Disney-comics digest #651.

[DAVID.A.GERSTEIN]

WES:  You call yourself "possibly the only member of this list who 
enjoys Taliaferro's strips in Gladstone's DD."  Gawrsh, say it ain't 
so!  I enjoy AT strips a lot.  And I wouldn't mind them in such large 
numbers -- in trade paperbacks along the lines of Garfield books.  
The reason I gripe about the material is that I have actually been 
around Europe, looking extensively at all the duck and mouse stuff 
available.  When I see great stories being ignored so that AT can 
simply hog lots of an issue, I feel it's a shame.  Not because I 
don't like the gags, but because I think that a comic BOOK should 
take advantage of its format to present more full stories, while 
paperbacks are a more logical place to anthologize droves of short, 
individual gags.
      I AM all for seeing SOME AT strips in Gladstone's comics.  I 
was disappointed that Disney Comics didn't use them, and wrote in 
continually until they finally dredged up a few (right near the end, 
in 1993), although they were the original 2-pagers he'd done for 
WDC&S in 1949 rather than dailies.  Before Gladstone started, I 
pleaded with them to print the Silly Symphony DD Sundays (which they 
were already planning to do before I asked them!).  But I feel the 
material is now being used at modern writers' expense, which is 
nothing like I had envisioned.

JOHN LUSTIG:  We've talked a lot about censorship of many stories, 
but I've never known if Disney censored the stories you did with Van 
Horn.  Do they?  I can't actually tell if a Van Horn-lettered 
balloon has been partly relettered, for instance.  But I do notice 
things like a train-station sign being deleted from "Stampede and 
Deliver" in the American edition.  Whose choice was this?
      Van Horn's stories always involve DD insulting the nephews 
with a lot of colorful language.  ("Drones!  Idlers!  Indolent --"  
CLONK!)  My stories start out the same way, but Disney butchers them 
so Donald becomes nice and polite.  How does Van Horn get away 
with it?  Does he actually include a lot more verbal horseplay than 
we end up seeing?

      One interesting thing I read about "Horsing Around with 
History" in an Egmont in-house journal was that Barks asked Van Horn 
to reduce the size of the noses on the Beagle Boys' tailor costumes, 
because he thought that the original outsize schnozzes made them look 
like caricatured Jews!  So it's not only Disney that censors stories.
      Gottfredson would now and then use an obvious Jewish character 
(the antique salesman in "The Miracle Master," for instance, who 
originally wore a yarmulke).  I enjoy these characters, because 
otherwise I would never be sure that I had any "kindred spirits", 
religion-wise, in Mickey's world.  ;-)  Why censor such obviously 
harmless things?

David Gerstein
<9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>
"You want this fiddle maybe Nero fiddled with?  It went with  
Washington when he crossed the Delaware in the Mayflower!"
"Yeah!  An' if Caesar gave it to him at Napoleon's funeral, so much 
the better!"