The Dragon of Glasgow

[Matilda]

Hey! I love this one! Beautiful large-sized printing, fun story, satisfying depth to the new girl character. It's a new chapter for the L&T set in Scrooge's childhood in Scotland, most reminiscent of "The Orphan's Christmas/The Substitute Santa of Strathbungo," both in childhood setting and in the new character girl partner-in-adventure. But I actually think I like Joris Chamblain's "The Dragon of Glasgow" a little more. That might be the glow of new discovery. But it might be the complexity of the backstory of the girl, her ability to help drive the plot, the presence of *Matilda*, and the fact that Great-aunt Matilda gets to narrate the whole flashback story!! Also, I like Fabrizio Petrossi's art, which surprises me a little, as I'm usually kind of a traditionalist in the Barks/Egmont/Dutch mold, and don't often like contemporary Italian stories' art or other very different styles. (E.g., I *loved* Mottura's art in Moby Dick, but found it off-putting in Marco Nucci's Christmas story with the Coot ancestors. Here's Grandma Duck on her farm, why doesn't it look recognizable?) But even though this is quite different from the Barks/Egmont/Dutch norm, it still feels "real" to me--not that I can pin down the reasons why!--and has impressive scenes and staging and the children are very cute without being cutesy. Nice to have such a good use of nonstandard panel layouts in a Disney Duck story. On the whole, I want my Duck stories to have standard panel layout, but every once in a while, as in this story and in "Himalayan Hideout," it's very satisfying to see a nonstandard panel layout used to great advantage.

[paulbrians]

Looking for a Disney comic written originally in French I ordered the original edition of this spectacular volume at great expense from Amazon.fr only to find that it was also published in English (at a much lower price). Oh well, I still enjoy reading the French.

[Al Levin]

Jul 27, 2023 23:12:41 GMT Matilda said:

Hey! I love this one! Beautiful large-sized printing, fun story, satisfying depth to the new girl character. It's a new chapter for the L&T set in Scrooge's childhood in Scotland, most reminiscent of "The Orphan's Christmas/The Substitute Santa of Strathbungo," both in childhood setting and in the new character girl partner-in-adventure. But I actually think I like Joris Chamblain's "The Dragon of Glasgow" a little more. That might be the glow of new discovery. But it might be the complexity of the backstory of the girl, her ability to help drive the plot, the presence of *Matilda*, and the fact that Great-aunt Matilda gets to narrate the whole flashback story!! Also, I like Fabrizio Petrossi's art, which surprises me a little, as I'm usually kind of a traditionalist in the Barks/Egmont/Dutch mold, and don't often like contemporary Italian stories' art or other very different styles. (E.g., I *loved* Mottura's art in Moby Dick, but found it off-putting in Marco Nucci's Christmas story with the Coot ancestors. Here's Grandma Duck on her farm, why doesn't it look recognizable?) But even though this is quite different from the Barks/Egmont/Dutch norm, it still feels "real" to me--not that I can pin down the reasons why!--and has impressive scenes and staging and the children are very cute without being cutesy. Nice to have such a good use of nonstandard panel layouts in a Disney Duck story. On the whole, I want my Duck stories to have standard panel layout, but every once in a while, as in this story and in "Himalayan Hideout," it's very satisfying to see a nonstandard panel layout used to great advantage.

I haven't read the book yet, but Petrossi's background is quite different than other Italian Disney artists. After working for "Topolino", he moved to French in mid 90s, and he worked in departement overseeing Disney parks, merchandising, and comics from all around Europe, following the style guides from Burbank. He also collaborated both with Egmont and Le Journal de Mickey.

You can read an interview with Petrossi here (it's in Italian, but online translators are getting better and better nowaday). They also show some artworks. You can see that sometimes he is very close the official Burbank style -- the "Meet Mickey Mouse" artworks are the very definition of "on-brand" -- sometimes there is clearly an Italian influence (his Mickey in the recent Vertigo story or the older Western story has something from Massimo De Vita's Mickey), and finally in "Mickey à travers le siècles" he shows his personal art style that has been nonetheless influenced by Gottfredson. He is a very interesting and unique artist!