DCML digest #12, Wes and Rodney

[Halsten Aastebol]

At 01:38 08.12.99 +0100, Ole Reichstein Nielsen wrote:

>Rodney w bowcock jr.: 
>> To say
>> that there are only 50 outstanding Barks stories seems like blasphemy to
>> me, because I can personally say that without Carl Barks I would never
>> have continued to read Disney comics.  

Of course Barks wrote more than 50 great stories. How many of them that are
outstanding is more difficult to say. But the notion that all Barks stories
are classics is of course silly. There are some Barks stories that are pure
undiluted bullshit!

>> Without Barks, and to a large
>> degree Gottfredson, I think *none* of us would be reading Disney comics. 
>> After all, who would've inspired the current crop of writers and artists
>> to write Disney books in the first place?
>
>No disagreement from me there. Well, except perhaps that especially in
>Italy there is such a long tradition for Disney stories, that many
>current writers and artists are more inspired by their predecessors
>than those who inspired *them*. And while everyhere else you can't
>talk about classic Disney stories without talking only about Barks,
>there are many distinctively different approaches in early Italian
>art and storytelling.

If I'm not mistaken there is a Disney comics tradition in Italy that
predates Barks. Weren't there stories written in Italy before world war II?
Characters included was, along with Mickey and Donald, the pig from "The
Wise Little Hen" and a cat villain.

> My point being that you can't simply judge the
>merits of a story on a scale from one to ten of 'Barksiness'.
>There are other ways to tell stories about Disney characters than Barks'
>and usually a writer/artist is best when he/she finds his/her own.

In principle I agree to the last statement. But on the other hand I rarely
ever enjoy a Disney comic that is not written by either Barks or Rosa.

Halsten