Keskustelujen arkisto

Morten:

> Uhm... so... Gladstone changed the european stories to make them fit
> with current traditions, to make them more easily accepted by american
> readers.
>
> How is this different than european publishers changing american stories
> to make them with fit current traditions, to make them more easily
> accepted by european readers?

All's fair in love and working in the Disney milieu in any capacity, but the
fact remains that Disney's global milieu originated and is still
headquartered in the U.S., so Gladstone was acting not as a foreign
interpreter but as a native reinterpreter. And let's be very, very clear
about this: "Current traditions" (a nice, vaguely oxymoronic phrase, that)
are what Disney U.S. championed, but at Gladstone we did what we did with
european Duck stories to suit Barksian traditions.

All the same, I don't have any problem with any publisher suiting the
material to its audience in any way that seems appropriate to that audience.
To debate the color of money is only to point out how widely varied are the
perceptions of comics readers and creators around the world, and that
publishers' efforts to address, and hopefully satisfy, these perceptions is
an ongoing, eternal challenge.

Gary

Kriton :
> ... learning a foreign language, which I hate!
:-)

Have you checked COA (the INDUCKS search pages) lately ?
If not, take a look at
http://www2.ec-lille.fr/willot/coa/c1/country.php/0/gr

and please, tell us want you think about it!
It would be nice with some comments from all Greek speaking members of this
list.

Kjell

Paulo:
>I think the colors of Scrooge's money are only a
>subject for people with nothing to talk about.

No, we do have something to talk about. Take
colors of the money for an example. :-)

>This is
>typical uninteresting so-called "fan" discussions.

You don't have to read them, you know.

>Who cares about all these details.

We do. Even when the color of the money isn't *that* essential
to me, discussions about it is interesting.

>We just need good stories.

Yes, good stories are the most important thing, but details
are nice too.

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

John:

>> And maybe someone can help me out with another reference: which story was
>>it that had Donald running back and forth between Scrooge's bin and a coin
>>dealer to make money selling rare coins? I remember Scrooge digging deep
>>into the bin to get a jar full of those coins, which I remember being foreign, but I
>>could be wrong.

Oh, I love this story!
WDC&S 131, July 1951
It's a jar of rare dimes.

Just for the record, - Joakim Gunnarsson is also a storywriter and artist.

Regarding Disney Co. and Franchise rights: It seems to me the contact I signed
with Oberon (later VNU) and Gutenberghus (later Egmont)indicated CLEARLy that
the Disney Company paid a flat fee to the writer and artist for a story and/or
artwork, which then gave it rights from then on, to change the story and
artwork as it sees fit. No one forces us to sign those agreements. We do that
willingly, for the privilege of working on Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge and
Mickey mouse characters; using characters and their well-developed universes,
which we did NOT invent. When we enter into that agreement, we understand that
the editorial offices may do things with our work that we may not wish. I know
that Don understands this, and he has a perfect right to be peeved when they do
some things that don't make much sense from ANY standpoint. I feel that way at
times, too. But, unfortunately we have to live with that.

As far as the location of Duckburg, - I believe (as Don)that it is on the west
coast of USA (as I drew it on many maps as early as 1960. But, as a young
Barks fan in Canada, USA AND The Netherlands, I believe it is no problem to
have it be in the country of publication. Even though I am Jewish, I believe
that Donald and his nephews should not have to go to an airport, hop on an
airplane and take a taxi to Amsterdam Harbour to greet Sinterklaas when he
arrives each year. I still can enjoy Dutch printings of Barks' work alongside
those that consider Duckburg in Europe.

Don is certainly correct, however, that his own gospel is gospel for his own
stories, and the editors who change meaning are creating something that is a
corruption (and thus, not a "true" version.

To this end, I am currently working on two book series' with different
partners, using ourr own characters (and retaining all creative rights).

Rob
Klein

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Hi, all.

It always seemed to me that Duckburg was in Southern California, somewhere
near Burbank where the Disney Studio has been since 1940. Barks makes this
pretty clean in several stories, such as "In Old California," "7 Cities of
Cibola" and "Land Beneath the Ground."

The American in Scrooge's money bin is silver. In 1933, the United States
government made it illegal for American citizens to possess more than a few
gold coins as collectors. All the rest had to be surrendered to the
government. Surely Scrooge would have complied with this requirement. Because
Barks had no control over the colors used in his comic books, it's impossible
to say whether he had gold or silver coins in mind.

What's in the money bin now? Who knows. There were times when Scrooge
converted the contents of the money bin into currency only and at least one
time when he converted everything he owned into silver dollars ("The Money
Champ"). After the He couldn't have converted the silver dollars into gold
coins after the contest because they were illegal in the U. S. to own.

If you accept Barks stories as canon and everything else as non-canon, then
everything else is fiction, tall tales and mythology. Those stories can say
anything they want, mixing truth with fiction, much like the Sherlock Holmes
stories not written by Doyle or the Oz stories not written by Baum (although
the Oz stories written by Thompson are considered to be canon as well).

Barks actually included a lot of detail about Scrooge's life. According to
one Barks' one page story (U. S. #12), Scrooge was 75 in 1956. That means he
was born in 1881, which would make him 121 years old this year. Why not? If a
duck can live 75 years, why not 121 years? In another story, Scrooge weighs
himself and finds out his weight is 25 pounds. Do ducks ever weigh that much?

Some Barksian facts seem to contradict other facts. For example, Scrooge
claims to have gone to Duckburg's Webfoot University, but its not possible;
neither school nor Duckburg existed when he says he attended it. Clearly
some tall tale spinning on his part.

There's been some chat on the site about who's related to whom. How can
Grandma Duck be Scrooge's grandmother, Donald's grandmother, Daisy's
grandmother and the nephew's grandmother. I haven't a clue how that ever
could be possible. I always thought everyone called her Grandma out of
respect and affection, whether she was actually their grandmother or not. I
can't remember anyone in any story calling her Ma Duck or Mrs. Duck or using
her first name -- does she have one?

If you really want to worry about continuity and consistency, how do Superman
and Superboy, his younger self, both exist in the same time? The Smallville
stories and the Metropolis stories have always been set in the present. Very
off topic, but a question I always wanted to ask.

More on topic, sort of: Why do you always see so few ducks in Duckburg?

Regards,

William Price
236 West Portal
San Francisco

Hello, everybody!

Rob Klein wrote:

> the contract I signed with Oberon (later VNU) and Gutenberghus (later Egmont)indicated CLEARLy that
> the Disney Company paid a flat fee to the writer and artist for a story and/or
> artwork, which then gave it rights from then on, to change the story and
> artwork as it sees fit.
>

Just to add to Rob's statement:
Similar contract conditions with translators here in Germany.
Since 1999 I'm working as translator for the weekly German "Micky Maus
Magazin" on a freelance basis (most times I translate Donald Duck
stories, rarely other charakters like Goofy).
And my contract also says, that the German publisher (i.e. Egmont Ehapa
Verlag, Berlin) has the right to revise and change any text I've
written. Not to mention, that the copyright is Ehapa's respectively
Disney's.
Happily the fact is, that my friendly editor Joachim Stahl (greetigs to
you!) seldom changes more than a few words.
And, of course, I signed that contract mainly because I like to work
with the Disney characters.
It is satisfying work to put German words and gags into the mouth of
Uncle Scrooge (Onkel Dagobert) and Donald and all the others. And there
is some poetic license to somehow re-invent the text, creating new gags
(which is neccessary because many idiomatic expressions one can't
translate from English into German) and polishing the diction.

So far (but no safari).

Erik
Rastetter

In a previous message on language, I mentioned that I used a German
translation of Christmas for Shacktown in my advanced German classes, and
commented that the German seems more literary than Barks' original. An
example: on the ninth page Donald is asking passers-by for money for the
Shacktown Christmas party. A cowboy asks him at the same time for a
donation to a party for "cowboys who can't yodel". In German the cowboy
asks for a donation for the "Small Animal Breeders Society"
(Kleintierz?chterverein), a word that I assume seems fairly ridiculous in
German, but is not on the same level as "cowboys who can't
yodel" (Cowboys, die nicht jodeln k?nnen).