From RoC

Thu May 5 18:52:09 CEST 1994

Here's a letter I wrote when Gary Leach was still on the list, and
"Walt Disney Comics in Colour" had just been banned, but he left
before I got around to posting it...

>>>
QUICK AND PAINLESS (Ducks and comics: a lethal cocktail)
--------------------------------------------------------
Gary, I too lament the fate of the unborn WDCiC, but if you've still
got money to burn, I do have a couple of ideas:

1.st: Would anyone care to explain to me why it's better to publish six
titles once in a blue moon, instead of *the* comic every darn tuesday!?
Considering the attention span of the average American young person,
a higher frequency of publishing would make it easier not to forget
that you are a regular buyer. Even I have to dig up the previous issues
for every new chapter of the 'World of Tomorrow' serial. If, as I
suspect, most of your sales are subscriptions, I wonder how many of
them are for only one or two titles, not all of them, save maybe one?
With a weekly Donald Duck as your only title, you would sell the
equivalent of eight bi-monthly issues to all subscribers, and maybe
they'll even grow accustomed to reading on a regular basis.
I know; it's un-American, subversive, and probably downright undoable.
At the very least though, some titles, like WDC&S, ought to be monthly.

2.nd: If you *must* have a new title with the profitable '#1' on the
cover you could try an 'old' new title like the Digests; that may fool
Disney into accepting it. But this time please don't use halfsized
reprints of ordinary pages. 6 panel pages preformated for digest/pockets
are available at very cheap discounts. In Denmark 264 paged Jumbo books
are published every month, selling more than a million copies a year;
it's the best selling book in Denmark. 'It a ly? :)
<<<

TALKIN' BACK:

Sigurdur:
=========
>Who was the artist who did the motorcar story 2 issues ago? Something
>about Donald renting a bigger car to impress Daisy. Was it
>the same one who did the "Donald as a Pizza delivery man" story?

No, the pizza delivery story was by William van Horn, while H 8296 in
whatever-your-Donald-is-called #16/94 is by Freddy Milton, the Famous
Danish Artist. Though the code as far as I know means it was written
in 1982, an early version of the script was published in Freddy's own
fanzine "Carl Barks & Co." #3 in 1975, credited to B"orner and Milton.
I see the Icelandic edition follows the Nordic ones, but as they are
slightly different, I'd like to ask you to list the codes for all the
stories from one issue; I'm curious how it compares to the others.
I believe that DANISH-INDEX (which I will soon update, really) on
LYSATOR will work just fine for your books too.
If you like Freddy's stories, you can also try and find some of the
Nordic Woody Woodpecker issues from 1982-85. He wrote a "duck story"
with WW or the Gnuffs (a dragon family) for almost every issue.

Elon:
=====
>On an aside, there was a thread on duck heroes a while ago (Paperinik).
>Has anybody seen stories in which Fethry Duck is a superhero (Batman-like,
>but Fethry-style, if you know what I mean)? The name was "Morcego Vermelho"
>in Brazil. I wonder if it could be a Brazil-only creation.
>Though this one was not bad, I'm sorry to say that Brazilian made stories
>are not good in my opinion. There was a series of stories (also published
>in Denmark, I guess) in which the Disney characters formed a "space patrol"!

The only B-coded stories I have seen, are a handful of Beagle Boys
stories in pocket books, and they were no better or worse than most.
I'm sorry to say I don't know those you describe; they sound funnier.

Fabio:
======
>"Paperinik was created with a parodistic intent: during the Sixties, in
>Italy were well spread a kind of comics called 'I neri' as a genre. Their
>"heroes" were violent, ruthless law-breakers. Their names, very derivative
>of the first one of them, Diabolik, always ended with a K: Satanik,
>Demoniak and so on...
>Besides, in the same period there was a revival of Fantomas, a French pulp
>character of the first years of the century, whose first story with
>Paperinik is reminiscent of (as for the name as Fantomius, the former owner
>of the building were DD decides to become Paperinik, after reading that
>guy's diary, and so on...)"

...and in German Paperinik = Phantomias.

Don:
====
>Have I ever posted a list of the Whitmans I need to see if
>anyone here can help me fill in the holes? I'll do so now.

You're probably drowning in responses, but here's my checklist:
U$ #179, WDC&S #480, HD&L #61+73, SG #64+68, and C&D #70+76+77.
I only have one of each, and they'll take ages to reach you, but I'd
be happy to swap with some "Captain Kentucky" books, if you still
"have a garage full of the #$%@& things!"

If anybody wants a copy of DD #231 (reprints all of DD #131, including
Tony Strobl's "Flight of the Golden Butterfly"), "I'm givin' g'way free
semple." My dealer sent me *eight* of'em!