Duckburg and Mouseton

[Gerstein, David DK - ECN]

	SIGVALD:

>>Paul Murry was mainly an artist, Sigvald, and almost never wrote the
stories
>>he drew.
>
>Are you sure? DD&Co seldom mentiones other persons names together with Paul
>Murry's name when they print his stories.
	We don't publish many Murry stories these days. When we do use them,
about 50% of the time we aren't sure who wrote them. So we list Murry alone
in the credits. But that doesn't mean he was responsible for the story
writing. We *say* he *drew* the story. That's what we know.
	Klaus Spillman interviewed Murry for a 1982 issue of THE DUCKBURG
TIMES fanzine. He asked Murry if he had invented any of Mickey's supporting
characters himself. Murry answered:
	"No. Remember, I never did a script."
	Murry also said:
	"At my age, I prefer not to spend all my time drawing Mickey Mouse.
I'm just not that interested."
So not only did he not invent Mouse mythology, it seems like the desire
wasn't there.

>But, what you here tell us seems to explain why some of Tello's stories are
>so close to Murry's, they may be written by the same guys.
	Sorry, nope. Murry's most famous stories were written, generally, by
Carl Fallberg, Don Christensen, Vic Lockman, and Del Connell. Tello's
stories were mostly written by early Egmont writers, mostly worked out of
Britain and Denmark. 
	The similarity in storytelling style comes because the Egmont
writers grew up on the Murry stories (or rather, Fallberg, Christensen, etc.
stories) and tried to imitate them.

>Anyway, if you are right, Paul Murry may no longer deserve to be counted
>together with the greatest artists like Gottfredson, Barks, Rosa, Van Horn,
>Rota, etc. who normally do all the work themselves.
> [...]
>This is just like in music, most great artists writes most of their own
>material.
	Sigvald, I am hurt by your generalization. Greatness is not measured
by whether a writer can also draw. Or by whether an artist can also write.
Neither is being lazy, or one *bit* less creative, by concentrating on a
single task.
	There are *great* Disney writers who never drew a single duck. And
*great* Disney artists (like Murry) who never wrote a single mouse. Some of
these creators I will admire for the rest of my life.

	STEFAN:

>Gottfredson usually didn't write his own stories either...
	He didn't *script* them after 1932, but he did *plot* them until
1943- a job that's still exceptionally important (because it's typicallys
the plotter who defines the *characterizations* in a story, including
Mickey's personality, desires, and decisions). And since Gottfredson also
edited the stories (as head of the Comic Strip Department), he intimately
supervised the scripts that were made from his plots, following them all the
way through production.
	I rest in attributing Gottfredson's most classic stories to
Gottfredson. Of course, scripters like Merrill de Maris were talented, too!

	SIGVALD again:

>> Gottfredson usually didn't write his own
>> stories either...
>
>Aha!!! Maybe that's why many people seems to prefer Donald Duck to Mickey
>Mouse...
	As I've just made clear, Gottfredson actually was very intimately
involved with the writing.
	Meanwhile, I point out that from the 1940s to the 1980s,
Gottfredson's work was not easily available in many countries beside Italy.
	In Italy, Mickey remained a popular character; perhaps not quite as
popular as Donald, but pretty close. Evidently, instead of turning people
away from Mickey, Gottfredson  had the power to keep readers interested in
Mickey. When readers had an opportunity to actually *read* Gottfredson, that
is.

	David
	(listening to a Three Tenors recording now... do you think it's less
of an artistic work because the singers didn't write the music themselves?)