Donald Duck Adventures 34

Carey Furlong - tdoc furlong at ug.eds.com
Mon Jul 24 18:50:08 CEST 1995


> So did anyone else out there read Donald Duck Advs. 34?  I picked this one  
> up last week, myself.
> 
> Pat Block's art is wonderful - something about it just clicks with me, and  
> I find it to be a lot of fun and very well done.  I hope we see a lot more  
> of his work.  I liked the story as well.  It wasn't deep or meaningful,  
> but it was a fun yarn.  It did take me a little work to accept the concept  
> of living beings being frozen for hundreds of years and just thawing out  
> into the present day, however... :-)  But something about Fernandez and  
> Block's work is reminiscent of very old funny-book stories, and I like it!

I read DDA 34 and thought the art was beautiful.  I especially liked
the separate panels showing the two islands.  As a person who
appreciates landscapes, the scenic composition of these appealed to
me.  Also of interest was the heroic style in which the revived frozen
people were drawn.  Even though they were drawn as animals, they
appeared to be quite human (humans with animal heads, perhaps).

The problem I had with this book was with the dialog.  It seemed
stilted at times, and I found myself searching for references I thought
I had missed.  (I can't think of any off-hand.)  I suppose the original
text was better, and the problems I had were with the translation.

On another note, last night I re-read US 17, "A Cold Bargain."  I was
curious about seeing the differences noted in this mailing-list between
the original and the CBL version.  I don't have a copy of the CBL, but
I do have a copy of Gladstone's Giant Comic Album 24, which has the
story, and also a copy of US 215, the Gladstone reprint of the story
done some years ago.

At any rate, the censored and changed panels were all quite evident in
both US 215 and GCA 24.  I laid US 17 (the original), US 215 and GCA 24
all down on a table side-by-side and compared them page-by-page.  The
differences were astounding, not just with the lack of raised
cheekbones on the Brutopians, which was plain enough and quite damaging
in places, but also with the dismaying loss of fine line detail in US
215.  In places the details were totally washed out!  Loss of detail
such as with the sea surface, the ice cliffs of Antarctica, and even
the texture lines on the frozen ball of Bombastium were astonishing.
US 215 looked blurred in many places.

In GCA 24, with its physically larger panels, the fine line details
were all present, but even here, they were not as apparent as in the
original, US 17 (by this I mean that the line details were visible, but
were not as pronounced - they seemed to fall into the background; some
folks today would say this is not a failing, but instead an improvement).

US 17, although the oldest of the three, and in many places suffering
from what some would call rather thick lines, seemed to me at any
rate, to be the best of the lot.  Although GCA 24 had successfuly
reproduced all of the line details, the coloring was not as balanced or
realistic as the original (IMHO).  For example, the sea surfaces of US
17 seemed to have deeper and richer shades of green and dark than in
the reprints.  The shadows of the Brutopian submarine were pitch-black
in US 17, making it seem more three dimensional and sinister than the
greys of the reprints. Did they use more ink in the old days?  Also,
the rails of Scrooge's ship seemed to work much better for me as red
(which is surprising) than the white used in the reprints.

This is generally how it went for the entire comparison.

Now, what's going on here?  And why are these conclusions nearly always
the same when comparing Barks originals with today's reprints, even the
best of today's reprints.  Do any other old-timers out there feel this
way?  Do you like the coloring, line quality and thickness better in
the originals?  Or is it just me?  Am I guilty of being a nostalgic old
bum?

Sorry to go on so long about this.  I do, however, enjoy comparing the
originals with today's versions, but I am wondering if I am being
objective enough in my observations.
-
                             "This fabulous twenty-four carat moon, for
                              a handful of dirt!... Man! That's the biggest
                              bargain I ever heard of in all history!"
                             ------------ Scrooge McDuck  (US 24) -------
       ---- Carey ----
    Carey Furlong, Huntington Beach, CA; Compu$erve 70531,2753;
    cfurlon1 at ix.netcom.com; Prodigy TXST34A; furlong at vxd.ug.eds.com; 
    Opinions expressed here are mine and do not represent those of EDS.



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