I'm back...

Harry Fluks H.W.Fluks at research.ptt.nl
Wed Nov 3 17:51:05 CET 1993


Hi everyone,

I'm back from Texas!
Boy, what a lot of messages to read! And some people are even complaining
there's too little traffic! It took me a whole evening to read it all
an another one to write this reply-message!

I will put my comments of the last 3 weeks in one big message. So Torsten:
try to find the 50% you're interested in! 8-)

(Note: there are more than 200 lines to follow)

My comics collection
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I bought some USA comics in various Texas cities. I even couldn't resist
buying some comics solely because of their Rosa covers. And I bought Uncle
Scrooge #116, which reprints the only non-Barks story Rosa based a Life
of Scrooge fact on: the 'shoe shining' story from U$ 50 by Tony Strobl.

I got Gladstone's DD Adventures 23 with a Disney Comics label ("distributed
by Marvel"). It is quite strange to see in an answer to a letter: "Hope
you like our new 'G' logo, Ron!", while the 'G' logo does not appear on
or in the comic at all.

Dutch albums and magazines
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You talked about the German "Barks Library", which is in fact "Die besten
Geschichten mit [not: von] Donald Duck". In Holland, a similar album series
is issued since 1975, containing only Barks stories. They reached album #77
now, and as an extra this one contained a poster of the Barks painting
"Return to Morgan's Island".
Besides this, an "Uncle Scrooge" album series was issued. Numbers 1-30
contained Barks stories only, after that they didn't contain Barks at
all, except in #50, where the Barks/Rosa "Pied Piper of Duckburg" was
reprinted. It is quite likely that future editions of this U$ series will
contain Rosa stories, though the chance that an album will contain ONLY
Rosa stories is almost nil.

The 43th issue of the Weekly Donald Duck this year contained a very funny
story drawn by Ben Verhagen. Also, it had a 3-D album as a bonus. It was
a copy of Disney's 3-D comic, but it only contained one Van Horn story.
(Fredrik, for [y]our index: that's AR 152.)

Jippes
~~~~~~
The American artist of Dutch origin, Daan Jippes, has left the Disney
Studios. He is now the head of the Story Department of "Amblimation",
Steven Spielberg's animation company. I guess that gives him too little
time to re-ink more Barks Junior Woodchuck stories...
(And Geir says they are "SIMPLY inking of Barkses scripts". WHAAH!)

Tsamjah Phee
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just before I left, I put a quote from "Return To Xanadu" in my signature,
misspelling Tsamjah Phee. Gosh, I never knew that was another word joke!
I just thought it was some real Asian name. Don: what a strange person
you are! 8-)
BTW: the Dutch translation was Tsjamjah Phee. The 'tsj' is the Dutch
transliteration of the 'ch'-sound like in 'church'. I think they missed the
Jaffee reference too.

Translations in Dutch
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wilmer asked how word puns are translated in non-English countries. In
Dutch, most of the things Per said about Swedish, and what David said
about German, is true. In the 50s and 60s the stories were translated
(from German) by a lady from an other magazine who did it as a side job.
>From 1973 on, when Jippes and Thom Roep joined the Dutch editors, the
Barks stories were faithfully translated. Sometimes the result is even
funnier than the original. In 1983, someone decided that the Disney comics
should be for younger children. This meant that the lettering and translations
changed: bigger letters, smaller sentences. Happily, this thing ended in
1985, when the letters were normal-sized again. And a lucky circumstance is
that they reprinted very few Barks stories in 1983 and 1984.

When a story is made in Holland, no effort is done to make puns
translatable into other languages. They only make the stories for themselves,
and don't have a language problem like Egmont has (I think that's also
the reason why they throw away English scripts).

In the Dutch translation of "The Lemming with the Locket", the words Nordost
and Gjetost were still there: untranslated. I remember I guessed that "ost"
would mean "cheese" (because of Gjetost), and that "Nordost" must have been
a joke...

Indexes
~~~~~~~
Andy asked about the Gladstone Barks index we once had on ftp. I put all the
information in the 'gladstone.index' file. It can easily be derived from
that file by using a 'grep' command on a unix system or a 'find' on a DOS-PC.
(Well, it's easy if you know how to do it...)

Also, David: I don't think a H-code list or a D-code list from Gladstone
and or Disney Comics would give more information than we already have.
(Just like Ole's AR-index on ftp.) We once had a Gladstone H-coded list,
which became superfluous when we made a list of ALL the Gladstone contents.

If we change the index formats to make a D-index, H-index etc. it can best
be done by taking the existing lists (including my Dutch list, for example),
and re-arrange the information.

I agree that Gladstone and Disney Comics could best be put in one single index
file. And it's time to list the "new" Gladstones as well.

I'll come back to the index subjects later.

Rosa Index
~~~~~~~~~~
Ole found the new version of the Rosa list "a little messy. The numbering
is a bad idea!". I introduced the numbering solely because it would make
the index less messy: there can be more than one line for a story now and
the number sort of indicates the lines belong together. I don't like to have
to mention all those different versions of the stories, but since they ARE
different, what else can we do than list them? I'm open for suggestions
for a better lay-out...

I'm sorry I missed those two Life Of Scrooge codes. They'll have to be
added. But you didn't provide the code of the Guardians story, that's why
I "forgot" that one.

Marco Rota
~~~~~~~~~~
Ole already pointed out that the story in Gladstone's DDA 23 (coded D 5393)
is in fact the same story as I 277-A, the one I called "geroosterd vlees als
redding".
They deleted a lot, and the most annoying is that they changed the page
layouts: Rota made a lot of panels with rounded sides, or slightly higher or
lower than 1/4 of the page height, et cetera. Gladstone all edited it down
to a very dull lay-out. And the Dutch title ("Saved by the meal" or so)
actually refers to one of the deleted parts: Andold and co. won the fight
because the Vikings interrupted their fight to have dinner!
I can imagine why Gladstone made the cuts (the story was too long, and not
interesting enough to fill TWO issues), but that doesn't mean I like it.

Per suggested the story has a Danish code because Egmont reworked it.
That may be an answer to an observation I did in the ftp-file 'story-codes'
about Danish codes:

> A peculiarity: all known codes between D 5274 and D 10166 are _even_.

Maybe the _odd_ numbers (like D 5393) were reserved for re-workings of
foreign stories?

Benny Donkey and Hugo Hound
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David said in his letter from October 18, that Harvey comics retranslated
some Barks MGM stories from the Dutch. This can't be, because the stories
never appeared in Dutch. I thought we figured out that the "original"
could be either French or German.

An article in The Duckburg Times #21 about slang
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark, give us some of that, at least the part where BopBop is explained!
And I'm also interested in a copy of the articles in the CBG.

Sweden is mentioned in a Barks story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As says Per, but I don't know which one (and I would like to know). I _do_
know two stories with references to the Dutch though...

Duck nudity
~~~~~~~~~~~
David mentions the story from WDC&S 86, where Donald is a fireman. On one
panel, he only wears a helmet. That page (page 3) was in fact deleted from
the Dutch reprint in the very first Dutch DD Weekly (#1, 1952). The reason
for that was that they needed extra space for a contest and the page could
be deleted without disturbing the story too much. But in the 70s, some
people suggested that the page was deleted because of the nude Donald! They
forgot that Donald can be seen even "nuder" (without helmet) a few pages
later...

Donald has been naked in several Dutch stories in the 80s. Not only in his
bedroom or when swimming, but also running through the streets of Duckburg!

Dell's Donald Duck #41
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark said he bought this issue and found the both stories "atrocious".
All the interior was drawn by Tony Strobl and the cover was by Paul Murry
(according to Kjell Crone's index). In fact, I know the Dutch version of the
lead story and I quite like it.

Donald and sex
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The article with the interview of Geir Hasnes was translated by Even Flood,
he said because "we felt the subject was of general interest to a larger
audience"! How may Norwegian "Dagbladet" readers are there? And how many
members do you think are on this list? 8-)

Jack Kirby
~~~~~~~~~~
Mark asked why he is in the 'creators' file. Well, in fact, that
file also covers the creators in the "classics" index. The Classic stories
were newspaper stories, often reprinted in One Shots and other comics.
In 1980, Kirby did the pencils of "The Black Hole" (story Fallberg,
inks Royer). That's the only Kirby entry though.

Re-reprinting European stories
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David objected to this, because there is little room, and he prefers
new stories. In fact, I prefer new stories too, but:

1. I prefer new stories to reprints
2. I prefer Milton/Jippes reprints to Barks (re)reprints.

All I was saying in the first place was that the Milton/Jippes stories
from the early Gladstone comics deserve a reprint in better colours, on
better quality paper. Maybe in an album or so... That's much better than the
20th reprint of a Barks story in the comics...

Mau Heymans (minor spoiler)
~~~~~~~~~~~
David said he has a great story by Mau Heymans "whose style is wonderful" and
that I would back that up. OK: his drawing style is very good. Unfortunately,
they give him very slow scripts of too long stories a lot. But the short
stories he does (4-5 pages) are very good. I think Ole can confirm that.
David, the story you refer to is planned for the DD birthday issue, so I
think you're talking about the story where Donald is chosen to be a "Mister
Duckburg" (or whatever). That story was made for issue #2000 of the
weekly DD (apparently, Holland started a bit earlier than Italy). It contains
several 1-page panels (or 1-panel pages). One such a panel shows a big
dinner with various characters from a lot of Barks stories. It was fun to
try to recognise all the characters and the stories they appeared in!
I think the story will have to be cut and partly rewritten for a Gladstone
publication.

BTW: issue '2000' was in fact issue number 1999. They made a mistake.
(But of course, Don Rosa already knew they couldn't count: they count like
this: 3, 1, 2.... 8-)

Mouse removal project
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Torsten asked about stories dealing with rats, mice, or exterminators. What
about Barks/Rosa's "Pied Piper" story?


That's all for now! Nice to be back.

--Harry.

Harry Fluks                      ()_()     Dutch Disney comics freak
PTT Research, Leidschendam (NL)   (_)      H.W.Fluks at research.ptt.nl 
"Yeah... I've _heard_ of coral barques!"



More information about the DCML mailing list