digests 787 - 807

[Frank Stajano]

DWIGHT:

Thanks for the explanation about Egmont's house language being English. If 
I understand correctly, then, Rota sends a first draft in Italian to 
Egmont, they then send it to you for translation into English, they then 
edit it and resend it back (in English?) to Rota who does the final 
dialogue (in Italian?) and the art and sends it to Egmont; they send it 
back to you (or whoever else) to have the final dialogue translated into 
English; and finally the English final dialogue is translated n times into 
the various different national editions. Whew! Is that more or less right?

By the way, how many languages can you translate a comic story into English 
from? I'm impressed!


DON:

More interesting stuff about colouring. You mention "Hearts of the Yukon" 
which has been published by Gladstone, with good colours, before Egmont; 
and you say, let's see how Egmont colours it when they publish it next 
year. In such a case why wouldn't Egmont reuse Gladstone's colours which 
are already available? If they ask their computer technicians to spend as 
little time as possible on their pages, it seems that recycling someone 
else's colouring should be the ultimate deal for them...


HARRY:

>Yes, the bigger comic shops have a stock of Gladstone comics. The smaller
>ones will be happy to order a comic or album for you from Gladstone.
>At least, that's the Dutch situation.

The only big comic shop I know of in Cambridge, "Forbidden Planet", has 
racks full of comics of all sorts, and then posters, toys, Star Trek, D&D, 
misc fantasy stuff and so on, but NO Disney Comics of any sort. I asked 
them several times, trying to get answers from different salespeople, but 
the most "informed" reply I got was that they are somehow not allowed to 
sell the Gladstone comics because of licensing problems. Ie, this guy knew 
that these comics existed but said that as a shop they couldn't get them 
from the distributor. Didn't know who else might get them either... Sounds 
a bit bogus to me, but on the other hand the incompetence of some comics 
resellers has already been discussed on this list.

If you or anybody else has tips on where to find Gladstone comics in 
England (preferably London if not Cambridge) please let me know. Otherwise 
I'll consider subscribing.

Many thanks for the info about the database: I'll give it a try asap! Which 
authors do you like best among the Dutch and Danish ones? So I know what to 
look for -- and maybe compare my tastes with yours when I find some of 
these stories.



DON:

>You realize that this "scanner" can't be something that you feed a
>page into or something which exerts ANY pressure whatsoever on the 
original,
>and the original can be the size of a two-page spread of a comic book?

What about the "photostat" process which you described a few days earlier? 
Doesn't that require the comic to be flat, too? How do you hold it in place 
then?



JOHN:

I think your public-spirited idea of having the pros write up their own 
index for the archives is great, if they have the time and inclination to 
do it. First-hand knowledge can't be beaten. Of course the rest of us will 
be more than happy to take a skeleton index as a starting point and to fill 
in the gaps (e.g. reprints etc given the story code).


JAKOB:

>Well, there's a second-hand comic book store in Goteborg that
>sells (I think) fresh editions of CBL. It's called Serieknodden.
>Ever heard of it? The owner is a member of NAFS(k) that is called
>Bengt Sollenby. He's got (I think) 8 different parts on his
>shelves. Unfortunately they cost 1.675 Kr EACH! It's awful, but

That's 1675 Kr for a three-volume set, or about twice the original price, 
right? Do you know exactly which sets he's got in stock?


DAVID:

>	Gladstone tells me that the Carl Barks Library, in its
>hardback form, is *NOT* going to be reprinted at any known time in the
>future.

I rate this as one of these classical rip-off operations. The trouble (for 
us story-lovers) is that the Gladstone guys are not only in the comics 
publishing business, they're also in the "selling older comics to 
collectors at a considerable premium" business. So what happens? They do a 
very good edition of all of Barks' Disney stories, the CBL. Everybody loves 
it, all around the world. Then the books become sold out; so what do they 
do? Instead of printing another run (which BTW would have the lowest 
possible marginal cost, because all the editorial work has already been 
done) they treasure the last few remaining copies, happy to see them become 
collector's items, and offer them at more than THREE TIMES the normal 
price! (I got a letter from them saying so, about a year ago. $3000 + 
shipping). I think this is really a dirty trick. Besides, none of this 
extra money gives any royalties to Barks or even the Disney company. They 
could run the same plates through the printing press and make "fair" money 
that way, and instead they play their little auction games on the 
collector's market which they're only too happy to encourage. Sigh.


ROBERT:

>Wes is toooooo kind.  The European stories are all pretty lame compared to
>even the most mediocre material produced by the American Disney writers 
and

I think this is another example of lumping everything one doesn't know into 
one big blob... I bet you only have a vague idea of all the different 
"streams" of Disney stories that have been produced in Europe since the 
'50s!


KATHY & KNUT:

>RE:  <Well, it's a little difficult to guarantee anything when I mostly 
read
>norwegian translations, but it sounds very much like you're talking about
>the "April fools" story where the nephews try to fool DD by putting 
wallets
>in front of him on his way to go fishing. After several unsuccesful 
attempts

In the Italian translation I have, the "patting himself" quote was 
completely lost, so it's no wonder I couldn't think of that story from 
Kathy's message. But with this identification from Knut I now know which 
story you're talking about (great one, BTW!). Unfortunately I don't know 
about all the US reprints, but hoping this helps in tracking it down I can 
tell you that it's a 10-pager which originally appeared in WDC&S 127 (1951) 
and was reprinted in WDC 344 (1969).


DANIEL:

>Brings up another question, which I have since I saw the English
>version of the story: Is fooling each other on 1 April a worldwide
>tradition?
>I used to think it was typical Dutch...

Just to add a few data points that I have first-hand knowledge of: the 
custom definitely exists in France, Belgium, Italy, UK.


      Frank  (Filologo Disneyano)