Various updates

Fabio Gadducci gadducci at DI.UniPi.IT
Tue Dec 28 22:14:53 CET 1993


Dear friends,
just a quick recap on some (almost) recent questions involving the Italian
stories...
(yes, I know what all of you are thinking: "Oh boy, here he goes again...").


David really has a good knowledge of Italian, since his summary of "The
Mars Mystery" is quite good. As for the story, it is not great art,
obviously... Actually, I think that the best story by Pedrocchi-Pinochi is
"Paperino inviato speciale" ("The Foreign Correspondant", according to
Ole), where Donald reencounters Peter Pig. "The Mars Mystery" is valuable
mainly for its being a real first: besides, as already David pointed out,
the Donald portayed there is really at a transition point, with a character
well developed while the drawning is sometimes crude. This feeling of...
how can I say... deja vu is shared by all the other stories by Pedrocchi:
as an example, the owner of the chinese vase in "Paperino e il vaso cinese"
("The Chinese Vase", always according to Ole) -costarring Goofy-, resembles
the owner of the haunted house in "M. and the seven ghosts". This is the
story to which Geir is referring when he talks about its publication in one
of the Giant Mondadori editions.
I do not think that Gladstone will ever publish the other stories, but, for
a 60 years special issue, "The Mars Mistery" seems quite appropriate.
Anyway, since there will be in that issue a new story by Don, poor
Pedrocchi should not make the sales drop too much!
Now about "L'Inferno di Topolino": that's one of the most famous Italian
stories of Mickey, involving a Virgil-Goofy and a Dante-Mickey travelling
across the Hell... It is a wonderful story, written by Guido Martina and
pencilled by Angelo Bioletto, appeared during 1948, but I do not think it
could be easily used: the text (more than 60 pages) is written in rhymed
triplets of hendecasyllables a la "Divina Commedia", almost impossible to
translate; besides, some situations are quite difficult to stand in a
politically correct arena...

A last thing: thanks to David for his defence of the Italian stories. Your
opinion is quite sharp, Geir, and I do not really understand why, since (I
know I'm repeating myself) I think the average quality of Italian stories
is quite high; higher, anyway, of the level in many other countries. Not to
talk of some great artists like Scarpa, which is in my opinion one of the
greatest artist who ever worked on Mickey (Anyway, I do not want to start a
flame war for this... :-)

Let's stop here: all the best wishes for a Happy New Year to all of you,

Fabio

PS: Harry, quoting Ole, wrote:
>> FAMOUS LAST WORDS
>> Badalamenti is an artist who will not appear in any of our lists. He's a
>> composer. The only thing that bothers me about this net thing is that you
>> can't write in italics. So I let off steam by ending with an italicism.
>> Like this:
>> 
>> Morricone.
> 
>OK, I'll follow you, using the name of another famous Italian:
>
>Gadducci.

Thank you Harry, but you do not need to do so: I'll send you the magazines
all the same... :-)

================================================================
Fabio Gadducci            Dip. di Informatica
Home: +39-50-541725       Universita` di Pisa
Off.: +39-50-510268       Corso Italia 40, 56100 PISA (ITALY)
FAX:  +39-50-510226       E-mail:gadducci at di.unipi.it
================================================================





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