DCML digest #842

[Don Rosa]

My goodness, a third message! I was so busy explaining that Taliaferro stuff
that I forgot to comment on:

From: "M.J. Prior" <M.J.Prior at let.rug.nl>
>>>In Voodoo Hoodoo, first page, there *was* a black man cleaning
the street, but later this man was replaced by a white man on a
tricycle-or-something. Maybe Disney had the black man replaced
by this man Bop-Bop because Donald adresses him as 'an expert
on ghost stuff', which they probably considered insulting to black
men cleaning the streets, but, of course, not to white men on small
tricycles.

Just so you have a correct idea of how this story was changed:
In the original version, printed in the Dell FOUR COLOR #238 in 1949, there
were two street cleaners in the first panel who we assume are caucasian
since they are drawn and they speak "normally". Bop-Bop was always there in
the original on his tricycle, but in that first printing he was quite
obviously a black man with the entire part of his head below his nose being
simply a gigantic pair of bulbous pink lips. This is the same way the black
natives later in the story originally appeared, with the further addition of
sharp teeth.
Also, Bop-Bop's dialogue was clearly a black-dialect -- in answer to
Donald's question of whether he had ever seen a zombie, Bop-Bop says
"Nossah! An' if ah evah does, it'll be just a short glance!" In Gladstone
reprints Bop-Bop's lips and dialogue were changed, as were all the African
natives' faces.
(One change that has always been assumed to have been made prior to the
original 1949 publication is the substitution of the words "done fer" in
place of "dead" in Bop-Bop's first balloon... the word balloon bulges
strangely at that point and the lettering is crowded.)

>>>Back to Voodoo Hoodoo. The version printed in the Netherlands
still has the black streetcleaner.

That's weird since, as I said, the street cleaners in the original wwere not
black!

>>>>In Don Rosa's 'Terror of the Transvaal', there are lots and lots of
white people to be found in *South Africa*, but only four black
people, in one single panel on the last page, and from a long
distance, so if you didn't care to look more closely, you wouldn't
even have noticed!

I did that for two reasons. One, I was dealing with the community of white
settlers and prospectors, so I didn't need any natives. Secondly, I knew
that it would be risky trying to figure out how to draw natives that would
suit Disney if that story was ever reprinted in America, so I saw no reason
to needlessly go out of my way to use natives that I didn't need.
But no one has ever told me *not* to put black people in my stories, if that
answers your question. What Disney will allow in an American reprint is
something you'd need to ask their censor-of-the-day... their logic and
reasoning is too inscrutable for me to even try to figure out so I don't
bother.

By the way, when I drew Foola Zoola, Barks' black witch doctor from "Voodoo
Hoodoo", in my episode 11 of the "Lo$", I drew him exactly as Barks had done
in 1949, with the lips and sharp teeth. But even in the original version,
Foola's lips were normal sized for a black native, not drawn as over-the-top
caricature lips like the other natives had in that story. I don't recall if
Gladstone had to change my version of Foola when they reprinted that episode
in America... I'd need to go check that myself.