BOOM! directions

Elaine Ramshaw elaine1 at snet.net
Mon Sep 7 04:35:02 CEST 2009


Ole, I enjoy your postings, and certainly take no umbrage at your comments
in this one. 

 

I could refine my comments: my happiness at seeing Barks and Rosa mock-up
covers was not a sign that I want BOOM! to publish lots of Barks
reprints-though I think that throwing in a few of the Barks stories that are
not too dated is a fine thing. I just took those covers as a cue that they
might take U$ in a different direction from the proposed initial stories for
DD, MM and WDC, to which I do not look forward. I have no chauvinistic
reaction against European stories in general; I like lots of stories written
or drawn by Marco Rota, Daan Jippes, Evert Geradts, Jan Kruse, Ben Verhagen,
Kari Korhonen, Gorm Transgaard, etc. What I don't like are: (1) stories that
are not well written, no matter what the set-up; and (2) stories that turn
the ducks/mice into entirely different sorts of characters in a fantastical
setting. I don't need Duckburg as an idealized 1950's town, though I respect
Rosa's decision to stick with the original Barksian time frame. But I want
the ducks (who, as Rosa says, are humans who just happen to look like ducks)
to be recognizable "people" who stay in character. They may encounter the
occasional ghost or sea monster or person with magical powers, but they have
no magical powers or superpowers themselves, and deal with such encounters
with the same options and limitations you or I would have. (Well, with the
exception that you and I do not have a Junior Woodchucks Guidebook.) Of
course they shouldn't be limited to Duckburg; that's the whole point of
Scrooge's money, from the plot-writer's POV--that it can take them all over
the world in many sorts of adventures. But wherever they go, I prefer them
to be mortals like me, and recognizable as the personalities I know and
love, people who do have "everyday" lives back home in Duckburg, going to
school, struggling to make a living. If I want superheroes, I'll read
superhero comics. If I want Tolkienian fantasy, I'll read Bone. If I want a
secret spy agency, I'll watch James Bond or Spy Kids. I don't think the
ducks are suited to such story-lines. They seem like they have been lifted
out of their "real life" into a story where they don't belong.

 

Tom Hanks isn't always Tom Hanks in his movies; he's quite different
characters who all happen to resemble Tom Hanks. (Only a bad actor or a
typecast actor is the same character in every movie.) In some of the fantasy
or superhero stories, it seems to me that the characters are different
characters who just happen to look like Donald & Co. As if, indeed, they
were being "played by" Donald & Co., who are the actors, and who are not
present in the stories as themselves. 

 

Elaine

 

 

 

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