Lots of comments

[H.W. Fluks]

Hi everybody, I'm back.

I have been on a course in Groningen for the past 1 1/2 weeks. I couldn't
read my own mail there, but one of my colleagues had a mailbox, and Per
was kind enough to give him a temporary subscription. My colleague gave me
a print-out of the digest every day, so I could live through the dull
moments of the course. I can't miss this mailing list a week!

There have been a lot of things going on, and I have a lot of replies.
For those who want to skip the rest of this message: I will reply
to Don, Andreas, Paulo, Fredrik, Torsten, Daniel, Dwight, Per (in that order).

DON:
Two weeks ago, when you couldn't read your mail, John Lustig posted
your joint statement with Grandey and gave his own comments. Others also
commented on that. After you returned, all you said was "I didn't miss
anything, did I?"
Is that *really* the only thing you have to say? At least tell us
that you have read it all. Then maybe we really can close the subject.

Oh, and congratulations on your award. Though I think a Disney comic
cannot be compared with any super-hero comic, it's nice to see Scrooge
comes out best, _if_ they are compared.

ANDREAS:
Glad to see you're still around, though in a new profession (maybe you
know Menno Verhoeven?). I don't have any dutch DD weekly of 1953. So maybe
I'm not a serious collector? I think a normal price for a '53 issue would
be 5 guilders. Maybe something extra for an (almost) complete year.
But I'm not interested myself. My maximum price would be 1 guilder.

PAULO:
You re-posted an old message which I only partly answered. The rest of the
answer was still on my "to do" list...
Where your translation says "illegal", the original just says "unfair".
This really sounds like a straight translation from Dutch to Portuguese
by someone who doesn't know Dutch. The Dutch editor usually delivers their
stories with Dutch dialogue, unless they *happen* to have an English
translation at hand.

FREDRIK:
I think I have to update the database for Van Horn story titles.
Would you send me an updated "van-horn" index? (I can't ftp that easily.)

TORSTEN:
I hope you will be able to read this before the end of the century...
> I wondered about the "new" Junior Woodchucks stories being redrawn by
> Van Horn (or someone else).

Those stories were redrawn by JIPPES. DAAN JIPPES. NOT Van Horn. NOT for
Egmont or Gladstone, but for the Dutch editor, GP. They think the original
drawings by Tony Strobl and Kay Wright are not up to their standards.
And though Strobl's art was reasonable and Wright's was _almost_ not bad,
Jippes' art is SO MUCH BETTER! He really inks the stories the way Barks
intended it, in a style much like Barks' 1960's style.
Daan Jippes is the "master copier": his Barks is Barkser than Barks. But
also: his Uderzo is Uderzoer, his Franquin is Franquiner, etc.

I even think part of the success of Gladstone's first run of comics were
the excellent covers drawn by Jippes. Jippes continuously draws the covers
for the Dutch album series "The best stories of Donald Duck" (since 1976!)
and that series is one of the best selling Dutch comic book series.
The covers just LOOK so good, you would want to buy an album just for
the cover.
So remember: DAAN JIPPES. DAAN. JIPPES.

About the re-inked JW stories: yes, they got new codes: H 9201, H 9202 and
others. In some of the reprints (in Germany and the USA at least), the
H-code was removed and the original JW-code put in stead.
You can find a list of re-inked stories in the file "Barks.story-index",
as part of the Disney comics Database. (Available through ftp or WWW.)

You also asked:
> Does the database note all the issues that a story appeared in?
Yes, it does, as far as we listed the issues! An indexer lists the
contents of a comic. My database programs then generate a list of
stories and where they were reprinted.

And we also note changes in stories (like censoring), as far as the
indexer of a particular issue noticed it, or if someone else noticed
it afterwards.

DANIEL:
You're way too polite to people who call this an "idiot mailing list".
People like that deserve to receive the entire archives, database, and
other ftp files, and the obligation to READ it all.
After all, we are NOT idiots, are we? Although... I had a hard time
explaining to my colleague last week why I wanted to receive e-mail
messages about Disney comics. "What on earth is there to discuss
about DISNEY comics? Disney COMICS? That children's stuff?"

TORSTEN again:
Do you really think David Gerstein changed his name to Larry?
Do you really think hemp can be grown in Holland?

About the German version of Don Rosa's family tree: the guy that was
hidden behind a bird was not DONALD's father, but HDL's father.
This tree is mentioned in our special "don-rosa" index file, which
hasn't been updated in months!

> Are the text stories indexed?

Yes and no. In the Dell data delivered by Kjell Crone and David Gerstein,
text stories are listed. They are indicated with a 't' behind the page
count. In data delivered by others (like Becattini), the text stories are
not always there. I think it's not that important to have them listed,
but if someone lists them, I won't delete that data.

> Are there any holes in the index from the late Whitman era

Yes, there's ONE BIG HOLE: we have almost no issue listings from the
Gold Key or Whitman era. Only a few comics that Anders Engwall or I happen
to own. There is still a lot of indexing to be done!

But we DO have a lot of data about particular stories from that era.
For instance, for SuperGoof 2 we have:

W SG    2-?1  32       BOg PM      SG  T:The Strange Case of Dr. Syclocks
W SG    2-?2   1       VL  PM      SG  D:Big Game
W SG    2-?3   1       VL  PM      SG  D:Knotty Problem

This information came from various reprints of those stories and gags,
either by Gladstone or in Europe. The question mark in the story code
"W SG 2-?1" denotes that we have no data from the original "SG 2" comic.
One would guess the data for SG 2 is quite complete, but we're not 100%
sure, and we also don't know the correct ORDER of the stories in the comic.

So if someone wants to index missing comics: look in the database files
what we already have, this can save you some typing. Or better: contact
me. I may have more data than is in the current public version of the
database. We're continuously working on it...

DWIGHT:
I envy you. You've met the famous Fabio Gadducci! I hope I can meet him
too, one day. 8-)

ALL/PER:
Last week I sent Per an update of the Swedish files of the Disney comics
database. Anders Engwall gave me a lot of updates, especially on Barks
and Rosa stories. Also, there is a new British index, made by David
Gerstein.
I think Per made those files available through ftp and/or WWW.

Well, that was only about 150 lines. I'm glad I was only away for 1.5 weeks!
--Harry.