Direct references to Barks-stories

David Gerstein gdavid at gemstonepub.com
Thu Aug 3 19:01:52 CEST 2006


	Hey Jonathan,

> To veer off topic for a bit, I remember when Disney ran "Brer Rabbit and the Garden of Eatin'" in Comics and Stories [#576, 1992] and it surprised me just how many resisdents of the "Brer Rabbit" community arent seen much anymore outside of small cameos [...] - i.e Brer Terrapin [...] and specifically Molly whom you'd think would have a much larger role in Brer Rabbit stories in general. I suppose thats because we sadly dont see as many Brer Rabbit stories as I'd personally like in the states...
> 
	You suppose correctly.
	In those countries that have continued to produce Brer Rabbit stories in modern times (Denmark through 1997, Holland right up to the present), both Brer Terrapin and Molly have been frequently recurring characters. IMHO, Molly is actually overused, typically as the victim of Brer Fox whom Brer Rabbit must rescue from the stewpot. I myself once wrote such a story, not realizing the idea had been done to death. Ho hum...

> I do like that in the Dell era, Zeke Wolf (whom I'm positive was 
> referred to as Brer Wolf once or twice), the three pigs, and Lil Wolf were incorporated into said community which IMO just made sense.
> 
	Darn tootin' it makes sense! It's not a big surprise to discover that the pigs and wolf are also in the original Joel Chandler Harris Brer Rabbit stories (see: "Brer Wolf and the Pigs" in Harris' _Further Tales of Uncle Remus_ ...no kidding!).
	Brers Fox and Bear actually call Zeke "Brer Wolf" in quite a large number of old W-coded stories, so it's actually the characters' traditional custom; we're carrying it on these days at Gemstone.

> Do the characters see print in Europe more often than they do in the states?
> 
	Until the early 1990s, the answer was generally yes; both Egmont and Dutch-produced comics contained a lot of both Wolf and Brer Rabbit stories.
	In the mid-1990s, Egmont's local publishers decided they wanted less of the forest characters. Brer Rabbit was dropped from most of the Egmont weeklies in the late 1990s. Wolf stories still appear, though rather seldom.
	The Dutch, however, carry on with lots of Wolf and Brer Rabbit stories even today.
	OTOH, Jonathan, remember that we have a Wolf story here in the States in about nine out of every ten WDC&S issues. So we're still getting a fairly good supply.

> And also - concerning European contiuity, most the Brer charcters live outside of Duckburg deep in the Black Forest area, correct? Or how does that work? I seem to recall a Barks Grandma Duck story where the Big Bad Wolf actually did appear though I imagine [Barks] had no hand in writing it.
> 
	Gil Turner began a tradition that the Brer and Wolf characters lived in the forest outside of Mickey's and Donald's cities. Vic Lockman and others carried this on in the 1960s, doing a huge number of crossovers - including the Barks-drawn Grandma story you mention.
	At Egmont in the 1990s the rule was that we couldn't mix the forest characters with mouse and duck continuity. I suspect the Dutch have a similar rule, but I'm not sure; going by the stories I've seen, though, that's what I'd suspect.

	David
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