Keskustelujen arkisto

If D stands for Duck, Drake, Douglas or Scrooge just uses D (for Dotty) because he dosn?t have a middle name beats me.

/Michael

Arie Fachrisal :
>Do any of DCMLians here know any other well-known non-Disney
>comic characters that use some of Barks' plots?

I have a Woody Woodpecker story with exactly the same plot as WDC 111
(Donald's Love Letters).
I have seen similar cases with Porky Pig. And Daffy, I think.
I assume lots of Barks plots where reused with other Dell/Gold Key
characters.

And the film "Raiders of the Lost Ark" has some scenes that remind of US 7
(Seven Cities of Cibola) and US 26 (Prize of Pizarro).

Kjell

Here's a report of my short holiday to Napoli of the past week.
I went to the Napoli Comicon, where Don Rosa and many
Italian DCML-members met.
I hope the following is not too boring for people who weren't
there. 8-)

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday (March 5, 2003) was the day I arrived in Naples.
I had a long walk through the centre of the city, seeing
approximately 60% of the sights: the small streets in the
ancient Greek quarter, the Castel Nuovo and its surroundings.
I figured I would see the rest on Thursday, but later I found
out that I wouldn't be able to do much more sightseeing in
Napoli on this trip!
In the evening I phoned Luca Boschi. Luca was in the car with
Don and Ann Rosa, returning from their trip to the Vesuvius.
We would meet at their hotel.
I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Rosa (Ann) for the first time.
On most previous trips, she couldn't attend because she was
working as a teacher.
I had dinner with the Rosas (in a restaurant near the
Archeological Museum). Seafood, of course. One of Don's goals
for the trip was to get as much sea food as possible...

I found out what the Rosas had been doing in the past days:
being robbed on Sunday, seeing Naples on Monday, Capri on
Tuesday, and the Vesuvius on Wednesday.
I'm telling nothing new here actually: the robbery (and the
rest of their trip) was also in the newspaper!
Five minutes after they left their hotel for a walk in the
Spanish quarter, a motorbike guy snatched Ann's purse.
This was a very "nice" welcome for them; the Rosas then spent
quite some time at the police station.

The Rosas had their personal tourist guide for the week:
Blasco Pisapia.
Blasco comes from Naples but now lives in Milan. He is an
architect and a Disney comics artist.
The perfect combination to guide American
Disney-comic-artists / tourists!
After dinner, I walked home to my hotel (a different one from
where Luca and Don and Ann were staying).
I didn't feel quite safe in the narrow, dark streets
(especially after hearing about the robbery). Fortunatly,
in the days to come, people were always kind enough to drive
me to my hotel at night! ("At night" was usually 2 o'clock
in the morning...)

THURSDAY

Today, Blasco took Don, Ann, and me to Pompeii (the ancient
city that was demolished by a Vesuvian eruption).
It was an hour riding by car.
I got an impression of the "special" Napolitan traffic rules.
Blasco later said: "Often people close their eyes when I am
driving. Usually I am the first who closes my eyes." 8-)
I didn't really feel unsafe, though. And I got used to it
after a while.
I think we have seen more of Pompeii than 99% of the other
tourists. Don was inexhaustible - he wanted to see
*everything*.
I had been in Pompeii before, but that was in 1979. Since
then, many new things were excavated.

After Pompeii, Don had to spend some time making drawings for
the hotel staff, and for the newspaper "La Repubblica", which
would have an article about Rosa the next day.

In the evening there was the opening of the convention (in
Castel Sant'Elmo).
Ann was too tired to come, so the 3 of us went there (by car).
Luca showed us all the interesting artwork on display, like
original Taliaferro and Gottfredson newspaper strips, and the
oldest (?) piece of comic artwork (The Yellow Kid), from the
collection of Bernard Mah?.
And lots of other interesting stuff, too much to mention
(especially since this is a *Disney* comics mailing list).
There was a whole section devoted to Don Rosa, called
"<<Magica>> art of Don Rosa".
All the original artwork of "A little something special" was
shown, plus the sketches and the extensions that Don did for
Gladstone.
And there were all the Life-of-Scrooge covers, and lots of
Don's parodies on American comic covers.
A really well-done exhibition!

FRIDAY

This was the first "real" NapoliComicon day.
I decided to walk from my hotel to the Castel Sant'Elmo.
This is a big fortress (from the 13th century), on a high
hill next to "downtown" Napoli.
In fact, the hill was slightly higher than I expected: I had
to climb a lot to get there.
When I told Blasco about this, he said "are you crazy?" - well,
I guess I must be. 8-)
Normal people take the cable car up.

I was just in time for the panel discussion (for journalists)
at noon.
This was in Italian, but most panel guests were Americans, so
I could follow most questions and answers.
Don was one of the six panelists, so the discussions mainly
went about less interesting (to me) issues.
The "La Repubblica" journalist who wrote the article about
Don was there too.
She showed me the newspaper: the article was spread over 2
pages, and also showed Don's drawing that he did just a few
hours before!

Friday is usually the quiet day of a comic convention, and
this was also the case in Napoli.
Many school class visits. It was interesting to see a teacher
explain Don Rosa's artwork to the school children.
There was a drawing session planned for Don, but since that
was at the same time as the journalist panel, Don didn't do
much drawing today.
In fact, we had the time to go on top of the castle, and have
a beautiful view on the city of Naples.
We took the elevator up (some of us are *not* crazy 8-), but
we went the long way down on foot, which was a very nice walk.
The weather today was not as sunny as the other days: clouds
and windy.

Several people who had to do their normal work on Friday,
came to Napoli in the evening.
One of them was Lidia Cannatella, the editor of Zio Paperone.
The last times I was in Italy, she was not there, so I was
very happy to finally meet her!

Other people whom I hadn't seen in a long time were Fabio
Gadducci (one of the first Italian DCML members, but not very
active in e-mail in the past few years)
and Paolo Carpi, the son of the great Giovan Battista Carpi,
who died a few years ago.

In the evening the invitees had a wonderful dinner at the
Umberto restaurant. Every course was devoted to a comic item.
The cake (course #5, "Dolce") was "Strega Amelia cake"
(Magica de Spell cake).
Most of the "Disney people" sat on one table: Fabio Gadducci,
Lidia, Alberto Becattini, Blasco, Luca, Ann, Don, and me,
plus the "non-Disney" celebrities Gilbert Shelton and his
wife Lora Fountain.
(Don is a big fan of Shelton.)
During dinner, Alberto and I exchanged pronunciations of the
names of various people ("Van Schuijlenburg", "Plijnaar").
I found out that Alberto is BeHattini (not BeKattini). And
Carl Von Buettner is pronounced Betner.
You learn new things every day.

SATURDAY

Earlier this week, I had been looking for the album "Tesori
Cinque", with a unique reprint (Darkest Africa, uncensored,
not re-inked).
There was supposed to be a hard-cover edition and a cheaper
soft-cover edition.
But I could only find the hard-cover edition in the newsstands.
Luca told me to have a look at the book market in "White Gate
Street", where I should be able to find a soft-cover version.
So this morning, I walked there, and looked for that version.
I couldn't find it though, so I ended up buying two hard
cover editions (one for me and one for my friend Dani?l).

This time I took the cable car up to the castle (I could
still feel my feet aching from my walking tour yesterday!).
There I was just in time for the panel discussion with Lidia,
Luca, Don, and Alberto.
There were lots of questions for Don, and lots of answers
about things we DCMLers already know.
Still, I heard something new there: Don included a hint to
HDL's parents in the "Return to Xanadu" story!
Don explained that he probably will never make a story about
HDL's parents, since they are officially dead in Egmontland.
Another question was whether Don would make a story about the
origin of Magica de Spell. Don said he didn't have plans to
do such a story soon, but he did get some ideas on this trip
(to Napoli and the Vesuvius) which he might use for a story
in the near future.

Paolo Castagno also arrived, together with Dario Ambrosini
and Nicola Raimondi.
We had a chat (a real one, not IRC 8-), and Paolo got a
drawing from Don because he had to leave back to Rome before
the official drawing session would start.
Paolo also brought one of Gladstone's Life-of-Scrooge albums,
and asked Don to *un*-censor the scenes where the guns were
changed into pointing fingers.
A brilliant idea. I still wonder if we should also include
this version in Inducks.. 8-)

Before the drawing session started (at 17:00), there was
still some time to go to the roof of the castle once more.
This time it was cloudless and warm!
Lora Fountain joined us, so I finally got the opportunity to
have a photograph of the 4 of us: Don, Ann, Blasco and me.

Then came the drawing session.
Don is already used to it (though he said on one point "this
is not really happening"), but it's always amazing to see the
long lines of people, waiting for a Rosa drawing.
Don has developed a standard way of drawing so he can do 1 in
2 minutes, and please as many fans as possible.
Only when people ask for a Magica drawing, it takes a bit
longer, because of all the black hair and such.
Sometimes Don had trouble spelling the names of the Italians
who he did the drawings for.
- "How do you spell Paolo? P, A, and then an O?"
- "Si."
- "You mean I should write a C?"
And then Don was tempted to write PACLO...

Don could have drawn until closing time, but he had to stop
at one point because there was an award ceremony (where he
got a "souvenir" award, like all other iternational celebrities).

After that, we had dinner. Not with all invitees this time,
but only with "Disney-related" people, and some friends of Blasco.
Amongst the dinner attendees were Alessandro Barbucci and
Barbara Canepa.
They are the designers, and the supervisors of the first
stories, of Paperino Paperotto and W.I.T.C.H.
But they are currently not working for Disney anymore.

SUNDAY

For me, today was the day to go home.
Blasco had arranged a breakfast at 10, but I would have to
hurry too much to attend that, and still catch my plane afterwards.
So I already said goodbye to everyone yesterday.
In the past days I had not enough sleep, so today was the
time to catch up.
I also had brought with me 2 Dutch pocket books to read (with
Scarpa and Cavazzano stories that I never read before), but
during my whole trip I had *not* had the chance to read them!

Here ends my report. Don and Ann Rosa left Napoli today
(Monday). I and others made a lot of photographs, and I'm
sure some of them will be on the Web in the next days.

Thanks to everyone: Claudio Curcio and Luca Boschi for
inviting me, Don and Ann Rosa for their company, Blasco for
his tourist-guidance and car driving services.
And thanks to everyone I met, for a wonderful holiday!

--Harry.

In a message dated 3/10/2003 6:47:18 AM Eastern Standard Time,
eega at supereva.it writes:

> That was a nice touch, imho, although I generally don't
> appreciate much stories too closely related to modern
> technology, I like my Disneys to be sort of "atemporal"...

Agreed! While there's much realism in a lot of the Duck stories, I think that
a lot of it goes too far. The way the stories are usually written--or
*should* be written--calls for an older, fantasy-like look at things, while
still retaining some historical context.

I hope that makes sense... it really doesn't looking back on it, but *I* know
it was supposed to say!
--
Thanks for reading this nonsense,

Dane Martin

I personally am very excited about these new "Take Along Books" that
Gemstone is going to publish. I think the time is perfect for such a
format with the success that Tokyo Pop and CrossGen have been having
with them. I get the feeling that the majority of these stories will be
Italian? Here in the US we have not had many Italian Disney stories
published so I am not sure whether they will appeal to me or not. I
certainly am excited about the opportunity to find out though! Even if
I find the stories are only a little to my liking, I will be buying this
title every month if for no other reason than to support Gemstone. So
by early 2004 we will be getting every month two prestige titles, two
newsstand titles, and a "Take Along" book! That sounds fantastic to me
and more than I could have hoped for. Every bit of news I get about
Gemstone's plans makes me all the more impressed with their publishing
plans.

I have a few questions. Are the "Take Along Books" going to be sold
in Walmart stores and is this what format Walmart want? If not, I hope
that negotiations are still taking place with them. I think it is very
important to find places other than book stores and comic book stores to
sell Disney comics, and I can't think of a better place than the check
out lines of Walmart stores.

Also, are there still plans for there ultimately being some
"regular" sized trade paperbacks? By regular size I mean a format that
is growing ever more popular in the US. The trade paperbacks are the
same dimensions as a regular newsstand comic, but usually contain about
6 issues of a comic book for a price between $15 and $20. A few weeks
ago on the list someone asked for opinions on what people would like to
see in such a format. I think they would be the perfect format for
collecting stories by such people as Barks, Rosa, Van Horn, etc. in an
archival format. Just for an example, imagine a library of Bark's ten
pagers where you got between 10 and 15 of them per trade paperback at
the cost of say between $15 and $20. Even though I have the entire
Barks library by Gladstone in the album format, I would love to buy
these stories again in a trade paperback format as this format appeals
to me more than the album format. Is there a chance we could see the
entire Barks library that was done in the album format redone in a trade
paperback format? Of course libraries of Barks, Rosa, and Van Horn
could be just the start! There are many other writers and/or artists
that would be great in such a format.

As for my preference for when Donald and Scrooge stories take place
in time, to me the most important thing is a *good* story, no matter
when it takes place. I probably enjoy Don Rosa's stories more than
about any other current Disney creator, and his stories usually take
place sometime in the 1950's unless it is a story about the past of
Scrooge. However at the same time, if a creator makes a Duck story that
obviously takes place in 2003, that is fine with me as well. So a Duck
story that takes place in the present day with computers, fax machine,
etc. is fine with me as long as the story is a *good* story. I imagine
Scrooge would like PCs a lot for at least one thing -- he could save
postage by sending e-mails instead of "snail-mail"! :)

Dean Rekich

W.M. Bernhardt asked:
> Came across this link
> <http://www.bcdb.com/bcdb/detailed.cgi?film=32913&p=c>
> And was wondering if this particular episode was ever
> animated/aired. I guess it would be the very last
> episode for the series, titled Honey I Shrunk the Gizmo
> Suit. If anyone knows anything about this particular
> episode, I would love to hear from you.

If it is the same episode I recall, then yes it was. After
Mrs. Crackshell accidentally shrank the suit while washing
it for her son Fenton, the Nephews and Webby, wore it, calling
themselves the "Gizmo Kids," even defeating the Beagle Boys
while doing so.

-Rich aka Ma Fei Ya (in Shanghai)

I was pondering what a random closet just might be when it dawned on me
applies right here, internetally that is. My 89 day old ibook is a
lemon. And here, for the first 10 or 12 crashes and freezes, I thought
it was me being inept. But no, mac has goofied. So, as ibook is
winging back to warrantyland, I shall be in a virtual random closet.
Smell you later--

Mary O'Benar