Cartoonist globale

Non abbiamo ancora dato conto della meritoria iniziativa che è sulla rampa di lancio in USA: la ristampa in volumi, in versione cartonata o paperback, di una sorta di anastatica della leggendaria testata Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories.

Il titolo proposto su Amazon a questo link, del quale vediamo sopra la copertina, si chiama Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories Archives Volume 1.

Quando uscirà? Manterrà le aspettative di centinaia di migliaia di fans sparsi in tutto il mondo?
Più volte siamo stati abituati a dte di uscita che poi sono slittate selvaggiamente di mesi, se non di anni. Ma l’iniziativa merita il plauso massimo, in ogni caso.

Sta invece viaggiando verso le librerie il primo volume della spesso annunciata cronologica di Mickey Mouse, di Floyd Gottfredson.

Oggi ne parla con toni piuttosto esaltati Mark Evanier, nelle sue pagine.
Mi limito a copiarne dei passaggi.

The book itself is perfect and by that I mean I can’t think of a single way it could have been improved. The reproduction is sharp. The editorial material fills you in nicely about the history of the strip, plus there are articles that discuss its merits and significance. The volume itself is handsome and will look good on your shelf.

But it really was a great strip, way back when. In the eighties when Disney was first getting into TV animation, I was involved in a meeting to discuss which of their classic characters might make the leap to that marketplace. I suggested that they oughta do a show with Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge adapting or writing new episodes in the vein of the classic tales by Carl Barks. As it turned out, I was about the three hundredth person to suggest that. Custodians before me had proposed such a show and sure enough, a year or two later they did Duck Tales. But I may have been the first person to tell a Disney exec there — a man who had never heard the name, “Floyd Gottfredson” — that they oughta consider putting Mickey and Goofy into an adventure format based on the first decade or two of the newspaper strip. I also suggested taking a look at the Mickey Mouse serials that ran in the back of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, the ones drawn mainly by Paul Murry.

Everyone was enthused at the idea and for a few weeks there, it looked like it was going to happen. But then it fell apart and when I asked wha’ happened?, I was told that there were simply too many people involved in any decision involving The Mouse. He was such a symbol of the company (and I guess, of Walt) that everybody in the Disney payroll had strident opinions about how Mickey should be depicted…and I don’t mean just the folks in the entertainment division. Involved in every Mickey discussion were the merchandising divisions, the theme park operations, the folks who ran the Disney Stores, at least five of the Seven Dwarfs, the robot of Abe Lincoln at the park, past employees who’d been dead less than 25 years, etc. The people I was talking to had soured on the whole idea because of that. They’d realized how complicated it was going to be to do anything with Mickey…and I sure couldn’t disagree.

Il discorso integrale di Evanier si trova in News from Me (una lettura sempre piacevole e talvolta indispensabile).