Walt’s People vol.30

I just received the latest volume of Walt’s People that was published earlier this month. This series is a collection of mostly interviews, but also other texts all about people that have worked on various Disney projects. Everything from animators, writers, voice actors and even a casting director in this book. But my main interest is comic books, and this book has an interview with Carl Barks that I was curious about.

The interview is made by the Italian Disney comic writer Carlo Chendi in November 1974. It's printed over 7 pages in this book, with short and direct questions and answers. If you have been reading other books or interviews with Carl Barks there's not much new and interesting details here – but it's a nice little early interview and was probably of great interest for fans back in the 70's.

The Carl Barks Collector and Die Kunst der Comics

It's not the first time this interview has been published. I have it in both in The Barks Collector #25-26 and a translated version in the German book Die Kunst der Comics. And it's partly also used in the Italian La Grande Dinastia dei Paperi (and translated editions). It would be strange if it wasn't published in some other Italian fanzine or magazine in the 70's too.
 

The interview in The Barks Collector and Die Kunst der Comics

For some reason Chendi is credited as Chantal in The Barks Collector, and there is some conflicting info about when and how the interview was conducted in the various editions. I talked to Simone [check out his blog Eco del Mondo] that provided the interview for this book, and he got this version directly from Carlo Chendi. Chendi never met Barks until the Europe tour in the 90's when he visited Italy, so the info about visiting his home as said in the Barks Collector must be wrong. It was probably done through mail correspondence.
 

Walt's People Master Index

But it's great to have this interview collected in Walt’s People and more available for anyone interested. While most of the content in this series is about people that hasn't worked on comic books, there are some interviews with comic creators in-between, including another one with Carl Barks in volume 8. For a full list I recommend the Walt's People Master Index, that you can find over at The Imagineering Toolbox. Here's a link to the post about the update for volume 30, but I'm sure the index will be updated for future volumes as well.

Disney Comics Around the World in One Hundred Years

Target excluive (left) and Deluxe edition (right)

In September 2023 Fantagraphics published a book called Disney Comics: Around the World in One Hundred Years as a Target (American retail stores) exclusive. And in December last year we got a deluxe edition of same book in regular distribution. I've seen people ask about the differences between the editions, so I'll try to make a quick summary here.

The most obvious difference is the cover color, and that the deluxe edition comics with a slipcase while the Target exclusive does not. The Target edition also has the Disney 100, and "only at Target" logos on the top front. Most Target copies probably also have a 30% sticker on the front, as it was sold at a 30% discount from the start.
 

The Deluxe Edition comes in a slipcase

It's a bit hard to see the size just comparing these two books, but they are huge compared to a regular sized comic book and most other books published by Fantagraphics.

Size compared to some other books from Fantagraphics

Size compared to a regular sized comic book

The book is divided into chapters for each decade starting with 1923-1932, 1933-1942 etc. all the way up to 2013-2022. And every chapter starts with a one-page article about that decade. These articles have been revised and slightly extended for the deluxe edition, sometimes also with different illustrations.

Target exclusive (left), revised article in the Deluxe edition (right)

There's also a total of seven new comic stories added to the deluxe edition:

1923-1932 – no new comic stories
1933-1942 – Donald Duck – The Secret of Mars (18 pages)
1943-1952 – Li'l Bad Wolf – The Practical Pig (8 pages)
1953-1962 – Uncle Scrooge - The Round Money Bin (10 pages)
1963-1972 – no new comic stories
1973-1982 – no new comic stories
1983-1992 – The Great Mouse Detective – Ratigan Strikes Back! (8 pages) (new to the USA)
1993-2002 – Mickey Mouse – A Mouse and His Dog (10 pages)
1993-2002 – Donald Duckling – The Awfullest Day Ever (17 pages) (new to the USA)
1993-2002 – Gyro Gearloose – Forward to the Past (1 page) (new to the USA)
2003-2012 – no new comic stories
2013-2022 – no new comic stories

Overall, I think both editions of the book have a great selection of stories representing the different decades. There's also a variety of different kinds of stories and featured characters. And I would recommend the book both for people not familiar with Disney comics and longtime fans. There are several new-to-the-USA stories inside, and getting comics printed in a large size like this is always a treat!

My personal highlights come at the very end of the book. First, we have Spies Like Us! – one of only two DuckTales '17 stories by Disney Publishing Worldwide that didn't get published in IDW's run of DuckTales comics. I've been wanting to read these two for years, and hope the last one will be published in English too at some point. The other one is the Estrella story by Casty, printed for the first time outside Italy.
 

DuckTales '17 and Casty's Mickey ending the book

While reading the book I couldn't help noticing some nerdy details too.

In the very first article for the 1923-1932 decade, we get to see a rare ad strip for the Mickey Mouse daily strip series. The same one is also printed in the Floyd Gottfredson library vol. 7, but there the text is translated back to English from Italian. In the meantime, a version with the original text has been discovered and I think this book is the first time we have seen a reprint of the original text.
 

First panel of the ad strip - Translated text in the FG library (left) and original text (right)

From the various examples of early comic stories around the world, we get to see a page from the Italian newspaper Il Popolo di Roma. This page has also been reprinted before it the Floyd Gottfredson library, but new this time is the coloring. A rabbit seen as a delivery boy is colored with blue shorts and then looks a lot like Oswald. It's probably not originally intended to be him (maybe inspired by?) but now I like to think it is! The rabbit is just called il fattorino (the delivery boy) in the original text, and baker's boy in the translation.
 

You might notice that it's not a literal translation, but that because the story is written in rhyme. If the blue coloring was intentional chosen to make it Oswald, it's not the first time this kind of thing has happened with the Il Popolo di Roma comics. The first two comic pages had a cat that was probably drawn as or inspired by Felix the Cat, a non-Disney character. But later reprints have turned this cat into the similar looking Disney character Julius the Cat. In the book Mickey and the Gang he was even colored green.
 

Black cat in the original (left) is called Julius and colored green in Mickey and the Gang

Later in the book we have The Crazy Crime Wave, with the same kind of panel layout as Gladstone used in 1986 (only 4 tiers instead of 3). But the cover Daan Jippes drew for that print is now used as a title panel – and I like it!

 

The Crazy Crime Wave in Mickey Mose #224 (left), the book (middle), and the cover of MM #224 (right)

A story I never expected seeing in an American translation is The Captive Fairy's Quest by the Italian team of Martina/Scarpa/Gatto. This story really has some not-for-fainthearted-kids scenes, and is a story of pure madness. I've read it before in fan translation and a heavily cut version in the British Walt Disney's Weekly. But I'm glad more people get to enjoy this story! Compared the British version some scenes are quite different both in coloring and dialogue.

British print (left) and American (right)

British print (top) and American (bottom)

In The Awfullest Day Ever, one of the extra stories for the Deluxe Edition, we get to meet young Donald as Donald Duckling or just Donny living on Grandma's farm. Even Grandma Duck calls him Donny here. One thing to notice in these stories is that they do not take place in Duckburg, but in Quacktown, a rural village outside of Duckburg. I think this is the first time we've seen Quacktown in American comics.

Exploring a Vietnamese comic book

In another attempt to get some life into this blog, I think I'll start with something random! I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before on here, but one of my collecting goals is to have a Disney comic from every country where one is published. And not long ago I finally got to check Vietnam off the list.

Inside and featured on the cover is A Matter of Some Gravity, one of my favorite Don Rosa stories. Published in January 1997 soon after the story was created, no official cover for this series existed – and I guess they had to make one themselves. But looking at the inducks gallery, it looks like they did the same for the rest of the comics in this series too.

From inducks.org

 

So how did they make the cover? Well, it's just art taken from a panel on page 8 of the story, with some background editing.
 

Panels from page 8 of the story, the first one is used as a cover

Not the best editing work I've seen and they should have time traveled to 2014 to get the cover Don Rosa made for this story instead.

Comics from from Fantagraphics, given away on Free Comic Book Day 2014 , promoting the Don Rosa Library

If you look closely, you can see that the two variants of the FCBD comic above actually have the same artwork! It's just rotated.

***

Another fun thing with the Vietnamese comic is that it's bi-lingual in both Vietnamese and English. And the way they did it is by numbering all the dialogue and adding the English text at the bottom of the page.
 

Englsh text printed at the bottom of the pages

I expected the English text to be simplified, but it looks like they used the original dialogue here.

Dialogue in Vietnamese

English text from the bottom of the page in the Vietnamese comic

Original American dialogue

But why...

 

Also, if you look closely at the two versions of the first panel above, it looks like they used the Egmont edit in Vietnam, where that panel was slightly cut to make space for editorial text at the bottom of the page. But that wasn't really necessary in this print.