Disney-comics digest #243.

[David A Gerstein]

	Dear Folks,

	Jon Lorentzen complained about 

	"THE SUNTANNED MOUSE:  Is this a strictly Norwegian 
phenomena, or have Mickey and Goofy gotten hideous tans in the 
foreign Disney Comics as well?  The trend started a year ago..."

	I'm surprised you say a year ago, when Egmont makes the
Norwegian comics virtually identical to the German and Danish ones.
In Germany and Denmark, the Mouse began having a pink face on and off
around 1990.  Yes, in old and new stories both....

	Meanwhile in the U. S., Mickey's face was white until 1990,
but when Disney Comics started up, they began to color his face pink.
In late 1992, it actually went from pink to *brown* -- I had
seldom seen Mickey with such a dark face until then.  They even
colored the very earliest Mickey this way -- a reprinted story from
1931 gave Mickey that brown face, and he looked just bizarre.  (I mean
"Circus Roustabout" in WDC&S 585)

	When Gladstone took over again in 1993, they began giving
Mickey a white face again.  I actually find that the modern Mickey
looks better to me with a pink -- *LIGHT* pink -- face, but that the
early Mickey is far superior with a white one.

	I think this is because with his later largely-white eyes,
Mickey lost a lot of the contrast that had been on his facial design
when he had pie-slice eyes.  Nothing really draws you to his face when
most of it is just pale white.  It's those pie-slice eyes that draw
me to the early Mickey, and I actually think the later Mickey looks
better with a *SLIGHTLY* pink face.

	"Soon, all the Mickey Characters (Goofy, Clarabelle, 
Minnie etc.) got this hideous colour in their face."

	Same happened with Disney's Disney comics over here.
Gladstone's given them back their "old look" -- but they do *not*
color Peg-Leg Pete consistently even now.  In WDC&S 588, he had a pink
face, but in 589 and 590 (later parts of the same 1944 story) he got a
white one.  Pete looks better with a pink one... he NEVER had a white
face on screen when color came in, whereas Mickey kept his for a few
years (during the era that Gladstone obviously wants to recapture).

	* * * * * 

	Tryg commented that he had a list of U$ 1-83 with reprint
status of everything through Whitman.  If he sends it to me, I can add
what I remember offhand of post-Whitman reprints, then toss it on to
Per.  Same for WDC&S, although what I'd really like the most is a copy
of Don's *whole* index complete with the pre-Barks issues.

	(Just so you know, BTW, the Barks DD in WDC&S 31 was *not* the
first original comic for WDC&S -- Thumper had an original story in
WDC&S 29, by Ken Hultgren, and I believe *that* to be the first.  It
was reprinted in WDC&S 547 back in 1990.)

	* * * * *

	Someone noted that the recent foreign reprint of Gottfredson's
"An Education for Thursday" has raised protest.  I am not surprised.
The story has its good moments, but only if you don't imagine Thursday
to be like ANY real human being.  No one looks or acts like that.
Unfortunately, anyone who takes him as BEING representative of real
Africans -- which he was supposed to be -- finds the prejudice in the
story.  I will never claim that Gottfredson, my favorite Disney
creator, was not prejudiced, because he most certainly was.  I would
NEVER advocate reprinting the Thursday stories in comic books today.  I
only hope that one day a complete Gottfredson reprint series will
appear, and when and if that does show up (maybe decades from now), it
should include the stories.

	* * * * *

	That's all, folks.

	David Gerstein

	"I'm the Fuller Brush Man!  I'm givin' g'way free semple!"
	<David.A.Gerstein at Williams.edu>