Favorite Egmont works, and comments for Geir

[David A Gerstein]

	Dear Folks,

	Geir talked about various things, and I'll take on a few of
them.  Lessee here...

	"William van Horn is shallow and one-dimensional. He is
completely predictable and his stories follow the same patterns 
always. But I laugh at some of his stories, yes."

	In some stories Van Horn holds a hatred for the Ducks as human
beings.  No, I don't mean for doing Duck stories, which he obviously
loves, but in these tales the captions have bitter sarcasm directed
towards the Ducks, some of it verbal, and a lot of it visual.  The
last panel of "Just a Humble Bumbling Duck" (DDAD 13, 1991) was one of
the bleakest panels I have ever seen in a Duck story.  Unlike Barks,
who seemed to sympathize with Donald despite his general 1949-1951
cynicism, Van Horn likes to make his Donald extremely sympathetic,
then kick him when he's down.

	This has improved lately.  Donald has become more of a
blowhard (as he was prior to 1990 -- I actually think that the trend I
described above peaked in 1991), making what happens to him funnier.
I thought "The Black Moon," for instance, was very well done.

	"Daan Jippes has done some good work, and also Fred Milton. 
However, there is a deep misunderstanding in Miltons view on the 
Ducks personality."

	Gee!  In what stories?  One of my personal favorites, "Sauce
for the Duck," is a Fred Milton story, and he continues to have, for
me, a remarkably high batting average.  In fact I have done the
American script for "The Clock Watcher," a Milton story to appear in
the United States soon.

	"I am sick and tired of Magica and the quest for the holy 
dime.  I am sick and tired of Donalds lack of luck.  I am sick and 
tired of the jealousy stories of Donald, Daisy and Gladstone."

	Gee again!  Barks used these concepts a LOT.  So why can't
other artists use them a lot, too?

	I actually feel that some of the best Magica stories are not
by Barks.  For example:  "The Robot Raiders of Magica De Spell" (US
210, 1986), "The Sunken Chest" (US 212, 1986), "A Witch in Crime"
(some US in 1988, I'm not sure which)... I almost think, Geir, that
you feel other writers and artists copy Barks simply by using plot
devices -- such as the three mentioned above -- that Barks did.  When
incidents like Magica's dime-hunger occur frequently in non-Barks
stories, I find that not derivative -- simply an attempt to recreate
Barks' universe by showing that things that happened there go on in
the Duckburg of others.

	I have mentioned my upcoming original story "Two in One,"
which is to me something I'm very proud of.  Do I need to worry, Geir,
that you will find me unoriginal simply for using the concept of
Magica going after the dime?  Did you find Rosa's superb "On a Silver
Platter" unoriginal in this same way?  I guarantee that you've never
seen a Magica story quite like "Two in One"...

	BY THE WAY... something NO other writer has taken up is the
idea that Magica not only wants the dime, but other mythical magical
objects, and that she can compete with Scrooge for *them!*  How about
"Isle of Golden Geese," where she wants the golden eggs, or "Rug
Riders in the Sky"?  I think that doing more stories like *that* with
Magica is a good idea, and I may do some of them.

	"I have laughed at some of Vicars stories and even more at 
some of Branca's stories. I am however sick and tired of their
mindless copying of poses, of cars, of houses, of landscapes..."

	I find that Vicar does a lot of copying, and Branca is more
original.  I generally prefer Vicar to Branca up to about the stories
made in 1989, when Vicar shows a marked improvement.  Maybe he sacked
some of his inkers (he works with some assistants in a sort of studio,
pencilling everything himself but having others ink it).

	(continued from above)  "...of all kinds of story patterns or
details taken from Barks, in short their almost total
non-originality."

	Whoa there!  Vicar and Branca almost NEVER write their own
scripts.  It's always drawing someone else's thing.  They've gotten a
lot of new writers in the late 1980s, undoubtedly the cause of the
improvements you have mentioned in their work.

	"The stories besides Barks were terrible in the 60s, even 
more terrible in the 70s, much better in the 80s..."

	I assume you're talking about foreign stories now.  The
American stories of Whitman in the 1980s were the worst crap you can
ever imagine...

	"... and even better in the 90s. With this I mean the ratio 
of good to bad. The Strobl and Bradbury stories of the 60s and 70s 
make me ashamed, but they delivered good stories in the 50s and very 
early 60s."

	Not in my opinion.  What bothers me the most is that the
Strobl and Bradbury stories, notably usually written by someone other
than Strobl and Bradbury, who often only did the art, don't try for
any type of realism.  The earlier ones -- for example, the ones in
WDC&S during 1950 -- strike me just as bad as the later ones.  Some
have good ideas now and then -- I think back to "Donald Duck in
Panama," by Bradbury, with a very stingy Scrooge -- but for every good
idea, there's a bad one.  And these two are usually just as bad with 
Mickey, IMHO, although they do a good Goofy.  In fact, I'd go as far 
as to say that all of Western Publishing's creators made the big 
mistake of relying on Goofy, not Mickey, to carry their "Mickey" 
stories.  Only Gottfredson and Scarpa make Mickey the central 
figure.

	There I go again, getting started on Mickey.  Jeez... I
maintain that I am Gottfredson's biggest fan.  I simply do not have
the facilities to try to do what Horst has done (presumably with the
Sunday pages) in whatever country it would be legal to do it in.
Maybe some day I can convince Disney to let the strips appear in a
library set, and the only way to do that is to talk to Jeff Katzenberg
himself via one of the animation historians I know...

	That's all for now.

	David Gerstein

	"I'm the Fuller Brush Man!  I'm givin' g'way a free semple!"
	<David.A.Gerstein at Williams.edu>