Keskustelujen arkisto

I wrote a message on this last week, but it was lost in electronicland somehow, and I did not feel like doing it over again; here goes now...

D23 has been publishing three daily Disney strips for several months now:
Mickey Mouse
Donald Duck
Scamp

All were affected by a glitch once, and skipped a few days of continuity, but the mistake was corrected and the gap filled.
The second time it occurred, however, a huge chunk of "Mickey Mouse in Death Valley" was obliterated and it just went on, so that the story was most incomplete.

My favorite strip has been Donald Duck, which is always funny, sometimes hilariously so.

I was familiar with the Scamp one-pagers published by Gladstone, and I liked them a lot, so I was glad to see the dailies.
Unfortunately, they started weakly and remained fairly uninteresting for a rather long time.

The strip was written as a strict continuity; if I remember correctly, the various stories were:
- naming the pups
- Tramp looking for food but hanging around late with his pals
- sliding down a snowy slope into a frozen lake
- the young lady dog and the dog show
- the boy who wanted to adopt Scamp
- the lost little boy

The problem with these was that the writer(s) did not seem to know what to do with their stories, whatever the span, nor how to make good use of good ideas; this led to a lot of padding and plodding around.

For example, "tramp looks for food but spends the night chatting" seemed to last forever.

In another instance, Scamp was scared by the night and one mysterious creature, which turned out to be an owl-- end of story: no frightened exploration of the garden; the mystery was not sustained over several days but lasted a mere two or three strips; nothing about all that might scare a puppy in the night; and nothing done with the owl, who just flew away, never to return.

A third example would be the "lost little boy" story; Scamp helps "Uncle Trusty" track him down because Trusty has lost his sense of smell; "where's my mommy? / here's the scent! / follow the dog! / what's that pup doing here?" was repeated over several strips, but it all amounted to nothing much, as the boy was eventually found by the police and the dogs were ignored.

Fortunately, after a few gags following up on the "can't smell a thing, but I tell big stories about my smelling feats" theme, the strip switched to a looser kind of continuity (starting May 11, 1956, I would say): rather than a thin plot stretched over weeks and strict continuity of the dailies, the writers came up with one-shot gags stringed together by a theme over a short period, or even no common theme at all, just like the Donald Duck dailies:
- Scamp and Trusty
- daily life (playing, bath)
- hot dog vendor (one day)
- doors (one day)
- flowers (one day)
- the tall dog
- being a watchdog
- strange noise (one day)
- the squirrel
- the kitten (current continuity, starting June 11, 1956)

The strip is now as enjoyable as Donald Duck.
My favorite one was published yesterday (June 14, 1956):
http://d23.disney.go.com/library/images/Scamp_6-14-56_sm.jpg

Thanks for the correction, Lars; this was all by memory.
And how do you like the strips?