Disney-comics digest #129.

[David A Gerstein]

	Dear Folks,

	Just back from New Hampshire.  As of now all I have to respond
to so far (after reading Friday's digest) is a comment from Geir
Hasnes:

	"The next thing will be to begin to rewrite Barks to make him 
easier to understand for the children of the next generation."

	>Ahem<  This isn't the next thing, it's already been *done*...
Harvey Comics rewrote some Barks MGM-character stories when reprinting
them in 1989... after a fashion.  Actually, what they did was that
they had nothing but foreign versions of some stories and
RE-TRANSLATED them from -- Dutch I think.  Barks' Benny Burro story
about Senor Macaw, the most beautiful bird in the world, was changed
to a story about a *parrot*, not a macaw.  No attempt was made to find
the original versions of the stories and reinsert their dialog... the
new dialect was abominable, complete with the term "nerd" used every
time someone insulted someone else.  Bah!

	I didn't mean to imply that Egmont wants to stamp out puns...
far from it.  They just don't like it when a story *revolves* around a
misunderstanding of a certain word.  They also don't like it when a
story is *really* wordy (mine tend to be *very* wordy)... and by that
I don't mean filled with grandiose words, but just TOO MANY words
(like in the pre-1932 Gottfredson strips, although I actually *enjoy*
that abundance of words).  It's easy to skirt this and write
intellectually stimulating stuff.

	And not all countries make infantile translations, either.
The German translations are great, and the flavors of Barks, Rosa and
Gottfredson come shining through.

	The Germans also have a habit of naming incidental characters
in a story "Barks"  (Neighbor Jones in one story, for instance...
until recently Egmont didn't recognize the early Jones as a consistent
character, only the later, slimmer version)

	And, of course, Gladstone loves unusual language.  Disney
seemed to, although now and then a pretty bad script would get
through.  And as for wordiness.... Disney Comics' US 250, in the story
"Power Failure," has one panel with more than 50 words in it.  I find
that to be just too much unless you have six-panel pages!

	Your friend,


	David Gerstein

	"Here comes Clarabelle Cow, the town gossip!  I heard she had
her tonsils removed so she could talk more freely!  .... She musta
been vaccinated with a phonograph needle!"