DCML digest #1274

Don Rosa donrosa at iglou.com
Wed Feb 26 15:41:13 CET 2003


From: <H.W.Fluks at telecom.tno.nl>
>>>My guess is that they care more for the stories than for the artwork.

Let's assume they don't like the art as it appears in the normal size (and I
know they don't) -- when they shrink it down much tinier, it looks 500%
worse! They're shooting themselves in the foot! Do they think my stories are
so VASTLY superior to anything else that they still prefer my stories with
even *more* miserably bad (to them) artwork? Wow. (And I don't like my art,
myself, but it's certainly damaged further by every 1% in reduction it
suffers!)

>>>BTW, I hope they wil reprint those stories in an OOM DAGOBERT album.
Then the artwork will have its right size.

But still the blah Egmont coloring and still the incorrect versions, eh?

>>>Ehm... they always use the continued versions, but that doesn't
mean that when they break up a story themselves, they do it at
the intended place!
The 3 Caballeros story was split up as 14+14, instead of 9+10+9.
The crusaders story was also 14+14, instead of 10+10+8.

Yeah -- since we were talking about me receiving copies of editions with my
stories, I was checking my files -- I'll post a short list of missing issues
here shortly to see if anyone can help me out.
But that's when I noticed how the Dutch broke that "3C" story up... as you
say, not in 3 parts as it was designed, but into 2 parts. But moreover, it
was broken right at the point where there is supposed to be a single "beat"
of rhythm between the climax of the big song/dance number and the reaction
of the audience. As it appears in this Dutch edition, the first panel of
"part 2" is three unknown Mexican peons sitting quietly at a table, then in
panel two somebody smashes a guitar over three other characters' heads for
no apparent reason. The only way the story would make a grain of sense is if
the reader had the previous issue laying right next to "part 2" when he
began reading. Even if he remembered there had been a production number, he
still would not get the proper sense of the timing after a full week.
Anyway, I certainly should not have said that this represented an instance
when the Dutch used the continued version of my story correctly -- they left
the chapter-breaks in needlessly where they did not belong, and inserted a
chapter break where one could not possibly be inserted for the story to make
sense.
And note that what bothers me is NOT that they are choosing not to do
something which would be a great effort. To use the correct art would be
just as easy as using the incorrect art. I'm not expecting anyone to go to
great lengths to make a story look good, just go to the same effort as it
takes to make the story look dumb.
There go a few more hairs fluttering down onto my keyboard. (You'll see how
much balder I am when you see me in Italy next week! Really!)




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