News from Italy (by two authors)

Fabio Gadducci gadducci at DI.UniPi.IT
Sat Dec 17 19:23:36 CET 1994


      Hi, Folks!

      Maybe you think I'm Fabio Gadducci, But it's me, David Gerstein.  I'm
in Pisa today and have been having a fine visit with Fabio (who's been kind
enough to board me) as well as with Luca Boschi and Alberto Becattini.  But
you're not wrong if you at first assumed that this WAS a letter from Fabio,
because he'll be joining me here just shortly.  Several things have
occurred:

      I HAVE LOCATED PAGE PROOFS TO CARL BARKS' "DARKEST AFRICA" ART in an
obscure Italian "complete Barks" BW series of years ago.  Some pages are
better than others in quality.  The quality is quite mediocre, but they
don't look worse than the CBL version of "Too Many Pets" -- in fact, that's
what the general quality reminds me of the most.  The worst-looking pages
are the first few, which Jippes did an excellent job of mimicking (I've
compared them), so Gladstone could perhaps keep the Jippes versions.  On
the other hand, many of Dick Vlottes' worst-reinked pages are among the
sharper pages here.
      The album containing the story was just solicited this month and is
still, thus, four months from publication.  DON -- IF YOU CAN, PLEASE TRY
TO REACH JOHN CLARK AND SEE IF HE CAN STOP THE PRESSES HERE.  I will try to
reach him Monday but may not succeed.
      Fabio and I will be looking into "Race to the South Seas."  The
Italian big white books have used Barks' original art, but it is unusable
(horribly muddy -- that version reached the U. S. in 1983's Abbeville _DD
AND HIS NEPHEWS_).  We will see about whether this same reprint series
included a better version.

      Fabio has the Italian book some of you spoke of which contains
"Horsing Around..." in both English and Italian.  IMHO, this is better than
many of Barks' mid-1960s tales, but not much.  There's a big logic flaw --
Barks' dialogue explains quite clearly that what is discovered is the REAL
Trojan Horse.  So how did the BEAGLE BOYS find it?  It's never explained.
Then, the dialogue has some wit but is far below, say, what Rosa, Geoffrey
Blum or Van Horn himself can do with interesting lingo.  In all, it's still
above a lot of Egmont stuff.  (Fabio says, "You are too kind to that
story."  He also wonders, rightly, why the Beagle Boys didn't take the
Trojan Horse for themselves, due to its great value, rather than merely
using it for a trick on Scrooge.)  He's sitting next to me, here.)

      Why doesn't Fabio take over the writing for a bit?

        *  *  *  *  *

      So, it seems I'm not a lurker anymore.

      As usual, I had a lot of things to do for my Ph.D. work, and was not
able to write any mail for a while. There are a lot of things I'd like to
talk about, raised in the latest digests:  about the Big Pocket Editions,
as an example -- they started in Italy in 1957, btw -- and about that great
artist Harry likes so much, Gius..... whoops...
      Btw, Harry, David has your Index!!! Yes, I know, you feel such
anticipation. And for all you who has to receive stuff from me:  I ask
forgiveness.  Actually, finally I have all the things I have to send you,
Ole: they will leave next week.  About Ron: I received your Collector
issues a month ago.  But when I went to the post office, they didn't know
anything about the stuff I sent you.  Anyway, just in case, I bought again
those issues in Lucca at the convention:  if at the end of the year you
have't yet received anything, please let me know, and I'll send you another
pack with those issues.  One last thing for Don, before passing again the
keyboard to David:  I just received your packet. It is really nice, and
next Monday I'll send the stuff to the magazine. It will arrive in time, or
so they told me.  Actually, the sad thing is that I haven't yet received
that Gladstone album... I hope it wasn't lost in the mail...
      Ooopppsss, truly the last thing:  did you receive your comic book,
Elon? I sent it a lot of time ago... And yes, I just received your Tio
Patinhas comics. Quite interesting...

      Ahhh, that's enough. And now, something completely different...

        *  *  *  *  *

      I'm back, folks.  Fabio and I have been told that another Rosa story
did appear in Italy at some point several YEARS ago -- one of the early AR
stories with Neighbor Jones, and we don't know which one.  We also don't
know which comic it appeared in.  I have looked for it in bins of dusty
PAPERINO MESE issues, but without luck.

      On the Disney's-banning-policy front:  Some early Gottfredson stories
involve guns being fired.  Barks showed guns being fired in "North of the
Yukon" and "Ghost of the Grotto."  Maybe in "The Golden Helmet," too?  A
Paul Murry DD story in DDOS 300 (reprinted by Gladstone in DDCD 3) about
firefighting, shows Scrooge firing at Donald.  A 1932 Bucky strip has BB
and Bo as tramps looking for work, and one home's irate owner fires a gun
at them for absolutely no reason except that they are bums.  And a 1936 AT
Three Pigs story has Practical firing a loaded blunderbuss at Zeke from
underneath (as the wolf is climbing down a tree), and sends him up again,
fast.
      Aside from the Bucky story, I'd say that there is a reasonable
motivation of desperation or particularly horrid villainy behind what the
villains do.  Only in the two AT stories do characters actually get hit by
the bullets, and they only end up bruised.

      That's it for now, gang.  I'll be back in a couple of weeks, and now
that I've mentioned "Darkest Africa," everything else can wait 'til then.

      Ciao!

      David Gerstein + Fabio Gadducci
      <gadducci at di.unipi.it>
      <9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>


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Fabio Gadducci            Dip. di Informatica
Home: +39-50-541725       Universita` di Pisa
Off.: +39-50-887268       Corso Italia 40, 56100 PISA (ITALY)
FAX:  +39-50-887226       E-mail:gadducci at di.unipi.it
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