Disney-comics digest #265.

David A Gerstein David.A.Gerstein at williams.edu
Fri Mar 11 04:54:13 CET 1994


	Dear Folks,

	Let's see here.


	Taliaferro's daily strip 3-3-38
	===============================

	Harry explained that "Donald is at a fair, where one can throw
3 balls for a dime to a clown ('hit the clown'). Donald throws a rock 
instead of a ball, and gets dozens of balls thrown at him. The clown 
is not shown in the panels; just Donald."

	OOOW!  I know right off the bat what must be wrong with this
one!  You'd think it's the concept of throwing a rock at someone, but
Disney did permit a strip (the first one in DD 281) where Donald threw
objects at a guy down in a manhole, some of which clearly hit him in
the head (although the impact wasn't shown).

	In the 1920s and 1930s, one of the most unfortunate things
about American carnivals was that they would have a booth where a man
in blackface stood with his head through a wall, the sign reading
(PLEASE:  DO NOT TAKE THIS PERSONALLY) "hit the nigger."  Really.
Racism was really this blatant!  I wouldn't be surprised if in the
original English, this was the text that was on the sign.  This is
probably why the strip was not allowed.  (Could Gladstone retouch the
sign?  I'd guess Disney wouldn't allow it, as they didn't allow the
letter from sister Della to be partly rewritten to make the 1st app of
HDL permissable either.)

	This strip is most probably in WDC&S #2.  The first week of
dailies is in #3, and the second and part of the third are in #1.
(BTW:  I know no more than that about #3, having only inspected it
once at a dealer's shop... it was $50 so it didn't join the
collection.)

	Would you, Don, be willing to check in WDC&S #2 and #3 for us?
I know you have those issues... I'd like to know what that sign said
in English.

	
	Gyro Gearloose "War Paint" story
	================================

	[Andrew Krieg described that prejudiced story as it appeared
in CBLGG 4]  "If this story could be reprinted, why can't we get "War 
of the Wendigo"?  Is it because it is in a graphic album as opposed to
a regular comic?  If so, perhaps Gladstone can produce a new Rosa 
graphic album and put WotW in it.  Maybe the Disney censors would 
allow that."

	If you recall our last discussions of WotW, Disney has not
banned this story.  They just sorta chickened out of printing it, but
made no official statement on the story's future upon doing that.  
Gladstone planned, last time I spoke with John on the subject very 
early this year, to attempt to get it into print this fall.

	But Gary told us that, didn't he?  I wish I knew what the
status of the story now was...

	BTW, the guidelines seem to be this for things in the CBL:
short stories with offensive characters can appear uncensored, and
long stories with offensive characters get censored.  When it comes
to the regular comics, those short stories (I mean WDC&S 34, 74, and
the Gyro warpaint and witch doctor stories) seem to be banned
entirely -- in my opinion, I can see well why they aren't used, and
personally advocate that they only appear in the CBL.  In the regular
comics, they either use the CBL version or an even more heavily
censored version (for example, "Adventure Down Under") for the long
adventures.

	I am only guessing about the CBL though.  I've never asked
Gladstone, and my guess is that they're only getting away with
printing things like the war paint story uncensored NOW because they
can tell Disney, "nothing happened when it appeared in the hardback
CBL."  If they wanted to print that in a regular comic, I'm sure
Disney would object.

	Who knows?

	David Gerstein
	<David.A.Gerstein at Williams.edu>



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