Minima de Spell. Personality and relationships.

[bn2010]

Lena Sabrewing (nee de Spell) is a very popular rebut character. But she has 2 prototypes — a shadow from the original and a Minima de Spell. Everything is clear with the first one, but little is known about the second one. There is little information on the Internet, and not everyone has access to comics (I don't, for example).

Those who know more about it, please tell us. In what stories did she appear and what was her role? What is her relationship with other characters (especially with her aunt and Webby). In general, is she a good person or a villain?

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Definitely a good person (but then, if you're coming to this from the DT17 side of things, it's important to bear in mind that comics!Magica is generally depicted as significantly less evil than her 2017-Continuum counterpart).

[The KKM]

Minima is, IIRC, the only character to technically make the jump from Ducktales canon to the world of the comics, being used as Magica's nice niece in a ton of stories.

[bn2010]

Aug 17, 2023 12:26:26 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Definitely a good person (but then, if you're coming to this from the DT17 side of things, it's important to bear in mind that comics!Magica is generally depicted as significantly less evil than her 2017-Continuum counterpart).

Yes, I am aware of that. But I asked for details. Didn't she often appear in Italian comics?

[Matilda]

I can respond better this evening when I’m home with my laptop and comics. But if you look on Inducks under “characters” and go to her character page, the index tab will list all the stories she has appeared in. Only a half dozen or so, and I have them all—just (thanks to That Duckfan!) got the most recent Halloween tale. She was created by Michael T. Gilbert for a DuckTales (original series) comic book story. Was used in the Artibani/Arena “Magica’s family” stories plus one other short one in Italy. Yes, she’s a “good guy”. In the Christmas Artibani story, she even gets into the bin past Scrooge’s mind reading device, because her motives are pure! More later…..

[donaldistducktoons]

Aug 17, 2023 13:12:37 GMT The KKM said:

Minima is, IIRC, the only character to technically make the jump from Ducktales canon to the world of the comics, being used as Magica's nice niece in a ton of stories.

Both the butler Duckworth and the pilot Launchpad have appeared in comics outside of Ducktales, but mostly in comics by author William Van Horn.

[donaldistducktoons]

Minima de Spell is a good and funny person and yes, she is better than Lena, since she is a stereotypical teenager. Minima is a little girl and niece of Magica de Spell who appeared in the 1991 Ducktales comic "Dime After Dime" where she meets Webby Vanderquack. After that, the Italian authors, having written and drawn a lot of comics for Ducktales at the time, took Minima as a good potential and used her in their independent comics. Unfortunately, she didn't appear much, but whenever she did, it was mostly interesting and funny stories. "Gifts of the Gods!" are some of my favorite comics featuring Minima with Grandma de Spell and Rosalio, Magica's supposed boyfriend and fiancé, even though she doesn't love him. Usually Minima causes trouble and torments Ratface, Magica's pet raven, which often makes her aunt Magica furious with her. In the end, however, Magica loves her, despite the many problems she has. This was specifically explained by Magica in the comic "The pact of the Moon" when she told Scrooge to take good care of her niece Minima. Also, Minima has met both Donald's nephews and Daisy's nieces and has a special kind of friendship with April, May and June in particular. So she's really an ok person, but she's not the only girl who appeared at Magica. There is also her other niece Streghella who has appeared more times than Minima, and of course the Magica de Spell students named Hocus and Pocus. By the way, here's an index of stories featuring Minima: inducks.org/character.php?c1=date&c=Minima&view=4

[Matilda]

Yup, basically six stories: first appearance in Michael Gilbert’s Dime after Dime, the three Artibani/Arena “Magica’s family” stories, the short Sisti story and the Dutch story where she trick-or-treats with April, May and June. In Dime after Dime she is at camp with Webby, and initially she sets out to trick Webby into letting her get the #1 dime through a switcheroo. Magica promises her a reward. But when she sees Webby sticking up for her to the mean girls, she abandons her plan and decides she wants to be friends. In the Artibani/Arena stories she may hassle Ratface by trying to play with him, but she always means well. She cares about Magica and wants her to be happy. In the Sisti story Magica wants to get ahold of an ancient sorcerer’s diary while Minima needs to get her planner for school—that one has a satisfying little twist ending. And in the Halloween story, she starts trick-or-treating because it’s the only time she can be out in public with no one looking at her weird; if she doesn’t get treats, she turns the ungenerous person into an animal. AMJ befriend her and trick-or-treat with her, and Magica turns up and decides to let her enjoy the night and undoes her hexes.

[The KKM]

Aug 18, 2023 2:08:27 GMT donaldistducktoons said:

Aug 17, 2023 13:12:37 GMT The KKM said:

Minima is, IIRC, the only character to technically make the jump from Ducktales canon to the world of the comics, being used as Magica's nice niece in a ton of stories.

Both the butler Duckworth and the pilot Launchpad have appeared in comics outside of Ducktales, but mostly in comics by author William Van Horn.

Those comics, to my awareness, were made under the Ducktales banner though- they're still intended to be the Ducktales setting, even if only nominally since by any regard they're made as "normal" Disney Comics. Minima, I believe, is the only one who fully made the jump from that setting to the "normal" one, appearing in normal Italian stories

[djnyr]

It's true most of Van Horn's stories with Launchpad were under the Ducktales banner, but Van Horn's "Snore Losers", a standard Donald/Scrooge story, does have an appearance by Duckworth; true, he's not actually named, but he looks and acts exactly like him. Also, the later two-page gags Van Horn did with Gyro and Launchpad didn't run under the Ducktales banner (at least in the US), but rather as "Gyro and Launchpad." There's also a story drawn by Vicar (the title eludes me at the moment, but it was in the recent Bear Mountain collection from Fantagraphics) that adds Launchpad into the mix of a story that's "normal" in Duck terms (i.e., the Nephews are living with Donald, Grandma is on hand, etc.)

[Ramapith]

Aug 18, 2023 22:02:17 GMT djnyr said:

There's also a story drawn by Vicar (the title eludes me at the moment, but it was in the recent Bear Mountain collection from Fantagraphics) that adds Launchpad into the mix of a story that's "normal" in Duck terms (i.e., the Nephews are living with Donald, Grandma is on hand, etc.)

The story is the one we called "New Year's Daze" in its US edition.

Egmont in the mid-1990s was encouraged by Disney to use Launchpad in "normal" stories, but few writers seem to have done so. Another one is Bob Langhans' "On Duckburg Pond" (not yet published in the USA).

Egmont at the time regularly used polling—administered by local branches of Gallup—to test how junior high-aged readers liked their stories, with Denmark and Germany as test audiences. Launchpad turned out to be a very unpopular character, which is why Egmont ceased using him soon after.

(Other findings at that time: the Big Bad Wolf and Brer Rabbit were unpopular in Germany too, which is why Egmont mostly stopped producing original stories with them; a youthful, adventurous Mickey in short pants was much more popular in the weekly than a Murry-style adult detective Mickey in a full suit of clothes, which is one reason why we switched so fully to the "shorts" type of Mickey.)

[Matilda]

Also, Minima didn’t make the jump from DuckTales show to comics, because she was created in a comics story, the above mentioned Dime after Dime story by Michael Gilbert. Gilbert created Minima. But one could say that she made the jump from DuckTales comics to regular Duckburg comics when Artibani & Arena wrote their first “Magica’s family” story.

[Rrr]

Aug 18, 2023 22:23:09 GMT Ramapith said:

Aug 18, 2023 22:02:17 GMT djnyr said:

There's also a story drawn by Vicar (the title eludes me at the moment, but it was in the recent Bear Mountain collection from Fantagraphics) that adds Launchpad into the mix of a story that's "normal" in Duck terms (i.e., the Nephews are living with Donald, Grandma is on hand, etc.)

The story is the one we called "New Year's Daze" in its US edition.

Egmont in the mid-1990s was encouraged by Disney to use Launchpad in "normal" stories, but few writers seem to have done so. Another one is Bob Langhans' "On Duckburg Pond" (not yet published in the USA).

Egmont at the time regularly used polling—administered by local branches of Gallup—to test how junior high-aged readers liked their stories, with Denmark and Germany as test audiences. Launchpad turned out to be a very unpopular character, which is why Egmont ceased using him soon after.

(Other findings at that time: the Big Bad Wolf and Brer Rabbit were unpopular in Germany too, which is why Egmont mostly stopped producing original stories with them; a youthful, adventurous Mickey in short pants was much more popular in the weekly than a Murry-style adult detective Mickey in a full suit of clothes, which is one reason why we switched so fully to the "shorts" type of Mickey.)

Interesting stuff, thanks for telling ! I also remember that at the time there was (at least in the Danish weekly, i dont know if other countries had it) a poll on the last page (i think) where readers had to choose how much they liked each story, since this was around the same time (mid 90es) i wonder if this also was a part of the polling experiment

[djnyr]

Aug 18, 2023 22:23:09 GMT Ramapith said:

Aug 18, 2023 22:02:17 GMT djnyr said:

There's also a story drawn by Vicar (the title eludes me at the moment, but it was in the recent Bear Mountain collection from Fantagraphics) that adds Launchpad into the mix of a story that's "normal" in Duck terms (i.e., the Nephews are living with Donald, Grandma is on hand, etc.)

Egmont at the time regularly used polling—administered by local branches of Gallup—to test how junior high-aged readers liked their stories, with Denmark and Germany as test audiences. Launchpad turned out to be a very unpopular character, which is why Egmont ceased using him soon after.

Very interesting. I'm curious; did Ludwig and Fethry also poll poorly at Egmont for a while? I remember, back in the DCML days, some talk about how both of those characters, as well as Launchpad, were "dead" as far as Egmont was concerned. Also, if New Year's Daze was representative of Egmont Launchpad stories, I can sort of see why he was unpopular with Egmont's focus groups. I liked the story well enough (your dialoguing was great, as always), but its presentation of Launchpad as nothing more than a bumbling disaster machine was a pretty limited take on the character, missing the appeal of his best appearances on Ducktales (like Hero for Hire, Top Duck, and Double-O Duck.)

[Ramapith]

Sometimes characters go unused at a given publisher simply because the editors and/or writers aren't fond of them. That was more the case with Fethry and Ludwig for awhile; it wasn't about ratings.

But things change all the time; let's take Fethry's case. When I started as an Egmont editor in Denmark in 1997, the editorial team there had grown up with weaker 1970s Fethry stories—particularly later S-coded stories in which Fethry and Donald acted almost indistinguishable—and generally felt Fethry was nothing more than a dimmer version of Donald. They felt it weakened an otherwise Barks-inspired world to have him included.

Initially, surrounded only by the Fethry stories I had seen thus far, I agreed. When the Swedish Egmont office, around that time, actively requested more Fethry stories from Denmark, Denmark didn't really want to make them and I understood why.

But it was also around that time that many were rediscovering and reassessing the original 1960s Fethry stories. Writer Lars Jensen and scholar Thomas Jensen (no relation) were both in my circle of friends, and we began to build up a large collection of those early stories, both from Australian printed comics and proofs that the Egmont art archivist shared with me.

Eventually I proposed to my fellow Egmont editors that we could make the stories Sweden wanted if we used this more interesting, very un-Donaldlike version of Fethry, and management agreed.

So that's how one character came back into use. This kind of thing happens at Disney affiliates all over the world all the time. Notably, Italian scholars/writers like the late Luca Boschi also reassessed Fethry in Italy in the late 1990s, so even countries that had never stopped using him began moving back towards the original Kinney inspiration.