Keskustelujen arkisto

I'll tell ya, I'm 48 years old, been reading comics for more than 40 of those, and it takes a lot to bring a smile to my face when I'm reading a comic book these days.

But...last night I was reading the second part of Don Rosa's "Return of the Three Cabelleros" story in WDC&S and I had a silly grin on my face the whole time! Although I enjoy many other comics and their creators, Don's the tops for making me feel like I did when I was reading comics as a kid. It's just so much dang fun!

I especially like seeing Donald hang out with some of his friends, people who respect him for who he is instead of expecting him to do things for them. And he's competent, and he succeeds! The bit where Donald explains what he plans to do with his share of the treasure is pure gold (or silver, maybe). I'm really going to be sorry when this story ends next issue. Are there any more Three C stories in the pipeline?

--your pal, Hoy Murphy

Daniel, Mike:

>> [Treasure of Marco] very interesting! Is there a list somewhere of
>> similarly banned stories?
>
>I once had a list of changes in The Carl Barks Library
[snip]
>I don't
>know if there a list of banned Disney stories available. I believe that
>somewhere in the mid-1990s, some attempts were done by fans. But the
>results got "banned" themselves, by other fans. The thought was that it
>might give Disney a handy list of items that may better be forgotten
>forever.

It sure might. The existence of such lists can often create
controversy where there was NONE before, with very damaging results.
A good example of this kind of thing comes from a Warner Bros
Animation internet fan forum that I like to visit. About three years ago, a
group of fans in that forum began enthusiastically listing Looney Tunes
cartoons that (to paraphrase) "luckily aren't censored or banned yet- but
WOULD be, if Warner realized what controversial material they contain, like
THIS and THIS and THIS! Yep, lucky for us they're still shown on TV intact!"
Some more experienced list members pointed out that writing lists
like this equated to providing censors with ammunition. "Oh, I don't think
so," was the general reply. Fans enjoyed the excitement of personally having
discovered something that might be scandalous to somebody.
Within a few months somebody at Warner discovered the forum and
began reading the lists. Sure enough: instantly, almost all of the relevant
cartoons began to be censored and banned on American TV. I heard the story
from the inside. It ain't pretty, folks.

At various times there have been lists of banned comic stories
inside Disney. Many of us can think of certain duck or mouse tales that one
Disney regime or another has complained about over the years. But regimes
come and regimes go, and different regimes often use different lists (or
start from scratch at determining what they object to).
So it's difficult to know which stories are banned at a given time-
but one thing for sure, there's no way to hurt ourselves worse than by
publicly conjecturing and guessing about individual stories.

Excuse my worried tone, guys but I feel more strongly about this
than about almost any subject we've discussed lately.

Best, David

Timo:
>>> I'm trying to collect together bibliography of Gottfredson related
articles
>>> and interviews.
>>> There is 1968 interview by Malcolm Willits in Vanguard -fanzine, and
then
>>> one in Nemo-magazine from 1984 and Comics Journal #120 from March 1988
by
>>> Arn Saba. Any others? What about articles?

Great idea!

Well, I'm sure you've already have the reference, but just in case (to
complete it?):
"The Man Who Drew the Mouse-- An Interview with Floyd Gottfredson by David
R. Smith" (November 5, 1975);
pp 97-112 of "Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse in Color-- 1930s Disney Comic
Strip Classics";
Another Rainbow Publishing, Inc (Prescott, Az); Pantheon Books (NY), 1988
In addition to this great interview, the book features
- an introduction by Geoffrey Blum, "Mickey's Second Father" (September 20,
1988),
- and "Of Mouse and the Man-- Floyd Gottfredson and the Mickey Mouse
Continuities", by Thomas Andrae

The interview you mention, "Mickey's Chronicler-- An Interview with Floyd
Gottfredson by Malcolm Willits", published in Vanguard # 2 (February 1968),
was reprinted pp 51-54 of "The Malcolm Willits Collection of Mickey Mouse
Paintings by Floyd Gottfredson", published by the Howard Lowery gallery
(Burbank, Ca) for the 1993 Gottfredson paintings auctions.
The booklet also includes
- "The Psychology of the Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse Paintings" by
Richard D. Olson-- which actually tells more the story of Mickey a
Gottfredson's career than it analyzes anything, from what I gather by
quickly skimmig voer it (I don't remember any analysis and don't have time
to read it, but it is pretty clear)
- "Gottfredson and Me" by Malcolm Willits
- and lots of great, large pictures of Floyd Gottfredson, his paintings--
and Carl Barks!

Gladstone Comic Album Series # 17, "Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse-- The World
of Tomorrow" (1989), which also includes a couple of gag-a-day strips and
"?The Pirate Ghostship", had an introduction by Geoffrey Blum-- a short
(1p)presentation & analysis of both stories; I read them again recently,
but haven't re-read the article yet.

The other albums surely had similar introductions by Blum:
#3, "The Lair of Wolf Barker"
#8, "Hoppy the Kangaroo"

In fact, "Walt Disney's The Biggest Big Mickey Mouse" (Gladstone, 199?),
collected a few such albums into one volume.
It has:
- "Mickey Mouse and the Seven Ghosts", without "The Case of the Vanishing
Coats" (part of the original album, as listed in the reprinted credits),
but with a Dick Moores Goofy one-pager and Blum's presentation of "The
Seven Ghosts"
-"Mickey Mouse at the Bar-None Ranch" and a Bill Wright MM one-pager, plus
Blum's presentation
- "Mickey Mouse Monarch of Medioka", with Blum's presentation and a 2p
reprint of the two-week news story in The New York Times regarding the
incident that followed (the strip was censored in Yugoslavia on Dec 1, 1937)
- "Mickey Mouse Sheriff of Nugget Gulch", a Paul Murry Goofy one-pager, and
a Blum presentation

And then, there's Gladstone's "100-page 60th Anniversary Special" issue of
"Mickey Mouse" # 244 (January 1989):
- short story of the strips & presentation of the writers & artists, by
byron Erickson
- Gottfredson self-portrait

I guess there must be some short articles to be found in Gladstone's comics,
especially the prestige WDC&S issues.

Olivier

Olivier:
>Well, I'm sure you've already have the reference, but just in case (to
>complete it?):
>"The Man Who Drew the Mouse-- An Interview with Floyd Gottfredson by David
>R. Smith" (November 5, 1975);

Wow, impressive list you got there, Olivier! Many thanks!
I remembered that David Smiths interview right after I sent my query.

>was reprinted pp 51-54 of "The Malcolm Willits Collection of Mickey Mouse
>Paintings by Floyd Gottfredson", published by the Howard Lowery gallery
>(Burbank, Ca) for the 1993 Gottfredson paintings auctions.

Yes, I have that one, really great paintings! I wonder if Willits took any
photos during his 1968 interview?
And I have also most of those albums you mentioned, I just didn't remember
them containing those articles! Thanks for reminding me!
How about American version of huge volume of Io Topolino -book? I recall
seeing it long ago and it has Floyd's own introduction in it. Am I right?

Timo

^^''*''^^
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Timo Ronkainen ---------------- -
YO-kyl? 52 A 26 --------------- -
20540 Turku ------------------- -
Finland ----------------------- -
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timoro at sunpoint.net

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...............................
"Rumble on, buxom bumble bee!
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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/07/movies/moviesspecial/07CANE.html

September 7, 2003
The Lost Cartoon by Disney and Dalí, Fellow Surrealists
By JOHN CANEMAKER

IN 1937, Salvador Dalí wrote to his fellow Surrealist André Breton about
his trip to California: "I have come to Hollywood and am in contact with
the three great American surrealists ? the Marx Brothers, Cecil B.
DeMille and Walt Disney."

That might have been the end of it, if not for a party at the home of
the producer Jack Warner, in 1945. There, Disney and Dalí ran into each
other again, and, the next year, embarked on one of the 20th century's
least likely artistic collaborations: the creator of Mickey Mouse and
the painter of melting clocks joined forces to create an animated short
titled "Destino" ("Destiny").

Dalí told the press it would be "a magical exposition of the problem of
life in the labyrinth of time." Nervously, Disney translated, calling it
"just a simple story of a girl in search of her real love." For eight
months, they worked on it, until Disney, citing postwar financial
problems, abandoned the project.

In the 57 years since, the unfinished short has acquired the reputation
of a lost masterpiece. "Destino" is as legendary in animation circles as
the phantom footage from "The Magnificent Ambersons" is among movie
buffs. But "Destino" is lost no longer. Next month at the New York Film
Festival, this six-and-a-half-minute legend will finally have its
American premiere.

It has been reconstructed from Dalí's paintings and drawings by a new
generation of filmmakers who were guided by Disney's nephew, Roy E.
Disney, the vice chairman of the Walt Disney Company, and by Dalí's
assistant on the original project, John Hench, who is now 95. It's a far
cry from "Snow White." Dalí's signature incongruities dominate the film;
there are crawling ants, colossal statues, shadowy vistas, a baseball
ballet and, of course, melting clocks. Still, Mr. Hench recalled in an
interview, "Walt approved the general terms, thinking rightly that
whatever Dalí would produce would be an interesting set of images."

In 1945, Dalí was in Hollywood designing sets for the dream sequence in
Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound," painting portraits for the likes of Mr.
and Mrs. Jack Warner and searching for ways to inject the "infekzious
poizun" of Surrealism into mass-market America. Like his Surrealist
colleagues, he recognized that America's animated cartoonists were
unwittingly applying Surrealist principles in their films. Spontaneous
subconscious association, anti-logical juxtaposition of imagery,
unconnected gags and dream logic abound in the work of Max and Dave
Fleischer, Tex Avery and also Disney: his "Pink Elephants on Parade"
sequence in "Dumbo" (1941) is one of American Surrealism's most sublime
moments.

At the same time, Disney was struggling. Because of the war, his
ambitious and hugely expensive features ? "Fantasia" and "Pinocchio" in
1940 and "Bambi" in 1942 ? had not earned any European revenue. His
studio had survived the war years primarily by making training and
propaganda films, which by 1946 were no longer needed. Deeply in debt,
the company was cobbling together "package" films: compilations of
shorts in feature-length format, like "Make Mine Music" (1946).

If Dalí and Disney saw great artistic possibilities in a joint project,
they were also well aware of the publicity potential. "They were both
relentless self-promoters," Roy Disney said in a recent interview.
"Certainly, that was not all there was, but there must have been a
chord."

They were also single-minded workaholics, attracted to animation
because, as Mr. Hench told me in 1994, the medium offered "consistency"
and "control" and the ability to "make your statement pure, not full of
ambiguities."

At first, Disney embraced the project. He was willing to take a
significant artistic and financial risk in order to expand the
possibilities of the animated film, something today's producers of safe,
formulaic, child-friendly animated features would never consider.

"We have to keep breaking new trails," he said. "Ordinarily, good story
ideas don't come easily and have to be fought for. Dalí is
communicative. He bubbles with new ideas."

From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, for weeks, Dalí feverishly turned out
picture ideas and Mr. Hench drew continuity sketches. "His mind was
going furiously," Mr. Hench said. "So many things came up, and so many
things evolved."

Stories about the relationship between Dalí and Disney sprinkle film
history books. There has even been a play about it, "Lobster Alice" by
Kira Obolensky. For eventually the differences between this odd couple
began to overwhelm their similarities. "The picture was not becoming
quite what either of them hoped when they started," wrote the animators
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston in "Disney Animation: The Illusion of
Life." A studio cynic suggested that Disney and Dalí had gotten along
well "because they couldn't understand each other." Another artist
recalled that the baseball section, which to Dalí represented "the
regard of the universe," literally threw Disney a curve. "Jesus Christ,"
he exclaimed after watching it, "$70,000 down the drain!"

When the production was halted, the official reason was that Disney's
distributor, RKO, felt the market for package films had been exhausted.
But two years later RKO released "Melody Time" (1948), another Disney
package film.

Still, economic worries undoubtedly contributed to Disney's caution, Roy
Disney said: "In those postwar years, `Destino' was not what you
expected from Disney." (Of course, it isn't what we expect from Disney
now, either.) "Walt wanted to be an artist," Mr. Disney continued. "But
he got knocked down by `Fantasia,' and the war was brutal. He had to go
and make money."

There were surely ego worries, too. After all, Disney was the man who,
when Orson Welles came to pitch "The Little Prince" to his animators,
told Welles's representative, "There is not room on this lot for two
geniuses." Disney always wanted to maintain total control over his films
and to reshape original material to his liking.

The elegant 2003 version of "Destino," which had its premiere at the
Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France, shows that
Dalí's vision could not be compromised or easily changed. Directed by
Dominique Monfery, this remake closely follows Dalí's original
storyboards, a symbolic exploration of the joy and pain of adult amorous
relationships with constantly metamorphosing images that have the
elusive quality of a sensual dream.

Using traditional hand-drawn animation with limited integration of
computer-generated imagery, "Destino" feels like an experimental film
with big-studio production values. The least Disneyesque film in the
Disney canon, it demonstrates the unlimited and (unfortunately) still
untapped potential of the art of animation.

"Destino" is also a tribute to Walt Disney's daring, a film that
contradicts assumptions about his aesthetic sensibilities. In fact,
Disney, who favored the realistic paintings of Norman Rockwell and
Thomas Hart Benton, also bought Dalí's work and displayed it prominently
at his house in Palm Springs, Calif.

"I believe Walt always regretted not making `Destino,' because it was a
valuable document," Mr. Hench said. "We should have done it."

After Disney dropped the project, Mr. Hench, who is now a Disney
executive, tried to save it by animating a 15-second sample to show him.
This tantalizing bit of film ? two grotesque heads atop tortoise shells
converging to form a ballerina with a baseball head ? was salvaged by
Roy Disney for "Fantasia/2000." But in discussions with the company's
lawyers, Mr. Disney made an interesting discovery: Dalí's contract
stipulated that his original artwork ? 22 oil paintings and scores of
drawings ? would not become Disney property until after the movie was
made.

"They told me that we possess it, but don't own it," Mr. Disney said. So
while the completion of "Destino" was partly motivated by Mr. Disney's
wish to honor the history of the studio ? "Our roots are in art," he
said ? there's also the fact that vintage Dalí art is potentially worth
millions.

So if money was indeed the reason Walt Disney abandoned "Destino" in
1946, money could be the reason Roy Disney has finished it. And nearly
60 years after that fateful party at Jack Warner's house, and 37 years
after his death, Walt Disney continues to prove himself an innovator.

---------------------------------
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Germund:
>There is at least one article that hasn't been mentioned, in a 1976
>issue of The Illustrator. Take a look at the following reference
>page:
>http://www.infography.com/content/517354313525.html

I haven't even heard of it before. Thanks!
Is this about Gottfredson:
Anders Berglund: En Mus om Dagen ("A Mouse a Day"). NAFS(k)uriren, no. 25,
pp. 38-48. Published by NAFS(k), 1995.?

Timo

^^''*''^^
Cartoonist - writer - donaldist -
Timo Ronkainen ---------------- -
YO-kyl? 52 A 26 --------------- -
20540 Turku ------------------- -
Finland ----------------------- -
timoro at hotmail.com
timoro at sunpoint.net

?? Personal:
http://www.geocities.com/timoro2/

?? Ankkalinnan Pamaus:
http://www.perunamaa.net/ankistit/

?? Kvaak-sarjakuvaportaali:
http://www.kvaak.fi
...............................
"Rumble on, buxom bumble bee!
Go sit on a cowslip - far from me!"

_________________________________________________________________
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Searching for something to round up my roder so that the shipping is free, I found Gemstone's "Donald Duck Adventures" #1 & 2 on amazon.fr !
A comic store told me they ahd the first Germstone issues, and I'll go on Thursday, so I may not need order them from amazon; but it's worth remembering, especially if they're cheaper.

Olivier

Olivier wrote:

> "Il Grande Floyd Gottfredson-- Una Vita Con Topolino", by Leonardo
> Gori & Francesco Stajano; Editrice Comic Art, November 1998. I need
> to find a way to get it. Why doesn't amazon.fr carry it? :( And why
> isn't there an Italian amazon? :\

Yeah, why isn't there one? I've always wondered :-(

Anyway there's the other Italian book about Gottfredson:

- "Floyd and Mickey",
by Alberto Becattini;
Editrice Comic Art,
November 1998.

--
Francesco
http://www.dimensionedelta.net/scarpa/
"Vi faccio vedere *io* chi sono *io*!! *Io* vi compro la fabbrica e
*tutto*!!"
~ Scrooge, from I TL 174-A