Italian favorites, Barks celebration stories

[Petri Kanninen]

Sprea:
> Right, even though I really *loved* History Re-Petes itself (and not
> 'cause
> David's here, I say this also where he's not :-), one of the best Scarpa
> stories not written by him.

It was not bad at all, actually best of his recent stories.  But still it
doesn't match some of Martina & Scarpa stories from the 50's and 60's.
Stories like Topolino e il doppio segreto di Macchia Nera (I TL 117-A),
Paperin Fracassa (I TL 584-A) or Il doppio mistero di Slim Magretto e la
casa degli svedesi (I TL 602-A) simply won't let you go anywhere. You just
have to read them without breaks. There is the painful suspense of Macchia
Nera as you can't be sure what Mickey is going to do next, the dreamlike
feel of Paperin Fracassa and great characters in Slim Magretto. As they
were published in parts in Italy I can't imagine how Italian readers must
have felt when they waited for the following issue of Topolino. 

BTW. What are people's non-Scarpa favorites of Italian stories? My vote
goes to Martina-Carpi story Paperino e il re del fiume d'oro (I TL 270-A).
Short summary of the plot: Ghost of an ancient king appears to DD and HDL
and tells them half the way to a lost treasure and the second half to US.
As the ducks reach what seems to be a quite magical treasure, both DD and
US try to take the treasure for themselves and only get in trouble. Then
HDL sacrifice the treasure in order to save their uncles. 

The fascinating, dreamlike hunt after the treasure in the middle of
nowhere where anything can happen is simply beautiful and mysterious. The
way how DD and US act is quite terrible and raises a feel of rage in to my
minf. And the end of the story when DD and US fail to get anything after
they had been greedy, rude to HDL and tried to cheat, I just can't help to
overwhelming feel of "This is justice!". The story is so intensive that
after reading it I can only sit a while and try to get my thougths in
order. The feeling of reading something that has affected you is immense.
It's quite hard to explain why I like it so much (as one can see of the
mumbling above) but it's sure worth reading.

I know the ducks don't act too barksian a way in the story. Some true
Barks-fans probably don't like story's DD and US one bit and don't like
the story because of that but for me at least that is not a problem. If I
would have to choose the best story in the pocket books, it would probably
be this but it is hard to choose between all the great stories.

> But, he's also *writing* the current Egmont's Uncle Scrooge celebration
> story, right? So he's back to writing, I'm really looking forward to
> reading this! :-)
Who wouldn't? :-) BTW. When are we going to see these celebration
stories in print? I can hardly wait.

>From: "Melanie Cerruti" <melanie166 at yahoo.fr>
>> I was told there are marketing reasons to this. The
>> young audience (around 7 years old) doesn't like long
>> stories.
> I guess that's what publisher think (but certainly not the truth!), and
> this might be the reason for short stories..

Yup! I wonder why nobody ever asks me when changes are made? I loved these
long Scarpa stories when I was a kid. But then again perhaps I wasn't a
normal child. :-)

--
Petri Kanninen (pkannine at cc.hut.fi)
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