april fools, translators

Kriton Kyrimis kyrimis at cti.gr
Thu Apr 6 13:05:58 CEST 2000


ANDERS CHRISTIAN:

> Don is the basis of two gags this april then. A fun person on  the
> norwegian newsgroup with the subject comics fooled everyone. 

Could you tell us more about this?

> But anyway, isn't it wish-thinking more than fooling? wouldn't it be
> great with a story done especially for Komix?

I understand that Komix is very tight with their budget: they don't want
to pay a certain list member (not me) the trivial amount he asked when
they suggested he write articles for them, they say they can't afford
to invite Don to Greece, and we all know how they use the internet as
one of the main sources of material for their articles. Thus, I wouldn't
have very high hopes about them commissioning such a story from Don.

> BTW Kriton you goofed on
> the K-code, that's reserved for Disney Studios in the 90'es, for some
> reason...

Ah, but the code was there to make vctims of my gag write about it,
so that I could point out the date of my posting. If they ever do
produce any stories, the code will probably start with something like
EL (Hellas) or GR (Greece). Given that they have several Disney comics
publications, it wouldn't make sense to have a different code for each
of their publications.


Regarding the gag, it was part of a larger gag that I thought last year
on April *2*. The idea was to suggest that the publisher of Komix had
obtained a license to print Disney comics in English, and that from April
onwards, there would be two different versions of Komix, one English
and one Greek.  In their first issue they would have Don's "Malayalaya"
story, and as a backup one of the banned Gottfredson's stories. I figured
that by the time next April came, publication of Disney comics would have
resumed in the US, so I started planning on just the first part of the
gag, i.e., the fake story by Don. As it turned out, Disney Comics have
yet to resume publication in the US, but going ahead with my original
plan would have been too painful. Anyway, note how I slowly started
to take over the presentation of Komix, so that the fake presentation
would not come out of the blue. I started producing the scans, and got
in touch with Archontis so that we could arrange for him to integrate
my scans to his monthly posting. As it turned out, Archontis would be
moving to the US for a few months. In terms of the gag, this was even
better, as I could take over the presentations. Oh, and just in case
you are wondering, the gag was posted with Don's consent.

Some comments on the gag:
* I had Don provide only the script, as we more or less know what
  he's working on, and there simply isn't any time left to account for
  producing a full-fledged story about which he hadn't talked before. I
  chose Vic Lockman as the artist, as his stories are the opposite of the
  kind of stories that Don produces, and there had to be some absurdity
  in the gag.
* The subtitle "all we had to do is ask" is addressed to Komix: if
  they want Don to produce a story for them, they really only have to
  ask--and pay him, of course!
* The subtitle "Carl Barks, internet searches and other stories of
  inspiration" suggests a possible starting point for researching
  material for doing a "Malayalaya" story. I once searched for
  "Malayalaya", and instead of references to the Donald Duck story,
  I got pointers to a company in India, whose headquarters are in
  "Malayalaya Building". Who/what is Malayalaya, and why is there an
  office building named after him/her/it?

	Kriton	(e-mail: kyrimis at cti.gr)
	      	(WWW:    http://dias.cti.gr/~kyrimis)
-----
"The problem with cheating Death is that he's a sore loser at the best
 of times."
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