DD&Co #37

[Jørgen Andreas Bangor]

After having written something about the first two stories in the
latest Norwegian duck magazine, I decided to put this on the top 
of the letter.  It's _not_ meant as a disclaimer. I'm a Norwegian, 
and don't feel the need to put in disclaimers. 
I did hope it wouldn't happen, but we've already seen that people 
"outside" this list have been taking information from it, and used 
it against it's members. I have no reason to think, though, that 
anyone would use anything I write on this list against me, and that 
is not the reason why I write this.

Daniel (the Dutch one) brought up the question about what to write
in a description of a story. The description could possibly hurt 
the writer, and since there are several writers on this list now,
the possibility is there to write something not very nice about 
their work. Therefore I'll just make sure that everyone knows that
this is only my personal view of the stories. I've read most of
the Disney stories that have ever been made, so I think I have
quite a lot of material to compare a new story to. It's still
only my personal view. I and David G. have often disagreed about
the qualities of a story.

When I first started to write these reviews, there were only a
couple of writers on this list. It was, and I guess it somehow 
still is, a quite closed medium. At that time it was no problem 
in describing a story as boring or just bad, or anything. As far 
as I remember, I was describing a story by Gilbert as quite bad, 
just before he came on the list. 
I have been wondering a bit of what I should do, since I didn't 
want to stop writing these reviews. I came to the conclusion that 
if I wanted to tell people when they are doing something good, I 
should also tell them when they are doing something bad (in which
case it of course is something _I_ don't like, and that applies 
to the good stories too, of course). That way I would at least be 
sure that people would believe me when I was telling them something. 



Donald Duck & Co #37 1995
-------------------------


- Cover: D11972 
     Donald has painted a portrait of Daisy's hat so it looks like 
a stilleben.


- Donald Duck, D94111, 10 pages, art by Vicar.
     Scrooge gives Donald a new job, as a pencil sharpener. Well, 
he  wants a better job, and he gets one. His first mission is to 
collect some money that a snobby club owns Scrooge. It's a dream of 
Donald to become a member of this club, so he looks forward to meet 
the people there. The members do not want to pay the bill, and when 
they discover that Donald is Scrooge's nephew, they make him a member, 
with a nice title (sounds like one of those ridiculous, er, proud
JWW titles). With Scrooge's nephew as a member, they believe Scrooge
will forget the bill. After a while, a few minutes actually, the other 
members are quite disgusted by Donald's manners. They throw him out 
of the window at the same time as Scrooge is coming to look for him. 
Donald lands safely on Scrooge. Then they trow an old coin to Scrooge 
and, while laughing, they tell him that that is all they are willing 
to  pay. Donald and Scrooge recognize the coin as a valuable such one,
and tell the members that they have paid the rent for twenty years
into the future. Scrooge then gives Donald a high position -- as a
window cleaner.
     A good story. What's really making it good is all the gags in
the dialogue. The translator must have done a really good job (I 
haven't read the original script). It doesn't seem, though, that the 
writer has the same idea of how Scrooge looks upon money as Don Rosa, 
but even if I prefer Don's view, I won't criticize this writer's view. 
     The art is very good. Seems like Vicar liked the story too.


- Mickey Mouse, D94097, 6 pages.
     Mickey and Goofy are hired as, er, what's the word... you
know such people in Bay Watch who look after the people on the
beach. Anyway, they are hired since no one else applied. I wonder
if the same could be the case for the writer. It's about some 
stupid guy who, for no apparent reason, wants to make trouble for
Mickey and Goofy.


- Grandma Duck, D92550, 2 pages.
     Gus Goose wants a tractor to do the job for him, and he 
actually manage to get Grandma to buy one. While Gus is looking
at the luxury of the machines, Grandma is looking at the prices.
At last she finds one she likes. Its a huge steam machine to which
Gus must supply the fuel -- wood.
     A nice little story, and the art is good. The machine in the 
last panel (half page) looks great.


- Donald Duck, H8580, 10 pages, art by Ben Verhagen (did he write 
it too?).
     HDL are playing knights (again :-). They make Donald very 
upset. He meets Gyro who lends him a mirror that can make people
do anything you tell them (nothing new so far, but just wait).
Donald then goes on a trip with HDL. He's looking for a spot 
where there has never been any war. If HDL disagree, he uses the
mirror. After a while they come to a nice place, and HDL tell 
about a big war that took place there. Donald gets furious, but
then HDL tell him that there is some gold hidden there. They look
for it, but don't find anything. Then Donald gets the idea of
hypnotizing himself to believe that he was there at the same 
place in 1623, when the battle took place. Donald can see 
everything that happened there in 1623, and the boys can see
Donald, who is acting quite strange. In 1623, Donald takes off
his own clothes, and puts on some armour. In 1985 (the code) he
takes of his own clothes, and then walks around naked. A knight
in Donald's "world" shows up to be a forest ranger, who doesn't
want people to walk around naked in his forest. Anyway, Donald
has found out where the gold was hidden, and starts to dig. A
water well suddenly blows (or whatever it does) out of the ground,
and on the top of it, invisible for anyone who see the water,
is a small chest.
     A very clever story, and very good art.


- Mickey Mouse, D93303, 8+ pages, story by Janet Gilbert, art
by Ferioli.
     A bottle of "rubber serum" is stolen from a friend of 
Mickey. This friend is an inventor. He's got the idea from a
comic about some guy called Rubber Sam (do I sense some super
hero comic here?). The serum makes anything, included cats, and
as we'll later see, mice, get some "rubbery" concistence.
It was stolen by The Red Bat (was that his name?), who's using
it on a big building in, well, Duckburg, of course. He'll use
it more, if he doesn't get a lot of money. Mickey wants to take
the serum back from the bat, and after having got the serum 
spilled over himself, he can actually get in through the key-
hole.
     Very good! This is really something new. And the art is
fantastic. I don't think I've seen anything this good by Ferioli
before, and I can't remember having seen anything bad by him.
You must have done a good job too, Erik :-)


- Donald Duck, KF5.15.49, one page, Bob Karp, Al Taliaferro.


Except for the first Mickey story, this was a very good issue.
These reviews might not all be as long as this one...



   Jorgen