Barks Annotations

[Geir.Hasnes@DELAB.SINTEF.no]

ALL:

I have been playing with the thought for some time to make a document about
strange words, expressions, references, background material etc. for
Barkses work. There exists such a thing for the books of Terry Pratchett, a
very helpful thing for those of us who dont immediately understand every
hidden reference and therefore miss the joke.

For such a reference book, you would simply have to mark things you send
with story/page/panel. For the story could be used the comic book code and
issue and if it is story 1, 2 or 3, Front page, Back page, Inside front
page, Inside back page, etc.

For instance, as I gave a speech in june, I was given the full meaning and
history behing the Brass Monkey (which even greatly confirms my sexual
reference theory), and after a speech in August, I was told about the real
possibilities of Nutmeg tea - in Norway it will probably be forbidden to
sell it soon because of the drug effect (so Scrooge WOULD be able to work
24 hours a day!). I didnt know about those things, and how are you going to
ask people when you dont know that you dont know?

And did you ever realize that when Scrooge is going to Asia in order to buy
Taj Mahal, Mount Everest and Hong Kong, it is one of Barkses harshest
references to the Disneyland craze - the Americans that think that they can
1) buy everything, and 2) move it to the USA, and 3) treat it as
entertainment. With money you can buy yourself a dream come true, uprooted
from all historical and geographical context, like the synthetic castle in
Disneyland. I didnt realize that until a few years ago!

When I made that Duckmobiles book about the cars in Barkses comics, I for
the first time realized that even such ordinary things was joked with in a
graphical way, and that if you knew more about cars, you would get bigger
laughs.

There are a lot of weird words and expressions in Barks, and I for one am
longing to see detailed explanations. 

There are a lot of reference literature already, and of course it is
possible to refer to articles, such as the ones in the Barks Library, for
instance on the Gold Rush references. The National Geographic references
would play a natural part in this reference book also.

The file could be organized such as within the Pratchett community: people
read the reference document to see if there is an explanation or whatever
to that particular thing they have in mind, and if not they write something
about it. They even compete to dig up the most absurd references, and that
makes good fun!

The reference book could even contain the censored lines from comics that
has been rewritten, like Treasure of Marco Polo.

Well, fans, what do you think? 

Geir Hasnes