Disney-comics digest #775.

Frank Stajano fms at cam-orl.co.uk
Wed Sep 6 22:13:42 CEST 1995


About the incompetent unsubscribers:

I basically agree with Fredrik's proposal. In fact I've been using a
similar mechanism for something else and it worked out very
well. Adapting my protocol to this mailing list would work like this:

1) The only way to subscribe to the list is to send
disney-comics-request a message like this one:
 
-------------
Please subscribe me to the disney-comics mailing list.

DECLARATION:

I understand that the mailing list is about Disney comic books and
*NOT* about cartoons, theme parks or other unrelated Disney
subjects. I know that to unsubscribe to this list I must send a
message with a body of "UNSUBSCRIBE" to the
disney-comics-request at minsk.docs.uu.se address, and I'll keep a note
of this for future reference.

--------------

2) A sample copy of this message will be on the web server, on the ftp
server and on the fingerable .plan of the disney-comics account (if
one exists-- I don't know how this mailing list is actually
implemented; otherwise it could be on Per's own .plan).

3) Any request not conforming to the above will NOT result in
subscription but in an automated reply that says: "if you really want
to subscribe please read this, understand it, agree with it and send
it back to me".

I've been running a sort of competition called DHT for more than a
year now, and the adoption of this policy has been very helpful.


To Even:

I don't think postmasters would ever be so rude as to sending
unsubscribe messages to a mailing list. It's their job to be "on the
other side" of such requests...


About the name: 

I think it should stay the same. It's as unequivocal and descriptive
as we can get.

End of boring administrivia, back to comics.



I went back to Italy on holiday recently, travelling by plane to
Belgium and by car to Italy, going through Luxembourg, Germany,
Switzerland and Austria. In the German-speaking countries, at highway
petrol stations and the like, I saw many booklets by the title of
(where's that bit of paper? I don't read German myself...) LUSTIGES
TASCHENBUCH. ("taschenbuch" must obviously be something like
"pocket-sized book", I await enlightenment on the "lustiges").  Well,
for the most part these seemed to be EXACT reprints of the Italian
"Classici di Walt Disney" (CWD), a glorious series that started in
1957. So I thought that maybe some of you would enjoy some more
information on that.

When I was a kid the CWDs came out at a rate of 3 or 4 per year; later
on they became monthly. This series is all reprints, mostly of Italian
stories. Most of the Scarpa stories, including the ancient ones, have
been reprinted here. Stories in installments get a bit butchered at
the junction (a typical ugliness would be the joining panels drawn by
a completely unrelated artist, usually Giuseppe Perego), but apart
from that it's a great, affordable anthology of past classics. Before
Perego retired they had him draw rather silly "connections" between
the different stories of the booklet, as if pretending that all the
stories were really one big story. These were generally scripted by
Giangiacomo Dalmasso. For many decades the CWDs had half of the pages
in black and white and half of them in colour.  The German edition I
saw was identical to the original in all respects (in several cases
I've seen they've even kept the same cover), except that the lettering
was typeset and not hand-drawn. Of course I can't judge on the quality
of the translation.


And now a question for the other Italians on the list. I was reading a
story the other day and I have a strong suspicion I found a
connection, but I had no way to confirm or reject it. The story is
<Topolino e il suo "amico" Macchia Nera>, from TL 1397, art by Giulio
Chierchini. I was trying to guess the writer and what I suspect is
that (s)he must have been a writer for Diabolik (which, to the rest of
you, is a popular non-Disney comic about a high-tech thief). Mostly
because of the ending, which is so untypical for a Mickey story, but
also because of details like the use of the face mask. I'd be grateful
if anyone could help me on that one. Who is the writer? Was I right or
wrong about Diabolik?

    Frank   (Filologo Disneyano)



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