Disney-comics digest #519.

[DAVID.A.GERSTEIN]

      BOB:  The "Voodoo Hoodoo" album is already out, and from what 
John tells me, the story is identical to its 1989 reprint, which if I 
recall has four relatively minor textual changes, the ring removed 
from Bombie's nose, the big lips removed from Donald's native 
bearers in the safari scenes, and Foola Zoola's pointed teeth being 
mostly covered by a moustache.  The story is basically intact, just 
as good as ever.
      The reference to Scottish miserliness was in "Micro-Ducks from 
Outer Space."  Scrooge's reference to "tiny coins no bigger than a 
Scotchman's tip" was changed to "...no bigger than one of my tips," 
which doesn't sound bad, but maybe a bit forced.
      Are you saying that in WDC 34 (the Cannibal story) that use of 
'Jazzbo' was originally SAMBO??!  Ye gods, I thought the version I'd 
seen was already so tasteless that it couldn't get worse.  So even 
the CBL wasn't the original version on that?

      HARRY:  If you, too, would have liked to have seen Don's 
Dutchman keep his dialect in US 290, then we have a chance to make 
sure it's used in the eventual album edition.  Being from the 
Netherlands yourself, all you have to do is give me, in writing, some 
statement of the type that you would have liked to see it used, 
because you're Dutch (or some such thing) and I can deliver it to 
Russell Schroeder at Disney (the fellow who 'proofreads' Gladstone's 
comics... I know him, now).  If you'd like to do this, we can take 
care of it when I'm there to visit you next month.
      Of course, maybe you are glad that the Dutchman DIDN'T keep his 
dialect!  I don't know, for sure.
      What Disney seems to have done is look at how black folks feel 
oppressed by stereotypes, assumed all dialect = stereotype, and put 
together a house rule that "it must be like that with every race and
nationality, hence no dialect can be used in Gladstone comics."
       DISNEY's comics were LOADED with dialect!  Particularly the 
Disney Afternoon titles (and of those, particularly "Chip 'n' Dale's 
Rescue Rangers") had stronger French and German dialects than 
any other Disney comics I've ever read!  And there was a story 
called "Sebastian in Scotland" in which the Scots were sometimes 
even hard to understand.

      DON:  "I think Disney would not allow it because there was some 
danger of copyright infringement if the entire line were used, believe it 
or else."  I KNOW this is the case.  I went through hell in my recent 
story "In Macavity's Shadow," writing a tale based on T. S. Eliot 
that never quoted a full stanza from any one poem!

      I'll return, folks.

      David Gerstein
      <9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>