Blum, Woodchucks, and Reprints

Matthew Williams kingofduckburg at apptechnc.net
Mon Apr 19 00:01:14 CEST 2004


I've been extraordinarily busy lately, and I haven't had time to respond to
some really interesting posts, so I hope you'll all forgive me if I put in
my two cents on a couple of the things discussed here recently.



ABOUT GEOFFREY BLUM:  I'm not a huge Blum fan, but I don't understand why
some of you dislike his stories so much.  I can genuinely say that I liked
Donald's characterization in "Dime and Dime Again."  I like the randomly
thrown in Barks references too; I think the references are fun in the same
way that our quote quizzes are fun here.  I also like the decidedly modern
setting; I'm fascinated by how Scrooge and the others' lives would change as
ours have through the years.  There is something perhaps a tad pompous about
Blum, but I find his work worth looking at overall.  I'm anxious to hear
more about why he's so distasteful to many of you.



ABOUT JIPPES AND BARKS SCRIPTS:  I think I might have said some of this
before, so forgive me if I'm repeating myself.  I like seeing the
Jippes/Barks Woodchuck stories, but I do think the work is beneath Jippes.
He's too good a writer to just be drawing the master's lesser efforts.
Besides when Tony Strobl was the original artist, I have no real complaints
about the original presentation of the scripts.  I was lucky enough to buy
an original copy of "Officer for a Day" at the mall yesterday, and I was
struck by how good the Strobl art really was.



ABOUT GEMSTONE REPRINTS:  I, for one, didn't really mind seeing "Back to the
Klondike" again a few months ago.  Honestly, I would prefer to see the more
rarely reprinted Barks stuff, but I'm really hoping that at least a few
readers got to read "Back to the Klondike" for the first time.  In my
opinion (and I doubt many of you will challenge me here), it's one of Barks'
best, and it has the power to hook readers for the long haul.  The problem
with Gemstone JUST reprinting Barks' less reprinted stuff is that the less
reprinted stuff is, on the whole, Barks' lesser efforts.  I just wonder if
new American duck fans are still being born.  I hope they are, but I don't
have a lot of hope.



Anyway, that's about all I have to say for now!



Matt




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