Marco Polo

[Daniel van Eijmeren]

MIKE:

>     No, please do tell me everything (about the Marco Polo story). For
> some absolutely ridiculous reason which I do not even know, the story is 
> forbidden in Finland and if none of the list members would like to send it
> to me (preferably with Swedish, English, German or Finnish text), I have
> very little chance of ever reading itFrom maisie!maisie.ow.nl!daniel at zoetermeer.ow.org  Sat Jul  8 06:45:14 1995
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From: Daniel van Eijmeren <daniel at maisie.ow.nl>
To: disney-comics at Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE
Date:          Sat, 8 Jul 1995 00:48:54 
Subject:       Horsing around again
Priority: normal
X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.22

MIKE AND HARRY:

Mike: And what the hell did they need to change that button to a 
Mike: microphone if the albatross had a one too?

Harry: You will find my explanation to that when you read the past 
Harry: month's mail.

Mike: Well, maybe I should've had, but I didn't. I must've got a bit 
Mike: careless around 2am or something... So what was the 
Mike: explanation? 

My opinion is that the albatross carried along the transmitter for 
the microphone. (I don't recall exactly what has been said a month 
ago.) A quite logical thing, I think.

What could have been more logical for the story itself is that the 
albatross could indeed have carried along only a microphone, thus 
skipping the whole button-parts.

To my opinion one major flaw of the story is that it contains too 
much facts and theories. All those facts and theories only make the 
plot of the story too weak, I think.

Mike:  And I think the whole horse stuff was not really essential to 
Mike: the story. 

Well, I think it's a nice illustration for the theme of the story. 
The "horse stuff" was something that *didn't* bother me.

Mike: ...and the final solution [was obviously stolen] from the one 
Mike: where BB were trying to enter Scrooge's moneybin inside a lion.

Yeah, I also thought of that! You're right. But the whole Troje-thing 
is also a very unique way to re-use it, so this didn't bother me too 
much.

Mike: Well, I guess you're right. But anyway, this was a major yawner 
Mike: to  me. I mean, the story in a nutshell: [A very funny re-
telling of the story follows, showing the flaws very good.]

M: HDL in the tailor's shop:
M: Huey: "They all have a long beard and look as if they were wearing 
M: masks. I do not suspect anything."
M: Dewey: "This one gut eats plumes just like one of the Beagleboys. I 
M: do not suspect anything."
M: Louie: "They got surprisingly excited to do just this little work. 
M: I do not suspect anything."
M: HDL: "We think they have nothing at all to do with the albatross 
M: who stole the button!"

Yeah, this part bothered me a lot! Why didn't Barks just skip this 
whole part? Is there an old Barks story in which the Beagle Boys are 
fond of prunes? (Sorry, but I can't remember it now.) It sounds very 
familiar to me.

This part just doesn't add anything to the story, it only makes the 
story a real mess.

M: Everybody goes diving in order to still not use the super-abilities 
M: that costed three multimillions. They find treasures.

Is that so? I didn't notice the ship having those not used abilities 
while reading the story. If that's right, this is another fact that 
should have ommitted from the story.

M: The ducks then find the cave where the people who wrote the S.O.S. 
M: were trapped. They had had lots of free time, countless amount of 
M: valuables and wood and apparently a quite high skill in 
M: engineering, so what had they done? No, they hadn't build a ship 
M: and sailed away with the gold, but instead done the more logical 
M: thing: They covered a giant horse with the gold. And this is the 
M: horse the ducks find.

This is another fact that I didn't notice! Yeah, why didn't they use 
the horse to sail away? 

Barks made it himself too easy in constructing the basic story-line, 
while making it himself too hard by filling in all those odd details.
He seemed to have been "too tired of Ducks" to be as critical to 
himself as he was in his productive years...

(The quote "too tired of Ducks" is from a comment of Barks from 
the early seventies.)


M: What is the Disney-comics drawing Van Horn's first name?

His name is William van Horn.


--- Daniel