Paperino... Anno 2001

[Jan Follak]

Halvor, Soren:

>> This is an italian story written by Attilio Mazzanti and drawn by
>> Luciano Gatto (one of my favourites) in 1961. It's called 'Paperino... Anno
>> 2001' (I TL 309-A) 

>Funny! Exactly the same story came to my mind, but I think I have
>mentioned it before on this list, on another occation.

The same thing happened to me. This story is among the first Disney stories
I read and I remember that I thought that it was very strange and felt
quite like a nightmare. Probably I couldn't cope with the time-paradoxes
(two Donald's of different ages at the same time), the strange shift in
Donald's character (he becomes a second Scrooge), the death of Scrooge and
Donald asking the Beagleboys for help. I had just grown accustomed to the
Disney universe, and in this story everything is different. Now that I have
grown up, I agree that this is a very good story, and exactly because of
the mixed feelings it leaves you with. I also enjoyed seeing the original
Italian beginning of the story for the first time, Soren!  

There is an interesting parallel to this story in another Italian one from
the same time: "L'antipaperone" (TL  295-B/ TL 296-B), written by Roberto
Catalano and drawn by Luciano Gatto (as well). Gyro invents a machine that
duplicates people, but makes the good ones bad and vice versa. Scrooge's
alter ego now turns out bad and teams up with the Beagle-Boys against the
real Scrooge to get hold of his money. This time there are two *Scrooges*
battling each other, and again the Beagleboys are involved on one side. 
In the German version (which is the same as the Italian "I
Classici"-version) the two parts are turned into one, and again there are
some panels drawn by Perego, this time to make the two parts fit together.