Somewhere in Nowhere - when will we see it?

Sigvald Grøsfjeld jr. sigvald at duckburg.dk
Thu Aug 21 00:39:18 CEST 2003


Hi all!

Recently some people here have argued that I have been too critical towards
too many artist/creators. So in order to show more of my positive side I
will now present a few comments about the story "Somewhere in Nowhere":

When I visited our friend AC Sivebæk in Nr.Nissum this summer, one of the
very first things he showed me was a nice Italian book with "Somewhere in
Nowhere" in both English (b/w) and Italian (color). I have checked COA:
http://coa.inducks.org/coa/c1/story.php/0/I+TES+++3-1//Somewhere_+in_+Nowhere_
and have found that this story is based on a plot by Barks and John Lustig,
written by John Lustig and drawn by Pat Block. My impression is that both
Lustig and Block have done an excellent job in giving this story a real
Barksian touch. My congratulations to both!

>From what I have heard Egmont was originally offered this story, but
rejected the offer because the price demanded for it was to high. Can this
be correct? I thought that Egmont usually pay a set amount of $ per page
regardless of the complexity of the art and regardless of who has drawn the
art. Another question is if there is any connection between the price
demanded for this story and Don Rosa's strike a few years later - as there
obviously is no reason to pay Lustig/Block any better than Don.

Anyway "Somewhere in Nowhere" was finally published by Disney Italia. This
has caused some confusion when the story was registered in COA/INDUCKS. In
stead of using the original title it's listed under its Italian title
"Paperino da qualche parte in mezzo al nulla" which look like "gibberish"
for most non-Italians. There is at least a few very good reasons that the
original title should be used instead:
a) When the story first saw print, it was printed in English as well as in
Italian.
b) The first page of the English b/w version comes BEFORE it's Italian
counterpart in that book.
c) The story is written/drawn by AMERICANS only, without any involvement
from any ITALIAN. The Italian title is thus a translation and *not*
ORIGINAL.
d) The American titles are used in the COA/INDUCKS entries for Don Rosa's
French stories.

>From what I can see from COA "Somewhere in Nowhere" has by now been
published in a few countries around the world outside Italy - like Germany,
France, Brazil and the Netherlands. I suppose this means that Egmont can now
print this classic for free, just as they can with Don's American, Dutch and
French stories – so why haven't we seen it yet in Scandinavia/Finland? Could
it be because Egmont didn't get that story initially?

Sigvald


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