I do a lot of copyright research for classic animation home video releases that I work on with a longtime colleague, Tommy Stathes. It's my major sideline outside of Disney comics work, and it's incredibly important for us to get this kind of IP research right!
In that case — you might be able to answer a question of mine: what's the copyright status of Pete? Obviously Disney still own the iconic “fat cat” version introduced in the Mickey Mouse cartoons and strips, and I assume (though I might be wrong) that they've trademarked the name "Peg-Leg Pete" somehow. But if one were to go back to the original bearlike Alice/Oswald version, and call him "Bootleg Pete" and everything — could one freely use that character in new productions? And if not, then, to stick closer to the quoted job description — doesn't that cause any issues for potential rereleases of the still-copyrighted post-Disney Oswald shorts that still have Pete in them?
I kind of doubt that early version of Pete is in the PD... but even if he was, you have to wonder what would be the point in resurrecting him. "Hey look, it's that 1925 version of Pegleg Pete which looks nothing like the character we know today! We can do whatever we want with him in new material!" Why not just create a new character if there's basically no point of recognition?
I kind of doubt that early version of Pete is in the PD... but even if he was, you have to wonder what would be the point in resurrecting him. "Hey look, it's that 1925 version of Pegleg Pete which looks nothing like the character we know today! We can do whatever we want with him in new material!" Why not just create a new character if there's basically no point of recognition?
*splutter* It might be a very niche spot, but both and (I think) Ramapith himself will raise ourselves up quite strongly against the notion that the only interest of the 1920's toons is as the precursors of what came later. I am hugely fond of the Alice Comedies in their own right — and my question is no empty thought experiment; I have long simmered an idea of a graphic novel (or just plain novel) which would be a poetic sequel-cum-homage to the Alice Comedies, dealing with Alice's adult life and how her friendship with Julius develops as fantasy starts to wane. I could do this story without checking in on the nemesis of Alice and Julius's childhood adventures, but I'd quite like to be able to have him in it, if only in flashbacks to the 1920's.
Plus, 1920's Pete is just a more fun character than you give him credit for. Design-wise, I like an evil cartoon bear, and the ratty, askew top hat beats Murry-era Pete's sailor cap any day (although both it and the tiny bowler hat have their charms). And while he became watered-down in the later Alice and Oswald cartoons as a more generic sort of bully, we don't give enough credit to the absurdist comedic potential of Pete's character in Alice Solves the Puzzle. A bootlegger who's obsessed with crossword puzzles to the point of diverting the resources of his “business” into stealing even more puzzles from random people so he can beat them before they do? That's gold.
I kind of doubt that early version of Pete is in the PD... but even if he was, you have to wonder what would be the point in resurrecting him. "Hey look, it's that 1925 version of Pegleg Pete which looks nothing like the character we know today! We can do whatever we want with him in new material!" Why not just create a new character if there's basically no point of recognition?
*splutter* It might be a very niche spot, but both and (I think) Ramapith himself will raise ourselves up quite strongly against the notion that the only interest of the 1920's toons is as the precursors of what came later. I am hugely fond of the Alice Comedies in their own right — and my question is no empty thought experiment; I have long simmered an idea of a graphic novel (or just plain novel) which would be a poetic sequel-cum-homage to the Alice Comedies, dealing with Alice's adult life and how her friendship with Julius develops as fantasy starts to wane. I could do this story without checking in on the nemesis of Alice and Julius's childhood adventures, but I'd quite like to be able to have him in it, if only in flashbacks to the 1920's.
Plus, 1920's Pete is just a more fun character than you give him credit for. Design-wise, I like an evil cartoon bear, and the ratty, askew top hat beats Murry-era Pete's sailor cap any day (although both it and the tiny bowler hat have their charms). And while he became watered-down in the later Alice and Oswald cartoons as a more generic sort of bully, we don't give enough credit to the absurdist comedic potential of Pete's character in Alice Solves the Puzzle. A bootlegger who's obsessed with crossword puzzles to the point of diverting the resources of his “business” into stealing even more puzzles from random people so he can beat them before they do? That's gold.
Oh, so THAT'S why you wanted to call him Bootleg Pete! I thought you just meant "bootleg" as in an unofficial or non-Disney production.
*splutter* It might be a very niche spot, but both and (I think) Ramapith himself will raise ourselves up quite strongly against the notion that the only interest of the 1920's toons is as the precursors of what came later. I am hugely fond of the Alice Comedies in their own right — and my question is no empty thought experiment; I have long simmered an idea of a graphic novel (or just plain novel) which would be a poetic sequel-cum-homage to the Alice Comedies, dealing with Alice's adult life and how her friendship with Julius develops as fantasy starts to wane. I could do this story without checking in on the nemesis of Alice and Julius's childhood adventures, but I'd quite like to be able to have him in it, if only in flashbacks to the 1920's.
Plus, 1920's Pete is just a more fun character than you give him credit for. Design-wise, I like an evil cartoon bear, and the ratty, askew top hat beats Murry-era Pete's sailor cap any day (although both it and the tiny bowler hat have their charms). And while he became watered-down in the later Alice and Oswald cartoons as a more generic sort of bully, we don't give enough credit to the absurdist comedic potential of Pete's character in Alice Solves the Puzzle. A bootlegger who's obsessed with crossword puzzles to the point of diverting the resources of his “business” into stealing even more puzzles from random people so he can beat them before they do? That's gold.
Oh, so THAT'S why you wanted to call him Bootleg Pete! I thought you just meant "bootleg" as in an unofficial or non-Disney production.
It's pretty amazing how this thread on Bootleg Disney has come full circle.
On a related note, I just pulled up some Alice Comedies on YouTube and they had sound on them. Like, genuine period sound. Must have been re-released in the early '30s or something.
I also want to share in the feeling that a bootlegger who steals puzzles is a heck of an idea, totally worth a shot if someone wanted to push the metafictional edge of an Epic Mickey game.
Last Edit: Jul 13, 2020 19:04:09 GMT by That Duckfan
Oh, so THAT'S why you wanted to call him Bootleg Pete! I thought you just meant "bootleg" as in an unofficial or non-Disney production.
It's pretty amazing how this thread on Bootleg Disney has come full circle.
On a related note, I just pulled up some Alice Comedies on YouTube and they had sound on them. Like, genuine period sound. Must have been re-released in the early '30s or something.
Or later on television, maybe. I believe a lot of silent cartoons got soundtracks in the 50s for that purpose.
It's pretty amazing how this thread on Bootleg Disney has come full circle.
On a related note, I just pulled up some Alice Comedies on YouTube and they had sound on them. Like, genuine period sound. Must have been re-released in the early '30s or something.
Or later on television, maybe. I believe a lot of silent cartoons got soundtracks in the 50s for that purpose.
Definitely the '30s. Listen to the sound effects on this Alice Solves the Puzzle, for instance. According to Wikipedia, the other voices are spoken by Walt Disney. I don't know how trustworthy that information is, but it certainly sounds like the voices Walt and staff would do in the very earliest period (pre-1931). I also can't see Disney ever going back to the Alice cartoons after Mickey became a great success.
The sound could also be recorded before Mickey took off, as there were some rudimentary non-synchronized sound systems around from about 1924 onwards. I'm not aware of Walt ever working with those when he was just starting out, but I can imagine sound re-release of Alice comedies being dubbed circa. 1927-1929, when Disney also dubbed Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho.
Does anyone know where "Return to Duckburg Place" was published (in a US fanzine?) first?
It wasn't published anywhere before its publication in the European Don Rosa Collection in 2011. Here is the text Don Rosa wrote about this comic and posted on the Papersera forum many years ago:
""Return to Duckburg Place"
If you read my preface to this volume, you already know the sad tale of this, my first Donald Duck comic story that I drew as a teenager in 1970 but then lost. What I did not reveal, however, was that I have again found it after 40 years!
My friend Ray Foushee and I had both graduated high school and started to college in 1969. That was a very important time in the cultural history of America! The "Summer of Love" had just taken place out in California two years earlier, and the repercussions of that ideological revolution were sweeping across America. One of the most important aspects of the movement was the birth of the so-called "Underground Comix" which by 1969 were very popular on college campuses, and those were an amazing new medium to the brains of two diehard comic fans like Ray and I!
We wanted to try making something like an "underground comic"... but not quite. We both enjoyed those shockingly obscene (but funny!) comics, and yet we were neither "hippies" nor comfortable with creating anything quite so raunchy as a typical "underground". So we decided to create a comic that had the "underground" flavor but still be suitable for printing in the comic collector fan-magazines we read... maybe more like an old MAD MAGAZINE parody, but a bit edgier.
Thus about 1970 we created "Return to Duckburg Place", a parody of Carl Barks' old Donald Duck stories with a few extra references to the other Disney comics characters who had reigned supreme in American comics from the 1940's to the early 1960's. Those once universally popular comics had already all but disappeared from America by 1970, so we would make a parody of what had happened in Duckburg since the glory days of 15-20 years earlier. We both wrote and I drew it.
We took the finished 9 page story to the big New York City comic convention in the summer of 1970 to show it to various fanzine publishers. But we naively never realized that no one in their right mind would want to touch a story with Disney characters involved with drugs and murder. Yes, looking back, it might seem we must have been low-grade nitwits! But we were both such comics fans (and Barks fans) that that idea simply never occurred to us!
However, while showing the comic around, we met another young Barks fan named Dick Reische who told us that he had connections to some of the actual "underground comix" publishers out in California, and he would try to find a publisher for us. As handy copystores were non-existent in those days, all I could do was give him the 9 pages of original art and trust him.
After a year or two of waiting to hear something from Dick, I decided I wanted the story back because I could barely even recall what Ray and I had done. Then it struck me -- I remembered the guy's name was Dick Reische, but I'd never asked him where he lived! There was no Internet in those days, so I had absolutely no way to try to locate the guy who had our Duck parody comic. It became the only art I'd ever drawn of which I did not have the originals or copies!
As the decades passed, and especially after I started creating actual Donald and $crooge comics for licensed publishers, I would try to think of new ways to locate Dick. I asked the old-time comic fans and dealers if they remembered a Dick Reische. No one did. Once there was the Internet, and Yahoo and Google, every few years I would again put "dick reische" into a searcher, but I'd never get any useful results. I'd give just about anything just to see "Return to Duckburg Place" again -- I couldn't remember anything about it! But after so many decades it was definitely lost forever.
Then came 2010 and Egmont's decision to publish this "Don Rosa Collection". We started having meetings about the vast amount of material I'd written and drawn back in my youth, and what extras might be interesting to publish in this new collection for the amusement of Duckfans. Even though I knew it was pointless, I couldn't help but tell the sad story of my long-lost Duck-parody comic. But the editors’ eyes lit up and they all insisted that I must try one last time to locate the comic. They even decided to hold pages open in the book plan. So, okay, I knew it was pointless, but I got on the Internet and tried one last time. I found mentions of a "Richard (Dick) Reische" here and there, but not the one I needed. Without some sort of limitation on the search area, it was just impossible. So I decided to never again even try to find him -- it was too frustrating and depressing.
I continued looking for more interesting old material for Egmont to use. I found myself looking through boxes and files that I had not opened in decades. I'm a born collector -- I never throw anything away. Finally I was looking through my file of letters I'd received years ago from important people like Jerry Siegel or Neil Armstrong, and I found a letter from... DICK REISCHE. Apparently I had forgotten that, after getting home from his visit to NYC, he had written to me to outline his plans for finding a publisher for my Duck parody. The return address was DENVER. Naturally he would not still live at the same address as 40 years ago, but now I had a city! I tried Google again. No Dick Reische in Denver. None in Colorado. But I wasn't licked, because I know CHUCK ROZANSKI!
I've known Chuck for decades! Chuck is the godfather of comics in Denver -- one of America's most prominent comic dealers and enthusiasts. He was my age and, like all comics fans my age, was also a huge Barks fan and he certainly would have known Dick Reische in Denver in the old days! I immediately called him!
Chuck said sure, he knows Dick! Dick was now a lawyer in Baltimore. That phone number was easy to look up. In another minute I was talking again, at long last, to Dick Reische after 40 years! He remembered me but had gotten out of comics decades ago and had no idea what I'd done since 1970. He'd sold his entire comic book collection to finance law school, so he didn't think he still had my Duck parody story, but he'd try to find time to go hunt through old crates and boxes. I told him I'd keep my fingers crossed and hoped to hear from him in a week or so.
But 5 minutes later he called back. He decided to go look in the one place it would be if he still had it... and there it was. I suppose he didn't sell it with the rest of his comics and art because in 1975 a Duck comic drawn by Don Rosa was of no interest to anyone. I'm lucky he didn't just toss it out!
He sent me copies of it. (I certainly grant him ownership of the art after he preserved it "for posterity" for four decades!) I could now read my first Donald Duck / Uncle $crooge story as if I'd never seen it before!
I laughed out loud a few times! Poor Gladstone! Poor Gus! But I must admit, it's much better written than drawn (something you might say about all my Duck comics). Especially annoying is my use of "Zip-A-Tone" -- that's an obsolete product once used for adding shading or textures to art. It came in endless varieties of dot or line patterns on a transparent plastic adhesive film. You would carefully cut out pieces of it with a razor blade, then apply it to the proper area of the art where you wanted to add shading. Fanzines and school newspapers were naturally only printed in black & white, so using Zip-A-Tone enabled me to add textures and depth. But I'd just discovered it at college in 1970, so my use of it was very awkward.
But there you have the story of the rediscovery, after 40 years, of my long lost first Duck comic. And I assure you no one is more thrilled than I am about it! (Perhaps, after you read it, you'll decide that no one should be at all thrilled about it but me. But be that as it may!)"
I remember Don's thread at Papersera a few years ago, but I never got through the hundreds of pages of messages. caballero, do you have all of his responses saved somewhere? I think they'd be very interesting to preserve for posterity, as I recall Don talked about quite a few things that he normally doesn't mention.
caballero , do you have all of his responses saved somewhere? I think they'd be very interesting to preserve for posterity, as I recall Don talked about quite a few things that he normally doesn't mention.
No, I don't have his repsonses saved. Btw, it would be a quite interesting (although daunting) project to save and organize all the comments Don Rosa made on the old DCML, the Papersera forum and other places on the internet, and turn it into a book. (With Don's permission of course.)
caballero , do you have all of his responses saved somewhere? I think they'd be very interesting to preserve for posterity, as I recall Don talked about quite a few things that he normally doesn't mention.
No, I don't have his repsonses saved. Btw, it would be a quite interesting (although daunting) project to save and organize all the comments Don Rosa made on the old DCML, the Papersera forum and other places on the internet, and turn it into a book. (With Don's permission of course.)
Eh. Nothing's daunting compared to the Rosa timeline. This is probably easier than you think, except for the book part (I'm pretty sure Don would not agree to that -- and would start to think twice about social media in the future!). Most forums have a "search for posts by this member" function.
Eh. Nothing's daunting compared to the Rosa timeline. This is probably easier than you think, except for the book part (I'm pretty sure Don would not agree to that -- and would start to think twice about social media in the future!). Most forums have a "search for posts by this member" function.
Yes, finding and saving Rosa's comments would be easy. The daunting part would be taking Rosa's comments apart, editing them and rearranging them by topic. For example he has answered most questions several times, but one answer might contain information that the other doesn't and vice versa. Also, one comment might answer questions about several different topics, so that comment would have to be taken apart and organized.
caballero , do you have all of his responses saved somewhere? I think they'd be very interesting to preserve for posterity, as I recall Don talked about quite a few things that he normally doesn't mention.
No, I don't have his repsonses saved. Btw, it would be a quite interesting (although daunting) project to save and organize all the comments Don Rosa made on the old DCML, the Papersera forum and other places on the internet, and turn it into a book. (With Don's permission of course.)
Many years ago now, I'm quite sure someone (I believe a European, not surprisingly) said he was planning on doing this and was working on it. That is, he was pulling together all Rosa's comments on DCML and was planning on putting them together into a book. I have no idea whether he (I think the person was male) had gotten an initial go-ahead from Rosa about this.
Don Rosa is probably lucky that “Return to Duckburg Place” didn’t end up in “Air Pirates Funnies”, published about a year after he had shopped his story around. Had he ended up getting mixed up in that mess, Disney would never have let him anywhere near Uncle Scrooge and we wouldn’t have his library of work today (which might not bother Rosa’s detractors all that much).
