Happy New Year 2017!
My plans to return to this Blog later in 2016 didn’t exactly
come to fruition, did they?
However, I’m still optimistic for a return some time in the
first half of 2017. But, since I’ve
never failed to wish you all a Happy New Year yet, please have a very Happy New
Year – and enjoy this festive (…for Eega
Beeva and Ellsworth, at least) illustration by our friend Debbie Anne
Perry! I think it should have been an
alternate cover to IDW’s MICKEY MOUSE # 15, the issue released most closely to,
but not past, New Year’s Day! Don’t
you?
...Though, shouldn't Eega's noisemaker go "Pfwee!"?
Please rest assured that things are good, but also remain (all together now) “Horrifically Busy” –
though it sure feels good to squeeze out this Blog post.
The (all together now)
“Horrifically Busy Period” also cut into my IDW work during the second half of
2016 as well – but I still have a few things coming up.
A Two-Part Uncle Scrooge vs. The Beagle Boys with a medieval
twist.
Super Goof’s rematch with a daringly different looking Dr.
Dunk.
Goofy gives romance advice to Clarabelle via an online video
(!).
And Ludwig Von Drake lectures us on the subject of The
Moon. …He can do it too, because he's already been there!
Before I go, I just wish to thank each and every one of you
for your support of this Blog. It is
that support that I hope to live up to in the new year of 2017! And,
thank you, Deb, for an illustration wonderful enough to sit me down at Blogger
once again!
After all, I can't let Melvin be a more prolific Blogger than me, can I?
17 comments:
Happy New Year to you, too!
Mickey, Eega and Ellsworth's New Year's picture started out as a greeting sent to David Gerstein (electronically, not the actual drawing), then I thought you'd like it, too. It was fun to think of Eega and Ellsworth in the same drawing, as I don't think the two appear together much. You are right, it should have gone "PFWEE!", Pbut I pguess it pwas an poversight. (Gah! I think I now know why you don't write all Eega's dialogue like that!)
While I have kept up with the monthly comics, I am a bit behind with the Glenat Mickey Mouse albums IDW is printing. I'm waiting to get Mickey's Craziest Adventures in the mail, and Mickey Mouse and the Mysterious Melody should be releasing soon. That one sounds like it should be a good one.
Deb:
And Happy New Year back at cha, particularly for being directly responsible for this out-of- the-blue post!
I don’t know if anyone has ever said this, or even thought much about it, but there IS somewhat of a challenge to writing dialogue for Eega Beeva, in that (…at least *I*) tend to write the actual line of dialogue, and then read it back to decide precisely which words would read best with the “P” in front of them. Often, I’ll do it more than once until I feel it reads just right.
That was certainly the case when translating and dialoguing the story we called “Plan Dine from Outer Space”
If only Bill Walsh could know his effect on these comics, even as far out as the first few decades of the 21st Century, when he created Eega Beeva in 1947 and gave him that uniquely odd speech pattern.
Happy Pnew Year, he says using his “P”s judiciously, while simultaneously minding his “Q”s!
Happy New Year back atcha! Yes, that drawing by Deb does deserve to be an alternate IDW Mickey Mouse cover! Maybe for 2018? One of these Januaries I'm hoping for an American publication of "A New Year, A New Donald" by Charlie Martin/Vicar, one of my favorite holiday stories. But I knew that wouldn't happen this year once "Donald Quest" started. So now I'm hoping for January 2018.
But speaking of covers...I was delighted to see that the alternate cover of WDC in March will be one of my personal favorites, a very funny drawing by Mau Heymans. Can't wait to see it on an American comic!
Happy New Year, Elaine… and Happy New Post. I hope it is a sign of things to come, even though I still cannot say when.
Well, there’s another vote for Deb’s cover! And you never know who might be reading there things….
It’s a funny thing about New Year’s in comics – at least in my own opinion. It competes too closely in actual time with Christmas, and may have always gotten the short shrift because of it.
For instance, would you do a New Year’s themed cover or interior content for the January issue, if said issue hit the shelves on (oh, say…) the THIRD or FOURTH week of January? Probably not. The concept would be best served by the DECEMBER issue. Oh, but the vast majority of those would be devoted to Christmas content, wouldn’t they?
I don’t know exactly how and when those great old Dell issues of WALT DISNEY’S COMICS AND STORIES and LOONEY TUNES AND MERRIE MELODIES that sported the New Year’s covers that I have used to illustrate posts past were timed and, if released in January, how close to (or far away from) the marking of the “New Year” they appeared. But they did kinda stop the New Year’s stuff as the 1950s wore on, whereas the Christmas themed covers did continue even into the Gold Key years for WDC&S.
Ack! No wonder I don’t have enough time to Blog regularly… It’s because I ramble on so! …But, I sure do enjoy the interaction! Thank you for putting up with that!
Welcome back (kinda) Joe! And Happy New Year. I was wondering when we'd hear from you next...
And a very Happy New Year to you, JoeC!
It’s great to be back, even if it’s only for a short time, but I hope to do something about that – and at least post a bit more regularly in the New Year. Say, was that a resolution? …Probably not, but you never know!
Meanwhile, it feels just like a family reunion – but without the oddball uncle who messes up everything. Wonder who else will show up?
"...you never know who might be reading there things" Hopefully not the weird uncle who messes everything up... In Disney comics, it's usually oddball cousins that mess everything up, like Gus Goose, Gladstone and Fethry. Although Ludwig Von Drake and Scrooge McDuck certainly count as oddball uncles.
For Mickey, it seems to be oddball friends like Eega Beeva, Goofy, Horace Horsecollar and their pet mynah birds Ellsworth and Ellroy.
In the “Oddball Uncle Category”, let’s not forget dear old Uncle Rumpus McFowl but, yes, confounding cousins do certainly abound!
As for confounding Mickey, once Eega Beeva returns to his cave – and somehow travels back to 2447 (…and disappears for far longer than this Blog has) you’ll find that Bill Walsh cooks up a number of new oddball companions for Mickey in the form of such characters as “Khan-Dhoo the Magician” and “Ohm-Eye” the loveable little “Electrical Man”.
Like Eega Beeva, both come equipped with standard-issue pun-for-name and the requisite odd speech patterns. And both bring that “oddball companion” quality that we love so much – even if Mickey might not be too fond of it on New Year’s Day!
True, Joe, New Year's suffers by its proximity to Christmas in terms of coverage in American comics. It's probably always been easier to showcase New Year's stories and cover art in countries where there are/were weekly Disney comics. I myself wouldn't mind a New Year's cover on a January issue coming out at the end of the month, but I can see why people might worry about sales. As for stories, I'd always be happy to see a good New Year's story as the final story in a Christmas Parade, as well as in a January issue.
One of the problems with printing any holiday stories originating in Europe here is the differences in holiday customs. The Dutch have a New Year's sort-of-doughnut (oliebollen) traditional food which features in a couple of stories I have. Not only do we not eat those doughnuts, most of us don't have *any* traditional foods for New Year's, so you couldn't easily replace the reference in the story with something else. Also, the Europeans seem to expect fireworks on New Year's Eve. While I think that happens in the South here, it's not something I associate with New Year's generally (apart from New Year's 2000). But a bunch of New Year's Disney comics stories from Europe include fireworks displays.
See? I can ramble on, too!
HAPPY NEW YEARS! Happy to see this crazy blog running agian :D <3 <3 <3
So far tree days into new year I'm keeping up theme of doing an animated short each day, and today I made Gladstone and Gyro one ^_^ Enjoy :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4JVemHakX8
(P.S. It's 2017 and I still like to draw Gyro demented for no reason)
Yours
Maciej
Pan:
I’m also “glad to see this crazy Blog running again” – and, that it’s so much fun to be back (if even temporarily), that I’m not “running like crazy FROM this Blog”.
HERE is Pan’s link for greater ease of use. Gyro IS, if not “demented”, at least a little “out-of-sorts”, but he’s fun to watch this way. Perhaps he’s been hitting himself on the head too often with a hammer or wrench. No wonder he got that “Thinking Cap” full of birds.
And, say… You do one of these a day? And, I can’t even find enough time to Blog…
We love it when you “ramble on”, Elaine, because it’s always interesting and fun!
New Year’s stories tend to usually be about resolutions, don’t they? While Christmas themed tales cast a much wider net of subject matter. Maybe that’s another reason why there are generally so few New Year’s stories – or one’s that don’t piggyback on Christmas, like Batman’s “Holiday Knights”.
On the other hand, New Year’s COVERS can come in many forms, as you can see over the runs of the Dell comics I mentioned above. I DO think we should see more of them, though they are very likely to be crowded-out by Christmas covers.
And, speaking of “interesting”, there’s your point about the tone of holiday stories produced in other countries. Some of them may not even be fit to rework into our own culture. (…Not that I wouldn’t like to TRY, of course, and risk the wrath of all those “Upholders of the Originals”!) Also, given the fact that no Disney “standard” character comics have been produced in the United States for quite some time, when’s the last time a THANKSGIVING story might have been done? Assuming I didn’t completely overlook one, I wonder if we’ll ever see one again. And “Fall-harvest-themed” covers or stories don’t truly count as Thanksgiving! …And the rambling continues.
There are some of the Wilfred Haughton-drawn British annuals that are not only extremely British, but are extremely of their time period that really wouldn't go over today, either. When you let foreign countries produce their own material, you end up with lots of intriguing stuff that you just can't rework and expect readers to assume it was American. Even stories that can be reworked have their little quirks (like Donald walking to Tibet, or the Disney characters being enthusiastic soccer fans). It would make a fascinating collector's volume, running some of the international material with all of the cultural influences intact, but your casual reader might not be as interested in it as the more serious Disney comics fan would.
Very true, Deb. But, I’d like to think that we’re up to the challenge of making some of that stuff work for our audience, as I did with “walking to Tibet” in THIS STORY and also did something similar regarding geography, in a very subtle way, with Brutopia in the first IDW UNCLE SCROOGE.
…Alas, there’s probably nothing I could do to ease the affliction of “being an enthusiastic soccer fan”.
Happy New Year to you, too—to Joe, and everyone!
Re: British stories, even as I run them in the pages of IDW's comics, I'll freely admit that only about 5% of their early 1930s output are actually suitable for IDW's readers—even with allowances made for how dated they look.
There were Italian originals in the early 1930s too. I ran a handful in the back of the first FGL Sunday book, in part because I couldn't imagine any other domestic use for them ever.
The last Thanksgiving story we had here was "Had a Gobbler" back in Gemstone days. To create it for a European publisher, Lars Jensen had to write it as a story celebrating Duckburg's Foundation Day, which just happened to have Thanksgiving-like customs; then he and I worked out an American version that matched his original intent, citing Thanksgiving explicitly.
Happy new year from me, Debbie Ann, Joe,etc.
And, Happy New Year, back-atcha, Pokey! Considering I’m writing this in August, I’ll use the opportunity to cover both 2017 AND 2018!
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