Disney-comics digest #657.

9475609@arran.sms.ed.ac.uk 9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk
Tue May 9 07:59:15 CEST 1995


AUGIE:
>It's like DuckTales and Lo$ are linked now, in possibly bringing 
>someone back to the comics.  I hope he decided to jump on the 
>bandwagon. =)
Are they linked?  More so than you'd think.
DON AND EVERYONE ELSE:  I read it in some animation magazine that Disney 
TV animation is considering MAKING A DUCKTALES FEATURE FILM OF YOUR 
LO$!!!  I don't know if there is any truth in this rumor, but since you 
have worked with them before, Don, I think that THE TIME IS NOW for you 
to get back in touch with Disney TV.  You don't want to see your own 
story cliche-ized for the tube, and you bet they'll listen to the 
story's AUTHOR, if no one else.

HARRY:
>This week in Dutch DD weekly: your story "Two in One". Colouring is
>beautiful.
YYYEEESS!  Well, the mail strike is OVER NOW, so go ahead and send "Two 
in One" my way.  Actually, can you send me two (!) copies?  If the 
coloring is as good as you say, maybe I'll send it to Gladstone to 
influence their coloring whenever they print the story.  (They'll 
hopefully not put GREEN cuffs on Scrooge's coat though ;-)

WILMER:
>I have only one comment to make on Van Horn's artwork - I **really** 
>don't like the shapes of the ducklings' heads.  They look like bubbles 
>with tiny bills stuck on.
And this is more obvious in "Horsing Around" (where IMHO the nephews are 
by far the worst thing about the art) than anywhere else.  Van Horn drew 
very nice nephews for a long time;  now in some of his most recent 
stories (including this one) he tries to make them look, it would seem, 
a little more like Barks' versions.  They look scrawnier and more frail 
now, and their beaks almost come off as froglike.  Please, give us the 
old, more dynamic Van Horn nephews again!

HORSING AROUND WITH HISTORY
has made it over here in its Gladstone printing now.  I felt that the 
story read, unmistakably, as a Barks story.  The feeling of the wording 
was unmistakably Barks.  But again, the story is just inadequate.  It 
wouldn't be bad if it didn't end when it did -- if, like someone 
suggested, there was a duel in the money bin.  But we build ourselves up 
here for a climax which never occurs.
      At least now I know that the BBs knew nothing about the Trojan 
Horse before U$ found it.  Whew!  (Or is that... "phew"?)  But I don't 
like how vague their motivation is.  At the beginning, it's not clear 
why they're spying on Scrooge, although I suppose they suspected he was 
about due to head off on a treasure hunt.  Later on, as Geoff Blum 
mentioned in his article, it isn't clear whether the Beagles should 
really be after Scrooge's bin contents or the horse itself.  And 
finally, as our own Rick Engle mentioned, why didn't the Beagles take 
advantage of that "whinny"?  I hadn't thought about it before, but THIS 
is perhaps the biggest oversight of them all.  In fact, if the BBs had 
whinnied while INSIDE the horse, it might have been a good way for them 
to reveal themselves and set the stage for an expanded ending.
      The text makes this story feel like a Barks tale of the early 
1950s, but the story itself feels like a weaker 1960s effort.

EVERYBODY:
      The WWW page now has a new feature which Per and I have added, 
still in its early stages.  Let's say you're looking through our 
database index of Gladstones and see an issue you haven't read with some 
interesting-looking Danish, Dutch, or original AR stories inside.  Would 
you like to know what these stories are like prior to searching out the 
issue?  Well, I've written capsule summaries of about 200 
Danish/Dutch/AR/K stories (1-pagers not included) and now if you plug 
some codes from our Database lists into our "look up a story by code" 
program, you can read a newly-written SUMMARY of the story you want!
      I've restricted my summaries to stories reprinted in the United 
States, although I may soon add some I've read in British editions.  
Also, there aren't summaries for a handful of stories I couldn't 
remember the plots of offhand.

      Enjoy!

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




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