Of Panels and Proofs and Puffed-Up WDC&S

[Larry Gerstein]

        ALL:
        The reason I only occasionally show up on this Digest, while
continuing to answer private mail fairly promptly, is simple.  My Santa
Barbara E-Mail account is at my Dad's office.  He prints out private
letters to me and brings them home, whereupon I give him the answers saved
on a disk and he sends them to you.  But it would take a ton of paper (and
time) for Dad to print out the Digests too, so I only look at and respond
to them when I come to his office in person, which is about once a week.

        COMIC-CON NEWS!
        "Disney Comics:  What's All the Quacking About?" will now be on
Friday, July 28, at 4 PM -- this is the first time I've actually posted a
date and time.  As of now, I'm still waiting to hear the final word from
Daan Jippes, cover artist Russell Schroeder, and our own Dave Rawson and
Janet and Michael T. Gilbert, but I will be having Don Rosa, John Lustig,
Ron Fernandez, Pat Block, Byron Erickson, and John Clark by for a chat with
Mouse and Duck fans who care to come by.  So why not join us?  Future
Convention bulletins will contain updated information.

        GREG:
        _The Life of Donald Duck_ is a work of fiction, telling Donald's
biography in a rather Wodehousian manner as if he were a real person who
grew up and became an actor.  The book was written before DD comics had any
kind of continuity at all, so it invents its own life for Donald.  It's
beautifully illustrated with a lot of (uncredited) publicity stills from
various cartoons, but it dates from the period when everyone thought Walt
Disney drew all the cartoons personally and doesn't have anything remotely
resembling a historian's attitude toward Donald.
        I don't know what the Barks interview with Donald is like --
presumably Tony Anselmo as Donald trading barbs with Barks, but I can't
imagine the interview is much more than a rather weird novelty.  (Not that
I wouldn't like to hear it sometime.)

        DANIEL:
        Did I make a video tape of "Scrooge McDuck and Money"?  >Gasp!<  No
chance!  IMHO it's an AWFUL cartoon!  I've done lots of videotaping lately,
but mainly to fill my MM collection.
        There are four archives of American-made Disney comics material in
the United States.  In a large building shaped roughly like a trailer (and
referred to as "Trailer 18," or something like that, as a result) on the
Disney lot are proofs to most Dell Disney comics since the early 1940s. 
Most, but not all.  There's an envelope for each individual comic which is
supposed to contain proofs to it, but - for example - the envelope for
Mickey Mouse Four Color #16 only contains a proof to the front cover of it,
and the envelope for WDC&S #42 contains only the inside pages, not the
cover.  They have NO material for any WDC&S issues prior to #31, the first
Barks issue.  No one really seems to know what they have in this trailer
and what they don't.  The proofs are all letter-size, 8 1/2 by 11 paper and
Disney claims that they got them from Whitman in the mid-1980s.
        The second archive consists of some filing cabinets that, in 1991,
were in the Disney Publishing building (I don't know if they're still
there).  One contained (all?) X- and S-coded stories.  (Another contained a
large number of D-stories through those of the mid-1980s, because at that
time Egmont was required to send proofs to Disney of what they produced....
but we're off track here, now.)
        The third archive is at (appropriately enough) the Disney Archives.
 Access to this is restricted;  Alberto Becattini, for example, has
sometimes gotten access to it, but not at other times.  I don't really know
what they purport to have, but their holdings include some pre-Barks issues
of WDC&S as well as a cover proof to WDC&S 42.  I don't know if Disney
Comics Inc. was aware of this archive, because when Bob Foster couldn't
find the cover to WDC&S 42 in Trailer 18, he had it reinked from a printed
copy when he wanted to reprint it.
        The fourth archive is at Western Publishing (Whitman), and I have
no idea what it may cover.  Their holdings include inside pages on Four
Color 16 (or so I have been told) as well as some backup stories from 1940s
WDC&S which are missing from Trailer 18;  Bob had to order one chapter of
the serialized "Mickey Mouse and the 'Lectro Box" from them, for instance,
when it wasn't in the envelopes in the Trailer.
        I'm almost willing to bet that the Disney Comics archive and the
Trailer 18 archive were once one and the same, but what was presumed to be
the rarer material (like the pre-Barks WDC&S issues) was taken out and
moved to the Disney Archives.  Of course, rarity is in the eye of the
beholder, and I think that having the stuff at two sites only creates
confusion.  But maybe these two archives were never the same, and I'm just
jousting at windmills.
        I don't know which of these four archives the original proofs to
"The Hard Loser" came from, but I don't think it was Trailer 18 (the proofs
were oversized, unlike those I saw in the trailer).

        MIKE:
        I didn't like the newsprint cover on DDMM 1 either.  It even
wrinkles with heat if you hold it in your hands for too long!  While I
won't refuse to buy comics that are like this, I don't like them much
either.  I'd rather pay $2 for normal comics, $3 for 52-pagers and $4 for
68-pagers rather than pay the old price for less than I've been getting
until now.

        DON:
        Happy Birthday!
        Don't worry.  Your stories won't ALL appear in WDC&S, because with
its bimonthly schedule, it will only be able to handle two of them each
year!  Since you seem to be doing about five long stories annually, that
means that you'll still be able to take up some space in various other
titles.
        If the Taliaferro reprints are to move to the new expanded WDC&S
(how long is this title going to be?  64 pages?  80 pages?) too, that means
we'll finally see the 10+ Danish and Dutch Donald stories I translated and
rewrote for Gladstone, which they've been sitting on since 1993.  I think
the new WDC&S, whatever its merits or faults, is going to be a big plus for
fans of the European stories.
        I just hope someone buys these expanded comics.  I, for one, have
seen plenty of kids buying WDC&S in the past.  When Disney Comics took a
poll in 1992, they found that something like two-thirds of its audience
consisted of kids (perhaps defined as 18 and under?  I don't know).  I
think kids will like these new WDC&Ses, too, but will they be able to
afford them?
        The sound you next hear will be my hands sealing an envelope with a
subscription form for WDC&S, so I can wangle myself a bargain before the
price goes way up.

        David Gerstein
        <gerstein at math.ucsb.edu>
        "Have a chestnut, boys! -- OW!"

gerstein at math.ucsb.edu