Barks' Wishes/languages

[Rob Klein]

Greetings, all! 

Regarding Carl Barks' comments on whether or not he wanted other writers and 
artists to keep consistant with his own depiction of the Ducks' universe:

He admitted that he often did not keep consistant with his OWN previous story 
contents, and had never intended to (as we have mentioned  on DCML many times).
Carl was AMAZED that many the new generation of artists attempted to do so. 
When he found out that I slavishly tried to keep perfectly consistant with his 
canon in my own stories, he told me that he did not want his own stories to 
restrict the potential scope of others.  He knew there were always other 
artists doing Duck stories. And, although he didn't actively seek to read their 
stories; if, in a rare situation, he managed to see some of their work and get 
a chuckle, he appreciated it. like any fan of good comedy, he wanted the widest 
forum possible for exposure of the wares of talented people.

Regarding the learning of foreign languages by others relating to comics: I 
seem to remember coming across a Scotsman who had never had any contact with 
Holland in any way until he heard in the late 1970s, that "Disney Comics are 
alive and well there!"
He had read a few Barks stories in his youth in the early 1950s. He found the 
address of a Dutch second hand comic dealer, and purchased some comics with 
Jippes/Milton/Verhagen stories included. He translated them as best he could 
using a Dutch/English dictionary. But, as that method didn't allow him to 
understand the comedic nuances, he made an INTENSE study of the Dutch language 
over the next several years.  I have seen this myself in the 1960s and 1970s in 
Germany, when MOST of the Germans I met could read NO English, or do it VERY 
poorly, based on their sketchy learning from school. Many of them, who loved 
the Erika Fuchs translations, wondered what the original language wording was.  
They worked hard to improve their English to read Barks' versions.

Side note: In Proper English when contrasting two items, "different FROM" is 
the correct usage.  "different THAN" is incorrect. Most USA inhabitants these 
days seem to use the incorrect version, but, as yet it has not been officially 
adopted as correct (neither has the dropping of word usage from 25,000 to 
approximately 4,000).

Rob
Klein

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