Three Caballeros in The Netherlands

Daniel van Eijmeren dve at kabelfoon.nl
Sat Jul 7 23:41:30 CEST 2001


DON ROSA to FERNANDO VENTURA, 16-06-2001:

> ["The Three Caballeros Rides Again"] Now we come to my real attitude
> towards using the material from the comics: see, we in America have
> never seen Jose Carioca or Panchito comic strips, none to speak of.
> There were short running comics about them in American newspapers 
> back around the time the movie was out, to promote it. And there were
> some unmemorable promotional appearances in the Dell comics (even
> though one was by Walt Kelly, which I would not say was "inspired"....
> it seemed a bit "uncomfortable"). But these newspaper comics and such
> were long gone by the time I was even born, and they were never 
> reprinted for me to see later.

If these newspaper strips were the Joe Carioca "solo" adventure series 
published in the Dutch weekly in about 1982, then I think these might
be "the missing link" in understanding the Dutch Joe Carioca stories.

As I remember these newspaper stories, Joe is somewhat living like a
Gladstone Gander *without* his luck. I think that Joe, like Gladstone,
tries to live as easy as possible, without working. But in the case 
of Carioca it only results in having a harder time than he already had. 
In other words: Joe would have had a much easier, richer life if he 
would try to get a job and give up acting like a prestigious gentleman.

Joe brags to rich people to hide that he is a tramp. He brags to pretty,
rich girls for the same reason, but also because he tries to get into 
a love affair with them. I can't remember exactly, but I believe these 
love affairs are also an attempt to get away from his tramp life. 

When he gets into trouble with his bragging, Joe tries to explain old
lies by telling new lies. Sometimes he even manages to get more than
one girl, which results in even more lies because of both girls getting
suspicious about his behavior.

So far my memory of these adventure series. Please note that this is
just a brief description. I don't know how different these stories 
are from the Dutch stories, because I've never compared them.

My thought is that the Dutch stories were heavily inspired on those 
adventure series, but maybe there are other Dutch people here who 
might know the answer?

Before 1982, possibly somewhere between 1977 and 1981, the Dutch weekly
reprinted a short Donald Duck story in which Joe Carioca and Panchito 
visited him. I think this could have been an American story, published by
Western. Carioca and Panchito give Donald a hard time because they don't
know much about city life. I remember a scene of a rugby(?) ball 
accidently breaking a window. As the police believes that Donald was 
the one who threw the ball, Donald ends up in jail. Carioca and Panchito
(apparently still unaware of the mess they made) thank Donald for the 
good time and they promise him to visit him again one day.

One of the reasons why I still remember this story is that Donald ends up
in jail in the last panel. When Barks did that in "The Firebug" (OS 108),
it was changed into a dream ending by the editors.

As far as I know, there have been no (or at least very few) Dutch stories
with both Panchito and Carioca in it. So, I doubt if this story has had 
an influence on the Dutch stories.

The Dutch Panchito stories might be based on a series of one page gags 
published on the back of Dutch weeklies in about 1980. I believe these 
one pagers had a foreign origin. Maybe they came from America?

Dutch stories mostly (always?) use Donald, Panchito and Carioca as 
"solo" characters. And if I'm right about that Caballeros jail story being
a very rare instance of a Dutch publication with all three of them, then
"The Three Caballeros Rides Again" might be the first Dutch publication of
such a story in 20 years.

But again: I hope that other Dutch members will correct any wrong 
guesses in this email.


-  Daniel



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