningless pictures of funny animals."

Ault: "This has been a bigger part of your career than anything else; you
put your heart and soul into them."

"Yes, but that's my workaholic way of living-if I don't paint something that
I can feel a little pride in, I don't want to paint it in the first place. I
like to outdo my own expectations and outdo whatever the guy expected when
he ordered it."

Expansion and modification of this statement in Barks Interview 5-30-00
(with Donald Ault, Bruce Hamilton, John Ronan, and Nicky Wright):

"[Knowing the stories] would make a big difference in the paintings-you bet.
I feel that if nobody would have read the stories, the pictures would be
meaningless..You are telling a situation-a happening, a short happening from
any particular story. You're not telling the whole story, but I put enough i
n a painting like 'Spangled and Flashy' that anyone who had never read my
comics could look at that and wonder, 'Why is Uncle Scrooge eyeing that
chick there by the piano in such a hostile way?'"

In the Barks interview with Donald Ault and Thomas Andrae (August 5, 1975),
Barks mentioned that he liked to do the paintings better than the comics
because he had "more complete control" over all aspects of the final
product, and he got a good deal of satisfaction from sometimes being able to
"see the expression" on the buyer's face-something that never happened in
all his years of comic book work.

I'm adding the following piece of commentary from my Preface to the Finland
Barks commemorative issue (which has thus far appeared only in Finnish):

From Preface by Donald Ault:

Barks' worldview and visual style.determine his each other in different
periods-but his style was continuously shifting, so the body of his work
constitutes a moving, transforming world view-indeed, a multiplicity of
world views always pulling against one another. Not only is the way the
characters look at different times in Barks' career expressive of shifts in
narrative and worldview but the ink work and panel layouts themselves were
constantly undergoing transformation. Consequently, Barks never repeated
himself. He could not keep his style static even if he had wanted to do so.
He often told me that it was just "natural" for an artist to keep changing
his style without ever thinking about it, and his style continued to change
into the very last drawings he ever made. Because the style of his drawing
is interior to his vision, he could never at a later period fully recreate
his earlier ink (or drawing) style. In the different medium of painting (and
late in his career, color pencil) he could reconstitute (and not just
simulate) and give "a different view of" events in his earlier work (Ault
interview, June 13-14,1997). Unlike the artists who have tried to emulate
Barks' style from a particular period, Barks never copied or simulated
himself. He did have a definite opinion about the relationship between the
periods of his visual and storytelling styles, however:

I did the best art in the 1960s-the best line work, the best drawing; the
best stories with the most spontaneity were in the late 1940s and early
1950s; in the earlier 1940s I was still searching for ways to tell my
stories." (Ault/Hamilton/Ronan/Wright interview, April 30,1999)

I liked to draw Donald best in the sixties because I had finally gotten
around to a style and proportions for the duck that suited me fine, and I
had a great set of pens to draw those accented lines very nicely. My lines
were stronger in the sixties, and it was harder for the background colors to
sort of nullify my drawing-cover it up or hide it. (Ault/Hamilton
interview/Ronan/Wright interview, April 30, 1999)

I think my drawing in the last few years was getting to be pretty darned
professional-looking. My pen and ink lines had gotten to where they had a
nice polish and a swing to them. (Ault interview, June 13-14,1997)

[Hm... I sent this yesterday, but it never appeared on the list. Second
try, let's hope the first one really lost, and won't find its way on the
list as a dublicate.]

>From: "Anders Christian Sivebaek" <acsive at mail.mira.dk>
>Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 17:55:35 +0200
>
>So i conclude there are at least two fanzines in Finland sometimes
>telling about the ducks?

Yes, Timo's Ankkalinnan pamaus is totally about ducks (and mice, naturally
:-) ), Sarjainfo is general-comics-fanzine.

>Are you familiar with the at least 2 pro gradu/doctor grates in
>litterature that have been made by
>readers there?

There are more, from http://www.kupla.net/alan/kirj/ras_opin.html by Tanja
Rasila:

"Ritola, Marja
Ankkojen aika : intertekstuaalisuus ja lukija Don Rosan Disney-sarjakuvissa.
Tampereen yliopisto, yleisen kirjallisuustieteen pro gradu -ty?, 2000."

This is the one you mentioned first. Yes, it is about intertextual
connections, coventions and other strange words.

"Manninen, Pekka A.
Aku Ankka ja yhteiskunta.
Tampereen yliopisto, sosiaalipsykologian sivulaudaturty?, 1986."

About Aku Ankka's popularity and how the comics describe society.

"Viitala, Tarja
Viiden sarjakuvalehden moraalik?sitykset ja k?sitykset yhteiskunnasta
vuonna 1981.
Helsingin yliopisto, tiedostusopin pro gradu -ty?, 1983."

The moral standards of five comics magazines, Aku Ankka one of them.

"Toivonen, Pia
"Donald Duck weekly", "Micky Maus" und "Aku Ankka" : Beobachtungen zur
?bersetzung und Sprache des Englischen,
Deutschen und Finnischen Comic-Heftes.
Vaasan yliopisto, saksan kielen ja kirjallisuuden pro gradu -ty?, 1994."

A translation study.

"Toivonen, Pia
Hur Donald Duck weekly blir tysk, svensk och finsk.
Vaasan yliopisto, ruotsin kielen lisensiaatinty?, 2000."

Another translation study.

"Toivonen, Pia
Namn i ?vers?ttning i Disneyserietidningar p? fyra spr?k.
Vaasan yliopisto, ruotsin kielen pro gradu -ty?, 2000."

This is probably the one you mentioned (hmm... she has done lots of these).

"Liukko, Satu
Sarjakuvien sanastosta.
Jyv?skyl?n yliopisto, suomen kielen pro gradu -ty?, 1984.
106 s."

Comics vocabulary - Aku Ankka one of the studied publications.

"L?hde, Kirsi
Puheenvuorot ja puheaktit Aku Ankassa.
Tampereen yliopisto, suomen kielen pro gradu -ty?, 1993."

Word balloons in Aku Ankka.

"Matikainen, Sirkka-Liisa
Sarjakuvien virkerakenteista.
Jyv?skyl?n yliopisto, suomen kielen pro gradu -ty?, 1980."

Sentence structure in comics - Aku Ankka one of the studied.

"Salama, Ilkka
Kieless?k? Aku Ankka -lehden suosion tulevaisuus?
Helsingin yliopisto, suomen kielen pro gradu -ty?, 1991.
152 s."

Aku Ankka popularity and the translational reasons of it.

"Ketola, Anni
Die Interjektionen in Aku Ankka und Micky Maus.
Tampereen yliopisto, germaanisen filologian pro gradu -ty?, 1994."

OK, don't know enough German to understand this one.

Interjections in Disney-comics?

"Tiainen, Leena
Comics und gesprochene Sprache.
Tampereen yliopisto, germaanisen filologian pro gradu -ty?, 1997."

Language in Lustiges Taschenbuch.

"Tulkki, Heikki
Verschiedene Satztypen und Onomatop?ien in Deutzschen Donald Duck -B?chern
und ihren Finnischen ?bersetzungen.
Helsingin yliopisto, germaanisen filologian pro gradu -ty?, 1989."

Language issues again.

"Virtanen, Salla
Beobachtungen zum Gebrauch von Verbidiomen im Comicheft Micky Maus.
Turun yliopisto, germaanisen filologian pro gradu -ty?, 1993."

?

"Palo, Pertti
Comparing Disney's comics and their Finnish translations.
Joensuun yliopisto, Savonlinnan k??nt?j?nkoulutuslaitoksen pro gradu -ty?,
1986."

"Risku-Korpela, Liisa
A semiotic analysis of the language of comics and Donald Duck.
Turun yliopisto, englantilaisen filologian sivulaudaturty?, 1997."

--
Ari Seppi (mani at sci.fi)
Eritt?in fanaattinen Disney-sarjakuvien ja Harry Potter -kirjojen palvoja
http://www.sci.fi/~mani/

Donald Ault
Professor of English
University of Florida
http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~donault/

I began my last posting with the notice:

> (I'm writing this not in an awful hurry, so please forgive any
> typographical errors.)

One typo I HAVE to correct, however, is one of the dates I put for the video
interview conducted by Bruce Hamilton, John Ronan, Nickt Wright, and me. I
wrote:
>
> Expansion and modification of this statement in Barks Interview 5-30-00
> (with Donald Ault, Bruce Hamilton, John Ronan, and Nicky Wright):
>

Carl was very, very ill on 5-30-00 and wasn't giving interviews.

The date should have been 5-30-99, when he gave us about a 2 and 1/2 hour
interview and 1 hour tour of his studio. At that time he was still able to
navigate up the steep steps from his studio less out of breath than many of
us "younger" folks!

Sorry for the mistake!

Donald Ault
Professor of English
University of Florida
http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~donault/

Don Rosa ranted:

>Yes, I fully agree. That's just what I thought when you called me arrogant
and ignorant in your previous message, wherein YOU launched a personal
attack and had started a somewhat hysterical and unsolicited argument. If
you'll look back, I was reporting what Michael Barrier had said, not what
*I* said. In fact, I stated that I *liked* Barks paintings, just not that
much, an opinion I am entitled to have without your bizarrely vicious
rancor.<

Wrong. You used Michael Barrier as a reference to your own opinion. Since you often forget the things you had written in digests
only two or three past, I'll quote your own words back at you:

"So I was particularly pleased that, amid the many other superb observations, Barrier expounds something I've always thought --
that Mr. Barks should be remembered strictly for the work he did in writing and drawing comic books stories prior to 1967, and not
at all for his paintings and other "collectibles" endeavors of his final years."

This was not an unsolicited argument. You solicited the argument when you expressed an opinion that Barks should not be remembered
for his paintings. I stand by my assertion that anyone who feels this way has not bothered to examine the fully body of Barks work
from this period, making them ignorant. I also stand by my assertion it takes a great deal of arrogance for an artist, i.e. Don
Rosa, who dwells in the shadow of such a man as Carl Barks, to assert opinions that any part of Barks's work is not worth being
remembered.

As for "hysterical," I challenge you to show me how that applies to anything I've written, as I've just shown how ignorant and
arrogant apply to you.

>Yeah, that's all I do, ain't it? You do go on so. I also apologize to
everyone for your bizarre angry venting. You obviously have some emotional
problem that you don't need to be spilling out all over us here in public.
It's embarrassing.<

No, what is embarrassing is you are very opinionated, but are incapable of having an argument without resorting to personal attacks
and slander. If someone, ANYONE, disagrees with you and challenges you, or asks you to use REASON in your arguments, you seem
incapable of responding in an intelligent manner, but instead accuse those who disagree with you of having an "emotional" problem.

So let me summarize this exchange for those of you with short attention spans:

1. Don Rosa says that Barrier wrote in the CJ something that Don Rosa always believed: that Barks should NOT be remembered for his
paintings.

2. John Garvin says that anyone who believes that 27 years of a great artist's work should be forgotten is arrogant and ignorant.

3. Don Rosa says that John Garvin must have invested money in AR lithographs.

4. John Garvin gets angry that Don Rosa uses slander instead of reason in yet another argument: i.e. implying that John Garvin has
some vested interest in lithos, thus using personal attack to answer the argument, instead of rationally showing WHY Barks
paintings are not worthy of being remembered.

Get the idea? Here Don, let me help you out: The paintings of Carl Barks should be forgotten because....

(Yes, I taught college level rhetoric and critical thinking for several years.)

And I have gotten many private emails supporting and agreeing with me, and no, not from Daniel van Eijmeren, who has also been
slandered on this list, and some are advising me that Don Rosa has never yet admitted to having a wrong headed opinion on this
list, it just ain't going to happen. So I'll return you now to your regularly scheduled comics discussion.

Olaf write:
>Don Rosa prefers, as myself, to believe in the 50's-theory. Many of Barks'
>stories can be read with the 50's-theory. But when Carl Barks suddenly
>writes a story like "Horsing around in history", I feel that I have no
>reason to believe in it!

I prefer the fifties, too...
I wanna think there are no humans in the Barks world (but alas! Barks drawed
humans, too).

The paints. Hey, they are impressive, o.k. but I hate the next situation...

Me: Well, and this great artist and writer, Carl Barks...
Another people (maybe a girl): Carl... WHO?
Me: Barks. He created the great comics you loved when a child...
Another people: Oh... yes? ?comics?
Me: Yeeesss... Later in the sixties he begun to paint thats pictures of
his...
Another people: OH!!! A PAINTER! THATS DIFFERENT!!! THAT SERIOUS STUFF!!!

And hey, no, I wanna say... is another art. Only another art, not more or
less serious that the GLORIOUS, LOVED NINTH ART.

DITTO!
Fabio Blanco
*************************
Bonvolu postu al: longtom at oeste.com.ar

Everyone owes Barks much, every duck-publisher, the disney company (for
cartoons, comics and huge publicity for them), egmont - my point of
wiev is that they wouldn't have existed, had it not been of him - nor
would any of the drawers they or Holland or almost any publisher has,
as they all base their duck-stories on charecters invented by Carl,
charecters beautifully changed into what Carl needed them to be, and
many of these based own stories (some, like the manuscript makers of
some Vica-stories maybe a bit too much, so as it became repetition) on
stories by Carl. The reason I don't firstly mention Italy in Europe is
that Mickey had allready begun there, but if the comic had ever been so
greatly sold as is, eg. Scarpa would have had a much much smaller group
of charecters to work and what about all the others?
We don't have to ask where the one of my own favorites Don would be in
this, Don would of course not have drawn his stories with the
charecters by Barks, as they wouldn't have been. We can't really start
to imagine what would have happened

The more serious person than me would maybe claim, that this is off
course hypothetic. But as we're actually interested in some kind of
fantasy-world, very much, or less close to our own world, lets imagine
a theory that I see in some books I read by an author named Philip
Pullman (The Golden Compass, The subtle knife). For every thing that
could've been different, there's a universe (makes an unblievably large
amound of universes). In the second of the two books, (the third one is
out, haven't read it), two kids travel through an opening between 3 of
these universes.
Lets imagine our own universe as it is, and the same one, where Barks
would have done one thing different, before he became a cartoonist, or
where he was never born, or imagine it, as it would have been with mice
and ducks. If we imagine this - what a strange world the one without
Barks would have been, we wouldn't have been us, noone would have been
themselves so to speak ( I don't even know what to call this theory or
what it is.). - But now if we are back looking at the world as it is,
where everyone is themselves. Let's imagine people with a fantastic
ability, to see what is in one other world, the one with Ducks. or the
one with mice and ducks, or mice only, (or any of the storeis we like)
these people would tell/write/draw in panels what they see going on in
that parallel world, possibly with the same dates and years, where
people just look like ducks or dogs or other animals.
Later on, the man who started writing and drawing in the 1940'es began
to get another vision of the world he had earlier made famous as
comics, so he would paint.
Not to be narrow-minded about my comic-interest, maybe an author Jules
Verne and any other author is able to do the same, with another
parallel, and write what he sees.

If the thery should have anything logic in it, there would be a world
for every choice possibly made different, it would again make a large
number, and perhaps it makes it all as impossible as it is anyway, as
as many people as there ever lived on earth would have an incredibly
high number of choices to make every week, day, minute...

Readers of the mentioned books by Pullman may rightly claim that this
is based on my reading of the books, and it's only a possibly
completely crazy thought?

If someone would like to kick me out, telling me to go to a philosophy
list, I would join one, but I don't really want to miss out on what
happens here.

A. C. Sivebaek
acsive at mail.mira.dk