digests 808 - 829 (that's a LONG msg!)

Frank Stajano fms at cam-orl.co.uk
Sun Oct 29 22:06:20 CET 1995



DON-807:

>I think that's enough... after all, I see my 3-parters as ONE-parters that
>have been torn into three sections, but will someday be printed as they 
were
>intended... that's why I do extra art for them to help them "heal" their 
wounds.

In Italian Disney comics, stories that are longer than about 30 pages are 
practically always split into sections. Authors know this and tend to end a 
section on a suspence situation, with a small text block saying things to 
the effect of "What's going to happen now? You'll know in seven days!". 
These stories are later reprinted in the CWD (Classici di Walt Disney) and 
similar series, which we mentioned recently. When they are reprinted, this 
text block is edited so as to smooth out the transition ("What's going to 
happen now? Turn the page to find out!") and the splash panel of the next 
page is removed. But there are worse cases. Sometimes they act even more 
drastically, especially when the second section starts with a splash panel 
of less than one page: they then cut out the last panels of the first 
section and the first ones of the next, joining them with some Perego-style 
connection that pretends to restore the missing bits. I hate this! I wish 
they'd reprint stories faithfully. Is it really that bad to have another 
title panel in the middle of a story? I would actually LIKE to see the 
second installment's opening panel, with its new title and its tiny summary 
of the previous section, highlighting what the author(s) thought were the 
crucial points of the story so far. (This is, of course, assuming that the 
story was CONCEIVED around its two-section structure. It's like saying that 
I want to read Gottfredson's stories in 1x4 strip form, and not in 
reformatted 3x2 or 4x2 album format. Because the authors KNEW that there 
would be a break after every strip, and they conceived the strips on a 
rythm that takes advantage of this, with a "punch line" or a suspence 
ending or a gag at the end of every strip.) But I guess I am (we are) in a 
minority here, and editors are driven by their target population of 
hundreds of thousands of "kids". Poor "kids": why should we assume by 
default that they would not like their comics to be given proper 
philological treatment? OK, they may be too young to know better, but why 
should they be annoyed by faithful and accurate reprints?

In your case, Don, from what you say the thing seems to go the other way 
round: the story as you'd like to produce it is a very long 40-50 page 
adventure, the sort of stuff that in the French and Belgian tradition would 
be published in a self-contained album like Asterix; instead, editorial 
requirements force you to split it into sections, and you long for the day 
when, thanks to another publisher, it will see the light in one long 
episode. My comments still apply. What I'd like is to see the story as its 
author(s) intended it to be, without bits added or removed to fit in with 
the requirements of a different publication than the one it was originally 
planned for. What I mean is this: I don't think that asking an author to 
produce a story as daily strips, or as installments < 20 pages, or as any 
other imaginable BUT WELL-DEFINED format is in any way a limitation; I 
liken it to the "constraint" of writing in hendecasyllabic verses, which 
does not prevent a poet from producing a masterpiece. Form can stylise 
contents without constraining it. What I do object to, however, is CHANGING 
that form afterwards in reprints, behind the back of the authors, when the 
contents has already been moulded into the originally requested form. This, 
I think, is a literary crime. It would be like reprinting that poem using 
octosyllabic verses because the new magazine has narrower text columns.


DON-809:

>I don't know if my original script said "man" or "duck", or what the
>official script said... [...] I think it would sound odd to say
>"richest mammal in the world" [...]
          ^^^^^^
...especially because $crooge wouldn't be in! ;-)


JORGEN-809:

[on Rota stories]
>they have probably been published in Norwegian, Swedish,
>Finnish, Danish, Icelandic, German, and at least some of them in English

Sadly I'm too ignorant to be able to read any of these except English. I'd 
like to track down the English editions, but I haven't seen much of a 
market in used (or new, for that matter) Disney comics around here so I 
don't know how successful I can hope to be. Thanks anyway.


DON-810:

[possibility of Egmont reusing Gladstone's colouring efforts]
>Still no go, because Gladstone has SHRUNK all my word
>balloons as well as colored in sound effects and signage and so forth. If 
a
>SINGLE thing needs to be changed on that film, the entire film is useless,

This basically puts the colouring at the same level (of detachment) as the 
translation, whereas semantically it would seem to me that it belongs with 
the writing and drawing... Technology artifacts getting in the way!

>they do their own coloring? I NEVER interfere in that part of their
>business... I don't see it as my place.

I disagree here: you're the author of the story, the final outcome makes 
your work look better or worse, you SHOULD have your say, and advise the 
colourist as to what effect you intend to achieve here or there. Of course 
I realise that there may be etiquette rules to follow, and also that you 
may just not share my opinion.

>        To make a photostat of a comic, all you need to do is lay it open 
on
>the machine doohickey. Gravity holds it down. It would seem unlikely that 
an
>old comic would have so much "body" left that the spine would refuse to 
open
>nice and smoothly, but I guess a piece of glass could be gently placed 
over

You're talking of the US-style comics here. This wouldn't apply to the 
Italian ones which have a square back. Try to lay an "old" one flat on a 
photocopier and you'll see the owner's face go funny colours for fear that 
the glued pages might crack!

>the thing, but not so as to crush it. But I was truly curious -- what does 
a
>"scanner" do? Do you feed stuff in, or does it work like this photostat 
thingie?

I've got a scanner on my desk at work (HP Scanjet 3c for anyone who's 
interested in these things). It works like a photocopier, except slower and 
with a LOT more controls on exposure, resolution and so on. Put the 
document on the glass window, reasonably flat, and go ahead. You may take 
the lid of the scanner off (you couldn't with the previous one I had, the 
Scanjet IIcx) if you have to scan in things from a book, which I did to get 
high quality, high resolution bitmaps of Carl Barks's oil paintings for the 
desktop of my workstations. So no problem here (it's just that it's boring 
to scan pages in individually, what with precise alignment, having to enter 
file names and all that stuff; it's nowhere near as fast as "photocopying 
into the computer"; but it gives pretty good results). But I understand 
that, though the scanner I have is rather good in its class, it's not the 
same sort of equipment as that which is used in the typography business 
("drum" scanners and the like). I was told (by the art director of the Carl 
Barks oils book, btw) that to use such scanners you have to cut the pages 
off the original book. I've never seen a drum scanner myself, except in a 
DTP book, and I don't know how much better they are with respect to the 
desktop scanners like the one I have. I suspect that they're still a step 
ahead but the desktop ones are catching up fast, especially as they move in 
the office/consumer market and so they start selling in large volumes.

>        You drastically misunderstand Gladstone's situation as regards the
>hardback CBL. When that license expired, they had to stop producing new
>volumes, stop selling any old volumes, and (I'm told) destroy all unsold
>volumes. This is not something you should hold against them in the least.

Thanks for explaining things that I was not aware of. My misunderstanding, 
and mistaken assumption that Gladstone was doing this because they liked it 
that way, came from an extrapolation of the following facts: (1) that I was 
offered the CBL at three times its RRP only a few years after their own 
advert offered it at <$1000; (2) that in the same mail I received a 
catalogue of "collector's" comics at several hundred $ a piece; (3) that 
they generally seem to like to fan and exploit this collecting crazy e.g. 
by giving out trading cards (sic!) with their albums. I didn't know about 
this licencing business. Well, I guess I should feel a bit less ripped off 
now...
In all fairness I retract what I said and after all I'm glad of this 
rehabiliation of Gladstone because they do produce good comics and it's a 
good thing that they exist.


DAVID-810:

>	The FORBIDDEN PLANET in Edinburgh refused to order Gladstones
>for me, too.  They said they legally weren't allowed to order them,
>because Fleetway's license covers direct sales in Britain, too.

Ok, so why can't I buy these Gladstones from Fleetway, whoever they are? 
:-) Or are you maybe saying that Fleetway are _publishers_ who've secured a 
no-competition licence which ensures that no one else other than them will 
sell Disney comics in this country (even if they don't take much advantage 
of this state of affairs)?

>	When the hardback CBL first went out of print, it was because
>in 1990 Disney decided that the banned Barks stories should not even
>be reprinted with changes, and that the CBL was thus dangerous for
>young minds... so it had to go.
>	Later Gladstone convinced them to turn-around, but figured
>that if they printed the whole works in a NEW format, they could then
>sell it to a lot of people who already had the bw CBL, too.

Aha! So it's still Gladstone's fault after all, at least in part... They 
could have reprinted the CBL but didn't. I wouldn't complain as much if 
they included all the critical essays from the bw CBL, but the leaflet I 
got said they were only putting in a bit of it, so the colour CBL, when 
it's finished, still won't contain all the material in the original CBL.


JORGEN-810:

[celebration issue]
>- Donald Duck (should have been Scrooge McDuck, IMHO),
>I/AT 9/58, 25 pages. Romano Scarpa.
>     A really good story dealing with Scrooge's personality.

That story is "Paperino e la fondazione De'Paperoni", which was published 
by Gladstone as "Uncle Scrooge (in) The McDuck Foundation" in U$ 241, Feb 
1990, with a dedicated front cover drawn by Scarpa for Gladstone.
(NB: This story belongs to Scarpa's "Ancient" period, great plots but 
"harsh" art, according to the classification I gave in digest 775.)


DWIGHT-810:

>I've done six languages: German, Dutch, French, Danish, Swedish, and
>Italian into English. It's amazing what you can do with a dictionary...
>(fortunately, Disney comics aren't exactly rocket science).

I disagree entirely! It's a lot harder to properly translate a comic story 
than a newspaper, a technical article or a random bit of prose. Comics are 
full of puns and gags based on linguistics (though this is not the 
specialty of DISNEY comics-- Achille Talon or Asterix would be better 
examples) but also on national traditions, current events and so on, which 
would be just lost if the translator were not aware of the customs, 
traditions etc of the country of origin. I'm thinking for example of some 
Italian stories from the 70's and 80's which poked fun at popular TV 
presenters and celebrities. So I think that, if you rate yourself as a good 
translator, you're being way too modest with respect to your work when you 
say that most of it comes out of the dictionary...


TOMMY-810-811-etc:

I liked your paper. Well done to your teacher for the open-mindedness of 
giving students the freedom to choose such a subject, and to you for taking 
up the challenge so well! I found the essay interesting, well researched 
(except perhaps for a Magica de Spell from Crete... :-) ) and entertaining. 
What did your fellow students say?


TODD-814:

Interesting stuff about lettering (don't call it boring!) Question: why 
would a good calligrapher want to use computer lettering? Maybe to make it 
easier to perform corrections? Or because it's much faster? I thought the 
letterer would tend to prefer hand lettering every time, as the only true 
way of making a genuine, inimitable work.



ARTHUR-815:

>	Does anyone know, if there are MORE movies that contain scenes,
>being based on Disney-comic-stories?

Well, I have seen several quotes to the effect that Steven Spielberg was 
inspired by the idol-triggered trap in "The Seven Cities of Cibola" for the 
corresponding Indiana Jones scene.


EGIL-817:

[your booklet]
>I don=B4t have the book here, but I can translate some of it
>on the list if there are others interested.

Please do (unless you've already done it in one of the successive digests 
that I still have to browse through...)


DANIEL-818:

>Of course there are some very interesting post-Barks Magica-stories,
>I think that Don's "On a Silver Platter" is a good example, and also a
>long (Rota?) story which was called "The Money Sea" in it's Dutch
>publication (KJUO43/I-A-215).

That wonderful story ("Zio Paperone e il deposito oceanico") was one of the 
few written by Gaudenzio Capelli, the recently retired director of the 
Italian line of Disney comics. The art is Marco Rota's, as you rightly say. 
I remember that comic very well (it had a blue cover by Rota depicting the 
story, with the ducks in the middle of a money-sea storm) because when I 
received it (1974) I was ill in bed with one of these infantile diseases, 
probably chickenpox; so was my little sister, too. I was amazed at the idea 
that Scrooge had so much money that he actually had A NUMBER of money bins! 
And that to put all that money in one single bin would have forced him to 
build one so big as to have a horizon! That sense of immensity (as in the 
opening chapter of Asimov's "Foundation", where the spaceport was so big 
that clouds formed inside the building) and of "breaking the rules" 
(because I was sure that "in reality" Scrooge only had one comparatively 
small money bin), together with the beautiful art, always made that story 
special for me.


DON-820:

[the colour of money]
>        Yes, in Holland and ALL through Europe they have always colored 
the
>coins in $crooge's Bin to be all GOLD. I think I've often pointed out that
>this (to me) is a major misinterpretation of what's in the Money Bin. The
>Bin is supposed to be full of common pocket-change... pennies and nickels
[...]
>I don't want to muck with peoples' traditions. (But still, those coins 
AREN'T
>gold!)

Having been brought up on European comics (or American stories recoloured 
in Europe) I can tell you what my model of the world was: the explanation 
was that money is like that (gold for coins and green for banknotes) IN 
DUCKBURG, even if in "real life" things are different. I had never seen 
gold coins in my life, nor green banknotes for that matter, but it was ok 
for me to assume that that was what they looked like in Duckburg. Of course 
your perspective is different because you've known what real US money looks 
like even for longer than you've known Disney comics! But having all these 
coins pictured as gold fits in very well with Scrooge's almost physical 
lust for gold itself, even besides its monetary value.

I was trying to quote a few stories where Scrooge's lust for gold as gold 
itself is dominant, but most of those I thought of were Italian, so they 
could not be used as an argument in this discussion. I'm sure there must be 
some Barks ones, but they don't come to mind right now. It'd be interesting 
to see any first printings of comic books from Barks's times. What colour 
were the coins then?

Anyway, rationally, I have to agree with you -- most of them have to be 
common coins, and because they're (fractions of) dollars, they ought to 
look like the real thing.


WILMER-820:

[Europe colours coins in gold]
>Do they make any effort, in any published editorial or letter column,
>to reconcile this coloring scheme with Barks's paintings of the money
>bin, which clearly show that this is wrong?

Oh-ho! That's an interesting observation! I hadn't thought of the PAINTINGS 
while replying to Don. But it looks to me that your argument is 
self-defeating: if I look at the Barks oils, ALL those that show coins have 
gold as their dominant colour; some have gold coins only, most have a 
majority of gold coins with some silver coins, and none (of those that are 
printed in my book) have silver coins only. Maybe we should ask Carl too? 
Probably gold symbolises wealth much better than silver, let alone other 
token substitutes... "Lake of Gold" sounds good, "Lake of Nickel" surely 
wouldn't have the same appeal.

The following research was performed on an Italian 2-volume edition of the 
Barks oils that reproduces 94 paintings of the 122 the master made. I have 
omitted "repeat" paintings and paintings with no coins.

Legend:
	GGG = all coins are gold
	GGS = most coins are gold, some silver
	SSS = all coins are silver (never happens)

1971 Money Lake                                       GGS
1971 Blue Composition of Ducks                        GGS
1972 Pleasure in the Treasure                         GGS, almost GGG
1972 Money Bin Memories                               GGS
1973 Secret Safe                                      GGS, almost GGG
1973 What's In There?                                 GGS, almost GGG
1973 Menace Out of the Myths                          GGG
1973 Visitor From Underground                         GGS, almost GGG
1973 Time Out For Fun                                 GGS
1973 Much Ado About a Dime                            GGS
1973 Time Out For Therapy                             GGS
1973 This Dollar Saved My Life at Whitehorse          GGS
1973 Spoiling the concert                             GGS, almost GGG
1974 Sport of Tycoons                                 GGS, almost GGG
1974 Danger, Tycoon at Play                           GGS, almost GGG
1974 A Binful of Fun                                  GGS
1975 Miser's Hangup                                   GGG
1975 Time Wasters                                     GGS
1975 Hands Off My Playthings                          GGS
1975 Lake of Gold                                     GGS
1976 Business As Usual                                GGS, almost GGG


HARRY-820:

Thanks a lot for your Dutch author "guide"; I saved it in a separate file 
so that I can easily refer to it later. As you may see I'm a bit behind on 
Disney-list stuff (catching up with 3 weeks worth of messages in one go) so 
I haven't tried your database yet... shame on me! BTW, I'll have to get 
back to you on that subject at some point.


DON-822:

>I see Duck-time as being frozen
>somewhere back in the 50s, otherwise all the Duckburg characters would be
>old and gray (or dead). And I like seeing Duckburg as the same town in the

There is one thing that is peculiar in your model of the world, which is 
that you make comics characters grow OLD! This is normal for real people, 
but is rather exceptional for comics characters -- Huey, Dewey and Louie 
should be out of school by now otherwise. So it must be noted that your 
"Life of $crooge" series is attractive and striking not only because of the 
interesting storytelling and the almost hypertextual cross-references which 
are a delight for connoisseurs, but also because it violates -- no, this 
sounds negative; I shall instead say "transcends" -- this basic paradigm of 
(Disney and other non-realistic) comics that puts characters in a special 
temporal dimension where they never age. They may have memory of past 
events, if the events were memorable (these are then the internal 
references where a story recalls an earlier one), but the characters don't 
grow older for that. And I think you still hold to this paradigm in your 
non-Lo$ stories, only to take the liberty to transcend it in your 
masterpiece.

There are several such untold paradigms in our comic world, and most of the 
time we don't notice them; one has been mentioned recently, the paradox of 
nakedness; another one might be the fact that HDL look like three ducks but 
are in fact A SINGLE CHARACTER, and so are the Beagle Boys etc.; and in 
fact another striking story was one where one of the nephews (which one? 
does it make sense to ask?) acted differently from the others, namely by 
falling in love (TL 1688, "Qui Quo Qua e il tempo delle mele", art by 
Massimo De Vita). But once in a while, in a great story like your Lo$, the 
author can afford to be daring and break one of the paradigms; and this 
makes the reader realise, even if subliminally, that "something special" is 
happening.


LASSE-826:

[auto-unsubscribing]
> I also suggest a restriction on the word '*ncle':)

I didn't get that joke -- can you explain it to me please?

Thanks for rating me a "man with the right stuff", but I'm no Englishman-- 
instead, I'm Italian (which *perhaps* explains why my Disney knowledge 
concentrates on Italian comics). I'm glad you liked my Scarpa periods 
guide. I too would like to see it on the Web, where it belongs, together 
with lots more stuff I always plan to write. Promises, promises... Let's 
catch up with this list in the meantime!

> My least popular of the pre-1960's Italian artists must be Giorgio
>Bordini, Giancarlo Gatti and Giulio Chierchini. And that's not even

I agree with the negative judgment on Gatti, though he's hardly a pre-1960: 
his first Disney story, "Zio Paperone e il miliardario in quarantena", is 
from 1973 (TL 897). I disagree with the other two judgments-- Bordini in 
particular is an artist I like a lot! Perhaps I should back this statement 
with a few good stories: the one with "Spack Doblon", for example, the 
pirate who breaks gold coins in two with his sword; or the one with the 
"trombe di Eustachio" (Eustachian tubes, but also trumpets).

Which reminds me: there is much talk of artists, because they're easier to 
recognise. One of the things I'd like to do as a follow-up to the Scarpa 
periods thing is something to do with the lesser-known Italian WRITERS 
which I think deserve some credit, in particular my heroes Rodolfo Cimino 
and Giorgio Pezzin.

>mentioning Luciano Capitanio, Pier Lorenzo de Vita and Guiseppe Perego.

I too don't like Capitanio very much: too angular and without proportions. 
I've given my opinion on PL de Vita and Perego before.

> Favorites are Luciano Gatto and, it goes without saying, Romano Scarpa.

Gatto IMHO had its best period in the 60's and early 70's. Those old 
stories of him I like very very much. His later ones, instead, including 
the contemporary ones, don't excite me as much.

I'm amazed you don't mention Cavazzano, in many ways the most innovative of 
the Italian Disney artists. Of course, this may be because he isn't a 
pre-1960. BTW, now that I think of it (and recheck), not even Bordini is a 
pre-1960: his first story (which I don't have) appears to be one of 1963. 
Maybe you meant pre-1970?

>I recall that the Norwegian Donaldists lumped all
>Italian stories into a category named "brutalism" (examplified by the one
>and only Guiseppe Perego), but had 4 or 5 periods in Barks' career.

It is wise of you to recognise this. As we said on several occasions, it's 
a case of "everything you don't know looks the same to you".

>  Modern Italian Disney is often:
>        a) socio-realistic (somewhat italocentric)
I can see which sort of stories you refer to here.

>        b) space-opera (*VERY* unscientific)
What are those? Do you think this is a complete genre? Can you give me a 
few examples?

>        c) time-travel (MM and prof. Einmug)
In fact this is not prof Einmug but two new scientists, whose original 
names are Zapotec and Marlin. Originally created by Giorgio Pezzin (1986) 
(actually Zapotec was created earlier, but it's only in 1986 that the time 
machine makes its appearance, in "Topolino e gli enigmi del tempo" TL 1576) 
with art by the great Massimo De Vita, they've started a stream of stories 
to which many other authors have subsequently contributed.

>        d) ethnographical (Wild West, Backwardistan)
What's this one? Maybe the "Indiana Pipps" saga?

>        e) parodic (world litterature classics)
This is a "house specialty", but I don't like them too much. Pier Lorenzo 
De Vita and Luciano Bottaro used to draw many of these and Guido Martina, 
with his solid classical culture (he was a professor of literature after 
all) had a virtual monopoly on the scripts. They're now reprinting them in 
album form, with new colouring. The albums were sort of ok a couple of 
years ago, although I've always objected to the "reformatting" and the 
editings of the dialogs, but now they're DRAMATICALLY overpriced at 15000 
Lit per story (used to be around 5000 until last year). The only change is 
a hard cover, which hardly justifies this price rise. Maybe it's one of 
these "let's go for the collector market" evil plots again? Or am I too 
paranoid?


I think that, without attempting to be exhaustive, there are a few other 
"streams" worth mentioning:

	* treasure-quest adventures by U$ with nephews using strange machines
		(classical Cimino stuff, some of my preferred stories here)

	* detective stories with Mickey, Goofy and O'Hara

	* Beagle Boys attacks to the Money Bin
	
	* Fantasy
		This was started by a wonderful trilogy (Trilogia della spada di 
		ghiaccio) by Massimo De Vita in the 80s
            and later became inflation-ridden with inferior stories by 
others like Ubezio.

What definitely seems to be missing from the Italian palette of stories is 
(among other things) the sort of Barksian short stories where Donald has 
new and creative occupations like barber, wrecker, glass surgeon etc. The 
Italian Donald is lazy and his main occupation is sleeping. I think this 
characterisation comes mostly from the late Guido Martina, "father of all 
Italian scripts" (he authored some 1200 stories if I remember right).


AUGIE-827:

Didn't see the show (I don't get Italian TV and even if I did I don't watch 
TV anyway, just buffer films up with the VCR from time to time, so I would 
have missed it) but at least I can confirm that birthday is "compleanno".


JAMES-827:

>Question: Can someone help me identify this Mickey Mouse story, and in
>which comic it last appeared.  It looked like it was written in the
>thirties or forties. The artwork appeared gothic, and it dealt with a
>mystery girl who turned out to be evil, and was also immortal. The story
>closed with a house in flames, and the girl in it.

The "frightening" story you mention (sometimes referred to as "The House of 
Mystery") is a series of daily strips that originally ran from 13 NOV 1944 
to 27 JAN 1945. Script by Bill Walsh, pencils by Floyd Gottfredson and Dick 
Moores, inks by Dick Moores and Paul Murry. Unfortunately I don't have any 
info on subsequent US reprints, but I hope that this info may help you 
track it down.


DON-828:

>How utterly strange to live in a country where these comics are so
>totally ignored, and visit countries where the same characters are 
national
>heroes!!!

How utterly disappointing to live in a country (UK) where these comics are 
not only ignored, they're not even SOLD, whereas in my own country they've 
now got so many comics conventions and stuff that people like Don go there 
on purpose! Sigh...


MARCO-828:

[Italian press and media on Don]
Could you post some of these articles to the list? I've got an OCR if 
anyone cares to send me a readable photocopy. Could we have them on a web 
site -- maybe Gianfranco's? Maybe Leonardo could even send in his interview 
directly in digital form? Since we're all here...


       Frank    (Filologo Disneyano)






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