Action in Rundetårn (Round Tower)

IDW's Donald Duck #7 (legacy 374)

Donald Duck #7 (legacy 374) came out earlier this month. The main story is Truth or Consequences, written by Lars Jensen and drawn by Flemming Andersen. It's the 6th story in the TNT (Tamers of Nonhuman Threats) series, the first five were published in Gemstone’s Donald Duck Adventures about 10 years ago. The stories work fine as individual stories, but if you are unfamiliar with the series, I would recommend trying to track down the first story before reading this one.

In Europe we just got part 25 published, and you can find a complete list of the stories in the inducks database. But here is a list of the American prints:

• Story 1 – Blue Rain - Donald Duck Adventures #4 (Gemstone 2004)
• Story 2 – Return to TNT - Donald Duck Adventures #5 (Gemstone 2004)
• Story 3 – The Ghost Rats of Hamelin - Donald Duck Adventures #6 (Gemstone 2004)
• Story 4 – Mission: Sasabonsam - Donald Duck Adventures #15 (Gemstone 2005)
• Story 5 – Let's Get Kraken - Donald Duck Adventures #18 (Gemstone 2006)
• Story 6 – Truth or Consequences - Donald Duck #374 (IDW 2015)

It’s actually not the first time "Truth or Consequences" is published in English. Egmont in Europe have a series of pocket books in English that is published in several countries, and this story is in one of them. The purpose of the books is to learn English, the pages have selected glossary with translation at the bottom and the Norwegian edition of the series is offered as class packs to schools.

Some books from the Norwegian edition of Egmont's English pocket books.

Glossary at the bottom of the pages

I believe the text in these books is close to the original script, so I thought it would be fun to compare with the American print to see how the dialogue is localized. As most of the story takes place in Denmark and I actually have the Danish print of this story too, I did a couple of comparisons to that translation as well.

Different comics, all with "Truth or Consequences" inside

Not that much have been changed really, but here are some examples (the American print is to the right):

Can someone explain the "jumping jacks/jumpin’ jacksnipes" expression to me please..?

In the next example, I wonder what the original script is. Two street names in Copenhagen, "Landemærket" and "Købmagergade" are used the American and Danish text, but not in the European-English print. And it seems the text box have been slightly enlarged to make space for the names.

And the next example has a fun joke. I wonder if that is in the original script or not. The European-English version have "come on", but both the American and Danish print have the Danish text "kom så". That’s a common and typical Danish expression. Even we Norwegians that have almost the same language use to say "kom så" when we are making fun of the Danes :)
 

In addition to Rundetårn (Round Tower) where part of the story takes place, there are a lot of other famous real-life buildings in the story. But for a Disney fan, the last panel have the most important one, it’s outside the Egmont office in Copenhagen!

Outside the Egmont office in Copenhagen, Denmark

***

The week after "Truth or Consequences" was published by IDW more action happened in Rundetårn, both in real life and in the comics. The Danish comic festival "Art Bubble" was held inside, and one of the guests was Don Rosa. The tower was again used on the cover of the Danish weekly, with Scrooge, Magica and Don Rosa (!). And the poster for the festival also had the tower with various Disney characters.

All covers with Rundetårn

If that wasn’t enough the Danish weekly even had a story inside featuring the tower AND Don Rosa.

Scrooge and Magica running to the comic festival inside Rundetårn. Drawn by Marco Rota

Scrooge is meeting Don Rosa

And the "money shot", Don Rosa is shoving his homegrown chili in Magica’s beak.