The Abbeville Press compilations

[Botto Armando]

Harry:
> These were taken from Italian publications. The cutting and pasting
and
redrawing and stuff were done to make the stories fit for a new layout:
3 panels in a row. The original Italian books had 6-tier pages, just
like the big Abbeville books. Abbeville also printed them half-size
(with 3-tier pages).

Correct, but some of the cutting and pasting and redrawing was already
in the Italian books. Those hardbound compilations from the early 70es
faithfully reprinted the original Italian publications of the stories,
which took place mostly in the 30es, 40es and early 50es; in those days,
Italian editors had no problems using scissors & glue to adapt the
stories' original layout to their needs. An infamous example is provided
by Barks' "Christmas on Bear Mountain", whose final was prolonged by
adding a gag obtained from Taliaferro panels, probably because the
editor had an extra half-page to fill...

Ciao,
Armando