From RoC

Lasse Reichstein Nielsen lrn at daimi.aau.dk
Mon Aug 8 15:24:32 CEST 1994


 Long time, no do.

 I'll skip my story of Barks in Copenhagen, it's old hat now, and I
guess Mattias saw a lot more than I did. In Tivoli a bunch of noisy
Swedes - dressed up as JWs - occupied most of the front row, while
Jan Lund Thomsen, I and a couple of others sat a few rows behind.
You could hear us go "NOOOO!", "BOOOOH!" and "yrk".

 FYI:
 ----
 The hillbilly character - a.k.a. 'Urtigao'/ 'Skogs-Ola' and
'Jesper Skauen' - in Denmark is (or should I say 'was'?) called
'Habakuk', which could be his, although misspelt, original name.
A Strobl story in AA&Co. #27/1969 also mentions his friend Amos -
not a very common name in Danish.

 'The Billion-Dollar Stampede in 3D' by W. van Horn, reprinted
recently in Sweden, has NOT appeared in Denmark since it's first
publishing in AA&Co. #6/1993.


 'WAR OF THE WEIRDOS'
 --------------------
 In February I wrote in a 'future quote' of Gary Leach :

> I'm glad to tell you that War of the Wendigo has finally passed through
> the eye of the needle at Disney. Of course we had to color the indians
> green and call it is a sequel to Island in the Sky.

 This is almost what has happened. Except...
Don has to redraw all the short guys as something completely different
from an indian, and rewrite all dialogue referring to them as such.
 It goes without saying, but that's an *outrageous* attitude!
Those few of us who have read the story can try to imagine what it
would be like without canoes, wigwams, tomahawks, and Donald as the
Great White Hope.
 Don's Longfellowian poetry (which the Danish translator either didn't
notice or didn't care about) would probably be deleted.
But Disney's policy is - however absurd - at least somewhat consistent.
Witness the fate of another 'midget-native' people in various reprints:

 ISLAND IN THE SKY, U$ #29
 -------------------------
 Reprints:

+ U$ #143, May 1977 (Western Publishing)
  Aliens are a healthy tan and have individually colored fig-leaves
and feathers.

+ U$ #268, April 1992. (Disney Comics, KJU 060-1)
  Coloring by Susan Daigle-Leach !
All the aliens are light green with a dark green shrubbery for
clothes and a yellow tipped white feather, so they are totally
indistinguishable. Minor dialogue-changes :

page  5, panel 7 : Fort Laramie, the pioneer wagon trains (NOT changed)
page 11, panel 3 : "How!" changed to "Howdy!"
         panel 4 : "They kneel like the American savages kneeled to
                   Colombus!" changed to "They kneel like the ancient
                   savages kneeled to the explorers!"
         panel 5 : "Colombus McDuck" changed to "Explorer McDuck"
page 14, panel 4 : "asteroid apaches" changed to "asteroid aliens"
page 15, panel 2 : "chief mohawk" changed to "chief savage"

+ Dutch Donald Duck #28/1994
  Translated from the original, the otherwise beautiful coloring dresses
all the red aliens in yellow, probably based on Barks' oil reproduced as
CF in the same Dutch issue.

+ I know of no art changes; all the 'savages' have mohawk hair-dos.

 Though Barks knew that his stories would be read all around the world,
references to American geography, culture and history are legio.
Especially the Midwest


 My advise, Don, is to tell them go fxxx somebody else to change it -
I guess you couldn't stop them, if you wanted to - and just wait them
out. That's what you do with the criminally insane...


 HET COMPLETE WERK VAN CARL BARKS
 --------------------------------
 A 17 volume/6000 pages B/W library in Dutch from Editions Loeb for
only 49,50 guilders each. At a total of approximately 500 US$, it is a
very cheap buy. But 6000 pages? The ad is illustrated with Barks' only
Mickey story, so that one's there, but how about the last 371 pages?
BTW: Is the publisher the one with the Latin and Greek bilingual texts
that stocked the shelves at university, when I was a philologist?

 DICK 'NO-DUCK' MATENA
 ---------------------
 Sorry if I'm bothering you with this guy, but I couldn't help noticing
a new serial in Dutch DD, where Matena draws in a new style.
Again. This time it's reminiscent of Jean-Claude Mezieres ("Laurelin et
Valerian") or maybe even Jacques Tardi.


=======================================================================
   "My friend Amos always says:
    'Don't sign anything, before you've read it!'"
                                    - Habakuk

   oLe 'RoC' Reichstein Nielsen       Fax & Phone: +45-8646-1609
   Borgergade 12
   DK-8870                             E-mail: lrn at daimi.aau.dk
   Denmark                         (it's my brother Lasse's address)
=======================================================================



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