Introducing myself

[Thomas Schuster]

I would like to say "Hello" to everyone, as this is my first posting after
several months of lurking.

My name is Thomas Schuster, and despite my German name (and my German
family) I am Italian. I'm 24 years old and for some years now, I've been
studying law in the beautiful town of Bologna; now I'm carefully
approaching the end of university.

The first things I've ever read as a child were Disney comics, especially
the German "Micky Maus". Later I litterally divored every Italian Disney
comic I could get my hands on, and now I read "Zio Paperone", "PKNA",
"Almanacco Topolino" and "Paperino Mese", obviously still cursing against
Disney Italia for having shut down "I Maestri Disney".
My preferred artists are Romano Scarpa (I especially like his early
stories) and Carl Barks: I've never been able to figure out whom of the two
I like best. After them, Don Rosa, of course, who I reguard as the most
skilled storyteller amongst Disney writers, but his artwork sometimes seems
just too perfect to fit into the Duck universe.
Oh, and my preferred Rosa stories (just to contribute to the current
discussion) are the "scientific" ones: "Cash Flow", "The Incredible
Shrinking Tightwad", "A Matter of some Gravity" and "The Universal Solvent".

For a year now, I've been holding a subscription to Danish "Anders And", as
I always saw it mentioned in the credits of ZP and I anyway had the
intention to learn a new language. I've been someways disappointed by the
Danish weekly, as I had to learn that, eccept a handful of good stories
every year (Rosa, Rota, Ferioli and few others), D-coded stories aren't
that much better than I-coded ones. There's a hyper-inflation of Vicar
stories (he was the first artist whose style I learned to recognize as a
kid, reading my "Micky Maus" every week, but his best period is over now.
And he does depend very much on the quality of the scripts they pass him),
and they pay very much attention to kid readers (I should have been aware
of the fact that this couldn't be otherwise in a Disney weekly, so perhaps
it's better not to complain now). And now I hear there won't be any new Lo$
stories on Egmont weeklies, so I have enough reasons to discontinue my
subscription.
Ah, and Danish is quite a weird language, sorry for the Danish members of
the list ;-)
So maybe I'll have to learn yet another language and try my luck with
Picsou Magazine this time.

DON ROSA:

>>The "blue duck" stuff was in the German version too. But when the
>>newphews (I think) say that Donald applies to that, they don't say that
>>>>Donald *is* a duck, but that Donald "swims like a duck". [SNIP]
>
>Aha! No, that reference by the nephew was *not* in my original script. But
>it's GOOD! If I hadn't said anything, I could have claimed it was mine!!!
>Drat! I *was* careful not to have the Nephew say "Our Unca Donald is a
>duck!" for the reasons you mention (he's a human!) But I had the Kid saying
>he dresses in blue. I didn't think about having them also say he "swims
>like a duck"! That was a good touch!

Just like you, I was always sure that our heroes are real people. But it's
important to point out that in the German translations they are _never_
refered to as ducks. U$, for an instance, is always called "the richest man
in the world" and not "the richest duck".
When reading the Danish version of the Kalevala story, it was right this
passage that made me wonder about how they would translate it into German.
And, in fact, in German $crooge-Vainamoinen talks about a "blue swimmer"
and not about the Blue Duck, and it's the nephews who specify that the
Kalevala mentions "a kind of high sea duck". Afterward, they say that there
uncle always wears blue and swims like a duck.
BTW, the German version of the Kalevala story is just eccellent, especially
the rune-o-meter parts (although they might be a bit difficult to
understand for foreign readers, as Harry Fluks already experienced), as the
German Disney translations always had been.
Don, maybe you'd like to know that I successfully taught German to a couple
of persons... so if you want to read your own stories in a language you can
understand, now you know whom to contact ;-)

Cheers,
Thomas