Van Horn's Orange Juice & More About DuckTales

JALustig@aol.com JALustig at aol.com
Fri Oct 20 06:12:18 CET 1995


David:
     You asked about a Donald Duck orange juice carton that had a William Van
Horn gag on it. I asked Bill about this and he said he did five of these last
year and another one several years before. All of them were written by Bob
Foster.

BTW, thanks (and also thanks to Jorgen) for identifying the 42-page European
edition of the DuckTales graphic novel as being a revised version of the
62-page American edition that I did. David, if we both make it to San Diego
next year maybe you can bring along the European version so I can take a
look. I've got to admit I'm curious to see how it turned out. Was the
European version printed with larger pages to offset the reformatting? Or was
the art just cropped and reduced to fit in the extra tiers? Sigh! There's so
many things about that project I wish I could change now.

To be honest, I've come to the conclussion that comic book adaptions of
movies are usually a mistake. I think they really made sense decades
ago--back in the days before everyone had video tape players. Comic book
adaptions of movies have often been nothing more than pale versions of the
original films. Still, they were better than nothing. Today, however, with
nearly every major modern movie on video tape I'm not sure what purpose a
comic book adaption fills. The only advantage a comic might have is that it's
probably easier to find a specific scene than on a video tape. (Of course, a
well-indexed laser disc would have the edge even there.)

I'm not trying to imply that movies are superior to comics. But when someone
buys a comic book-adaption of a movie they are--I presume--trying to
recapture the movie experience. For that--I would think--a video or laser
disc version of the movie would be superior.

Personally, a comic book adaption of a movie would interest me a lot more if
it was in someway different from the movie. If it could add something to the
original movie's story, take a different viewpoint or even dramatise the
story from different camera angles--these are all things that might help a
comic book adaption stand on its own.

At least, it's what I might find interesting. I'd be very interested to know
what other members on the list think. Are comic book adaptions of movies
something you really want to see these days? And, if so, should the adaptions
be as close as posssible to the original movie? Or should they try to retell
the story of the movie in a new way--even at the risk of changing some events
in the movie?

On to another DuckTales subject! Someone awhile back was asking about which
issue of Disney's DuckTales Magazine had Don Rosa's four-page story "Back in
Time for a Dime!" I finally got around to unearthing my collection and found
the story. It's in the "Spring 1990" issue. Once again I want to emphasize
that it's in a magazine and has not--as far as I know--ever been printed in
any regular comic books. The same goes for my two stories which appeared in a
couple of other issues of that magazine.

---John Lustig


Also thank for SD panel.



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