DCML Digest, Vol 7, Issue 40

[Donald D. Ault]

> I have a question about the following:
>
> Ault, Donald: Ducks in Perspective - The Comic Vision of Carl Barks'
Disney
> Comics published by University of Mississippi Press; 2000.
> A very intellectual study of Carl Barks' work. Probably worth a good look
> considering the repute of the author
> ----------
> I found this on a Disney books website. It was in the future books
section,
> but the wording makes it seem as if the book was already published. Has it
> been? I haven't really seen it anywhere except this mention of it on the
website.
> Considering how well done the CB Conversations book was, I'd be
interesting in
> reading this book as well.
>
http://pizarro.net/didier/_private/tocome.htm

>
> Derek Smith

Donald Ault's response:

The book is still in progress (it has been for too many years!), but a
preview section of it has been completed and is about to appear in COMIC ART
#4. A glimpse of the first two pages of my "Visionary Synchronicities in
Carl Barks Comics" can be found at:

http://www.comicartmagazine.com/4d.html

It addresses issues of the narrative metaphysics of "coincidence,"  "luck"
and "the Barks multiverse"(a term Barks authorized in 1999 to describe the
fluid mobility of his settings [such as Duckburg] and the revisable history
of his characters) in relation to the V-2 rocket story from WDC #81 (June
1947), "The Magic Hourglass," the escalation and disruption of the role of
"the first dime," "The Golden Nugget Boat," "Lost Beneath the Sea," and
several other stories. It also contains a discussion of Barks's statements
about his "intentions" and the relation between karmic coincidence and
things "falling into place" in Barks's creative process and the way things
show up in his narrative worlds. It also contains analysis of several
substantive extracts from a new English translation (by University of
Florida professor John Van Hook, on which I'm collaborating) of the 1974
Introduzione a Paperino: la fenomenologia sociale nei fumetti di Carl Barks
by Marovelli, Paolini, and Saccomano. All images in the "Synchronicities"
essay have been scanned in high resolution from THE ORIGINAL PRINTINGS OF
THE STORIES. The editor, M. Todd Hignite, is a purist in such matters, which
I find refreshing in an era when computer manipulated color reprints seem to
have become the only perceptual yardstick for the way comic book stories
should look.

A brief note regarding the Klaus Strzyz interview painstakingly typed and
posted to the list by Mike Devery (mdevery at netspace.net.au). This interview
appears in an edited form-"checked and revised by Klaus Strzyz, 2 May
 2002"-on pages 109-119 of my Carl Barks: Conversations, and I'd like to
note that this interview is currently under Strzyz's copyright, which was
renewed from 1980 to 2003 by virtue of its book publication (2003) and
revision (2002) by Strzyz. It took me considerable work (via this Disney
mailing list and other resources) to track Klaus down and work out the
translation details with him (since the original publication of the
interview in English was a back-translation). I believe that the version
Mike has posted is more COMPLETE than the one that appears in the book
(because I had to cut it down for overall word count in the book), and I'm
certainly not going to challenge anything about this copyright nor do I
think Klaus would. It seems, however, that when a lot of people are
willy-nilly appropriating and posting the intellectual property of others on
the web  without their permission and even selling the physical property of
others on the web, it raises issues of copyright infringement and property
rights. As a past victim of such appropriation myself-and I'm not referring
specifically or by any means exclusively to Mike's efforts, which seem to me
to have been an act of generosity with no intention of profit or malice and
without any knowledge of the Carl Barks: Conversations publication-and
having been constrained by "fair use" copyright restrictions in my own
publications, I've become sensitized to such practices.

Donald Ault
Professor of English
University of Florida
ault at ufl.edu
http://www.nwe.ufl.edu/~donault/