Let me plot the ways...

[Eta Beta]

Shrinking characters is indeed an old and popular cliche' also outside
the Disney world, there's Isaac Asimov's novel (and later movie) the
title of which I can never remember ("Hallucinating Voyage" back-
translating from the italian title), and of course Brick Bradford and
his trip whithin a coin, that was before the Barks' story quoted, I
seem to recall.

Also, in France there's a comic series devoted to "Les Petits Hommes",
a bunch of people whose diminutive size is permanent (freely chosen,
I seem to understand), rather than temporary.

I'm generally with GARY when he says...

>My own basic yardstick is this: has the writer done enough with the 
>plot, characters, situations, etc., to keep me from thinking I've read 
>the exact same story before?

But I might also add that it could be nicely challenging for authors
to try and measure themselves against old cliches to see if they
can revamp an old idea with a personal touch.

And they may even fail miserably without deserving being accused
of plagiarism, in my opinion, if they tried their best.

Of course it's not easy to tell when a less-than-perfect clicheed
story is the result of a honest attempt in the above fashion and
when it's due to plain lack of own imagination... :-)

Oh, BTW, I want to make clear that I'm not referring to Gorm
Transgaard's story with any of the above, I haven't even read that
one yet, this is all in general terms.


DAVE RAWSON then wrote...

>All that said, my personal bugaboo in Disney Comics is the aping of the 
>super-hero. What if Mickey were Spider-man? The Hulk? Batman?
>
>I know, what if Tolkein wrote with Disney characters?
>
>What new movie is breaking and how can we loosely copy it and seem hip 
>and timely?
>
>This seems to me a creator that can't find any originality [snip]

Well, I don't agree on that, again in general terms.
This is different than using "situation-cliches", here we come in
the realm of the parody/spoof, which to me is a perfectly "acceptable"
form of comic expression.

Again, we should judge the results obtained, I grew up with the
italian Disney parodies of classic literature and have always
LOVED them, I think they're actually quite educational... AND
funny to boot... :-)

On the other hand, I'm not exactly fond of Disney super-heroes,
either... I find those, especially the italian Paperinik (moreso
in the recent, "modern" incarnation) but also most of Super Goof
quite repetitive and unoriginal...

Maybe a good parody is best left "one-shot" rather than made into
a series...

Well, that's all cordially imho, of course :-)


Cheers!

Eta Beta