I'm back...

Fabio Gadducci gadducci at DI.UniPi.IT
Fri Apr 29 17:58:32 CEST 1994


... I'm baaaaaack.

Hello, my dear friends. It is nice to come back home and find my e-mail box
filled with yours letters...


A long time ago, James Williams asked

>Fabio, who is Paperinik?  I've never heard of this character?

and Don added

>PAPERINIK:
>        As violently opposed to this idea of demeaning Donald Duck with
>American-super-herodom, I see these in the digests (of Italian stuff)
>they send me from Scandanavia and these stories are apparently not as
>bad as one might fear. Donald doesn't actually have super-powers, but
>he has all sorts of gadgets made for him by Gyro. Still, it makes me
>wanna cry...

and

>        What do the Paperinik fans think of my "Super Snooper Strikes
>Again"? Not many of them have ever seen ANY of my work. They have
>nothing but digest-type Disney books in Italy (other than some Barks
>reprint series), so the Italians never see my work nor any comic book
>style Disney stuff (or so I'm told). But then, I guess the many readers
>of the Scandanavian Italian-reprint-digests see my stories; I don't know
>what they think, but I do know that they understand that the comic books
>and the digests are like two different "universes" of Disney stuff --
>sorta like DuckTales is to us.

Well, I can only add that Paperink was created in the Sixties by Guido
Martina e Giovanbattista Carpi. As I wrote some time ago to David,

"Paperinik was created with a parodistic intent: during the Sixties, in
Italy were well spread a kind of comics called 'I neri' as a genre. Their
"heroes" were violent, ruthless law-breakers. Their names, very derivative
of the first one of them, Diabolik, always ended with a K: Satanik,
Demoniak and so on...
Besides, in the same period there was a revival of Fantomas, a French pulp
character of the first years of the century, whose first story with
Paperinik is reminiscent of (as for the name as Fantomius, the former owner
of the building were DD decides to become Paperinik, after reading that
guy's diary, and so on...)"

I think Paperinik is a good character, very nice. But I know that, for Don,
any Italian story happens in a different universe... :-)

Then David

>        RoC described Scrooge-as-newseditor Strobl stories
>        ==================================================
>        This is not directed at YOU RoC... but... I don't know about
>anyone else, but I would never buy ANYTHING like this.

while Ole

>  They do, however, within the limits of the set-up, excell in stringent
>plots, ironic comments, and absurd events, otherwise unknown to Disney
>comics. Without dismissing the role of the (unknown?) scripter, this is
>IMHO Strobl's most original contribution to disneydom.

I'm sure that nostalgia plays a big part here, but... yes, I like those
stories, too! I find them quite amusing, even if maybe the translation
makes the difference in these stories...

And then Don

> Any Disney
>freelancer is free from the worry of ever receiving royalties for his
>work... that's why you only see the work coming from art studios in
>Chile and Spain and Italy and other economically primitive countries.
>That's why somebody like Daan Jippes got OUT of it a decade or two ago.

To tell the truth, the Italian situation is quite different. The most
important stories in Italy came not from studios: nor Scarpa neither
Cavazzano, Bottaro, Carpi were part or owned a studio. All of them worked
freelance and, as for you, they did not take any royalties for reprintings
and other stuff. Sadly to say, even Mondadori in the Seventies found
cheaper to buy from studios, as for "Comicup" and "Staff di If": the first
one is Spanish (as for Ferioli), the second one Italian...

Then David

>        Air Pirates Funnies
>        ===================
>Ron Evry:  "Dan O'Neill knew what MM was all about twenty
>years ago. THAT mouse had character!"
>        This is a reference to a series of underground comics, only 2
>of which were published, titled _Air Pirates Funnies._  These
>contained pornographic adventures of Mickey Mouse, Bucky Bug, and
>"Dirty Duck" (a parody of George Herriman's "Gooseberry Sprigg"
>character in _Krazy Kat_).  I consider those comics a good parody of
>society as symbolized by Disney, but I *DON'T* appreciate what they
>did to Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse.
>        Disney sued Air Pirates Inc. for plagiarism -- I think that
>they were justified, honestly.  They settled for rights to the two
>comics rather than an enormous fine.

Ah, I (almost) got you.The Air Pirates printed also a special issue: "the
turtle and the hare", reprinting the whole cartoon spin-off. Great stuff,
really.

David again

>        Mattias referred to
>        ===================
>"Paul Murry's daily Mickey Mouse strip" as it appeared in WDC&S.
>Well, I know that Murry did some of the pencilling on "The House of
>Mystery" which ran in WDC&S 72-74.  He of course did a lot of work on
>the long "gag" period from 1944-45.  Unfortunately, I just don't have
>enough of the issues from the 1940s period (about 35%) to tell you
>which ones contain Murry's work.  Worse, the gags (presented as
>half-pagers) have all had dates removed, so the reader must go by the
>mere inking style alone.  It's tough, because Murry was trying very
>hard to imitate FG at the time.

I have no time at all to check, but Becattini's Index has all the
information on the strips of that period, and looking in my collection of
the Italian edition of FG reprints I could tell you exactly which are the
contents of the ones by Murry...

Finally, David :-)

>        As for Snow White sequels -- Pedrocchi and his gang did one
>around 1940 in Italy, which to this day is the Italian story that has
>been printed more times than any other.  "Snow White and the Magic
>Basilico" (what's a Basilico?  That's one word I can't translate)

Well, you got the name wrong! Basilisco means (sweet) basil. The correct
title is "Snow White and Basilisk, the wizard". There was another sequel
during the early Mondadori years, with the same authors. Besides, Snoe
White appeared in some Italian stories with the other Disney characters (as
in Paperin Fracassa, a great 1965 story by Scarpa). During the late
Eighties, Romano Scarpa himself wrote another sequel, linking directly with
the end of the movie. Till now, he wrote 2 other long stories, all linked
together. Not his best works, imho.

Last two things.

Here I am , Dwight.
And about the comics price: I usually pay 1300 liras for each dollar, that
is, a little less than the current exchange rate. My dealer get his comics
directly from Diamond, so that they give him a 40% discount over the price
of each sigle comic, and he can sell them to me with a 20% discount.

Bye for now,

Fabio

================================================================
Fabio Gadducci            Dip. di Informatica
Home: +39-50-541725       Universita` di Pisa
Off.: +39-50-887268       Corso Italia 40, 56100 PISA (ITALY)
FAX:  +39-50-887226       E-mail:gadducci at di.unipi.it
================================================================





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