More Witches

[Luca Boschi]

Hi, Harry, Don and all!

About Magica...
I appreciate very much what Don said about Magica. It's also my opinion
about HOW the character should be used, since there is no reasons to have
another Hazel, or so, around, with the Ducks.

But the confusion is large, as I'll try to explain in December's issue of
Zio Paperone...

Harry is absolutely right when he writes:
>
> This already happened before Europe started to write stories with her; in
> America. In stories that were made while Barks was still active, for
> instance drawn by Tony Strobl.
> And Barks himself showed Magica flying on a broom in one of his JW scripts.

Yes, in the "battle of the bottles" story... I think that at Western someone
decide to use a witch in the U$ stories, and after the re-discovering of
Hazel-Wanda-The Witch (with no name at all), someone found that Magica could
fit better in the Duckburg Universe. So, Hazel-Wanda-The Witch disappeared
again, because her role was covered by Magica.

I think that the "new trend" started occasionally, with the (minor) story
"Mad Madam Mim: The Generosity Potion", written by an unknown story man (Del
Connell himself? Maybe, since he could decide a trend or another one, in
that period), drawn by  Tony Strobl, inked by Steve Steere, published in WDC
310 in the USA and in Denmark (Skønne, spildte kræfter) in AA1967-34. This
is the first meeting, in the USA stories, between the two... "girls". In a
"similar way" they met also in the Studio Program stories (so there are TWO
"first meetings", like Donald meets Fethry TWO times for the first time, in
the comic books and in the Studio stories).
The approach between Magica and Mim is different in the comic books and in
the stories never printed in the USA. Friendly approaching in the second
trend, differently they verbally insult one another in "The Generosity
Potion".
Later, it seems that someone decided to give Dick Kinney (writer of the
early Fethrys and Magicas for the Studio) the "license" to go on with his
interpretation about these Disney characters. Kinney is the guy who went on
making the confusion we are speking about: from that time on, Mim and Magica
become two witches *quite* of the same kind, and even Barks was influenced
by this idea.

> But *they* were the sources where the European writers worked from.

Ya!

Ciao!

L.