Ducktales 2017

[Mesterius]

Nov 25, 2020 2:58:35 GMT The New Laird of Castle McDuck said:

Aug 25, 2018 10:22:46 GMT djnyr said:

Like so many of the defenders of this show, you're resorting to some absurd straw-man creation here. Why do people want to see screen adaptations of their favorite books or comics? So they can hear good actors reading their favorite lines with dramatic vigor, so they can see visuals they imagined in their head or viewed in illustrated form translated to live or animated action. That's one reason why the critics of the show have a right to want it to be more like the comics. The other reason is this: when a show has terrific source material--the best American comic books of all time--to draw on, but instead chooses to ignore the source material and draw instead on a medley of inferior sources, then the show's makers are very much open to criticism on grounds of judgment and taste. 

Look, the original Ducktales suffered from this problem too; it sometimes forced the Ducks into Scooby-Doo plots or into more treacly Saturday-morning-cartoon territory. But this wasn't as severe a hi-jacking as the one that Angones and company have engaged in. Duck comics were meant for kids, and though the best of them--namely, Barks'--worked for adults too, pitching a Duck show in the key of other kids' shows was not as tonally jarring to fans of the comics as pitching a Duck show at snarky, cynical, and continuity-obsessed fangeeks. I miss the days when popular entertainment was designed to appeal to the whole family instead of just Internet niches.

On that none, It's no coincidence that Angones' only real comics inspiration--if he read any comics at all--seems to be Don Rosa, the most kid-unfriendly major Duck creator and the American creator with the most cynical and sarcastic edge to his Ducks. For all the claims that the original show "softened" Scrooge--although frankly, Barks did the same thing in many of his later stories; witness his surprising generosity at the end of Treasure of Marco Polo, for example--its Scrooge still felt like the greedy but lovable figure from Barks' stories, with a childlike and almost naive side to balance his grumpiness and stinginess. This Scrooge, on the other hand, feels like Rosa's most smug and cocky version of Scrooge--what my brother used to call "Rosa's Super-Scrooge"--taken to cartoonish extremes. In defense of Rosa, however, the show takes only the worst of his stories and none of the best. 

In short, please don't tell us we are unreasonable to wish this show had done the smart thing and actually adapt its superior source material. And also accept the fact that some people find this smirking, mean-spirited, hypocritically sentimental, "alternate universe," with its obnoxious voice work, self-satisfied plotting, and ugly character designs, far from an enjoyable ride. 

The Rosa fans who were mostly agreeing with you up until this point, all in unison: REEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

Actually, "Rosa's Super-Scrooge" very much echoes my own thoughts about the worst sides of Rosa's Scrooge. That Scrooge, despite his flaws, is SO awesome and powerful in many of the stories (especially the later ones) that he is basically a superhero. Which is highly ironic considering how often Rosa has lamented that superhero comics have a much higher stature than duck comics among American comic book readers today. He may prefer Uncle Scrooge to caped heroes, but Scrooge is still a "superhero" to him.

[Matilda]

To djnyr I would say, I agree with much of what you say about the two DuckTales shows. On Rosa: I definitely contest the "kid-unfriendly" label. I have a godson and a great-nephew who were both huge fans of Rosa's comics from the age of 9 on. The godson definitely liked Rosa best of all, better than Barks, even at 9. There was nothing off-puttingly adult about Rosa's humor for him--nothing too harsh or knowing, nothing that talked down to him. I feel that Rosa respects his child-reader as Barks did. Yes, there's a mix of elements in Rosa's stories, some of which would appeal superficially to Angones, I assume. There is sometimes a sarcastic edge...though I personally wouldn't say "cynical"--the core of sincere values in Rosa's work feels very solid to me.

And yes, djnyr and Mesterius, late Rosa Scrooge can be too awesome. Though I do think that while Scrooge ascends at times into mythic stature, Rosa's Donald is always at heart the better man.

[djnyr]

I should probably qualify the "kid-unfriendly" remark; Rosa himself is always adamant, to an almost comic extent, that he does not write for children. Unlike Barks, he is also not very good at portraying children, either; Barks' nephews are heroic and wise, but always retain recognizably childlike flaws and quirks. Rosa's are such mature little paragons, particularly in his later stories, that his occasional attempts to have them act like "real kids" (their reaction to the Cleopatra revelation in "Guardians of the Lost Library", for example) feel oddly out-of-character.

However, although Rosa is always at pains to disavow kid readers and doesn't like to write about kids, I agree that his work has great appeal to some kids; I myself was Rosa-obsessed during my childhood. I think he appeals to the strong urge in many kids to enter a coherent, fully constructed world with every character's personality, history, and family connections carefully catalogued and documented. I was also obsessed with the chronology of the English kings, the Sherlock Holmes "canon," and with Tolkien's works during my childhood, and I think Rosa had a similar appeal to me.

I will agree that Rosa is much more sincere than Angones, although I think Rosa also suffers from a less accentuated version of the same problem that damages New Ducktales--i.e., his humor is so abrasive and his character interactions so frequently reductive that his big sentimental scenes can seem a little jarring and unconvincing by contrast. A good example is the Donald versus Scrooge dynamic you mention; Rosa makes some emotional attempts to push the idea that Donald is morally superior to Scrooge, but this is undercut by Scrooge's witheringly sarcastic and contemptuous attitude towards Donald, the Nephews' almost invariably pitying but somewhat superior treatment of Donald (as opposed to Barks' nephews, who could be either skeptical or hero-worshipping about their uncle), and the brutal, unpleasant slapstick Rosa frequently subjects Donald to ("The Last Lord of Eldorado" and the "Escape from Forbidden Valley" are two of the worst examples).

[Matilda]

Nov 26, 2020 17:13:45 GMT djnyr said:

I should probably qualify the "kid-unfriendly" remark; Rosa himself is always adamant, to an almost comic extent, that he does not write for children. Unlike Barks, he is also not very good at portraying children, either; Barks' nephews are heroic and wise, but always retain recognizably childlike flaws and quirks. Rosa's are such mature little paragons, particularly in his later stories, that his occasional attempts to have them act like "real kids" (their reaction to the Cleopatra revelation in "Guardians of the Lost Library", for example) feel oddly out-of-character.

However, although Rosa is always at pains to disavow kid readers and doesn't like to write about kids, I agree that his work has great appeal to some kids; I myself was Rosa-obsessed during my childhood. I think he appeals to the strong urge in many kids to enter a coherent, fully constructed world with every character's personality, history, and family connections carefully catalogued and documented. I was also obsessed with the chronology of the English kings, the Sherlock Holmes "canon," and with Tolkien's works during my childhood, and I think Rosa had a similar appeal to me.

I will agree that Rosa is much more sincere than Angones, although I think Rosa also suffers from a less accentuated version of the same problem that damages New Ducktales--i.e., his humor is so abrasive and his character interactions so frequently reductive that his big sentimental scenes can seem a little jarring and unconvincing by contrast. A good example is the Donald versus Scrooge dynamic you mention; Rosa makes some emotional attempts to push the idea that Donald is morally superior to Scrooge, but this is undercut by Scrooge's witheringly sarcastic and contemptuous attitude towards Donald, the Nephews' almost invariably pitying but somewhat superior treatment of Donald (as opposed to Barks' nephews, who could be either skeptical or hero-worshipping about their uncle), and the brutal, unpleasant slapstick Rosa frequently subjects Donald to ("The Last Lord of Eldorado" and the "Escape from Forbidden Valley" are two of the worst examples).

Rosa has great appeal for some kids for several reasons, I'm sure. I don't know that your characterization of why his comics appealed to child-you would be true of either of the kids I mentioned. But thank you for qualifying your remarks; I get what you're saying much more clearly, and agree in part. I have always had the feeling that when Rosa says he doesn't write for children, he means he doesn't write "kiddie comics." I wouldn't think he was (intentionally or unintentionally) distinguishing himself from Barks in that; I would think he was identifying with Barks' attitude when Barks said that he tried to write stories that he himself would find to be worth his dime. It's another question whether Rosa does as *well* at writing for children, and yet another whether he does as well at writing children as characters.

I do disagree with your last sentence. I think that Scrooge's contempt towards Donald is clearly shown to be powered by envy, that HDL do respect Donald as well as feel sorry for him (and in Barks they pity him, too, acting far more than "skeptical" in, say, No Such Varmint), and that the slapstick violence is another way the world is cosmically unfair to Donald, not a sign of his unworthiness. I personally don't like the slapstick violence, either, but I don't find slapstick in general funny, and indeed no one in my family of origin (men as well as women) finds slapstick funny.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Nov 26, 2020 17:35:11 GMT Matilda said:

I do disagree with your last sentence. I think that Scrooge's contempt towards Donald is clearly shown to be powered by envy, that HDL do respect Donald as well as feel sorry for him (and in Barks they pity him, too, acting far more than "skeptical" in, say, No Such Varmint), and that the slapstick violence is another way the world is cosmically unfair to Donald.

You see, that's just the thing, and why Rosa's Donald feels… unpleasant. Rosa's Donald feels like he's jinxed. He's put through all kinds of mayhem for no particular reason, and is just downcast and crushed through them all. This is also something DT17 has copied. Barks's Donalld, as GeoX once articulated, is above all else vital, always full of bounce and energy and resistance to whatever comes his way; and the slapstick, when it works, is usually sort of karmic, being, if not necessarily a punishment for a particular wrong, at least the cosmic pushback against Donald pushing his luck too much/acting with hubris.

[djnyr]

Nov 26, 2020 17:35:11 GMT Matilda said:

I do disagree with your last sentence. I think that Scrooge's contempt towards Donald is clearly shown to be powered by envy, that HDL do respect Donald as well as feel sorry for him (and in Barks they pity him, too, acting far more than "skeptical" in, say, No Such Varmint), and that the slapstick violence is another way the world is cosmically unfair to Donald, not a sign of his unworthiness. I personally don't like the slapstick violence, either, but I don't find slapstick in general funny, and indeed no one in my family of origin (men as well as women) finds slapstick funny.

I'm never able to buy into the idea that Scrooge envies Donald in Rosa's stories, because Rosa usually fails to show any enviable aspect of Donald's life--he heaps that cosmic unfairness on Donald so heavily, that the idea of Donald as, ultimately, a more well-adjusted and happier duck than Scrooge, rarely comes across effectively the way it does in Barks' stories like "The Second-Richest Duck" (where Donald is the voice of sanity throughout and gets a very effective last word).

Your mention of "No Such Varmint" brings me back to another perennial complaint about Rosa's Nephews--in "Varmint," the boys are frustrated with Donald's ineptitude, but at least partly because they want to be able to bask in his reflected glory--their motives for pushing him into the role of the world's greatest detective are a lot more mixed with selfishness than they would ever be in a Rosa story; he makes the Nephews more perfect, and sentimentalizes the Donald-Nephews relationship, much more than Barks ever did. 

Sometimes Rosa's take on Donald and the Nephews works--the medal ceremony scene at the end of "W.H.A.D.A. L.O.T.T.A. J.A.R.G.O.N." I actually find moving--but in other stories ("Super Snooper Returns"; the second "Three Caballeros" story) he lays on the pitying "poor Unca Donald" theme so hard that I find it depressing and embarrassing.  As Scrooge McDuck says above, I think the Rosa tendency towards making Donald too pathetic, and focusing excessively on his parental relationship to the Nephews, has definitely had a strong and unfortunate influence on Angones' depiction of Donald--although, to be clear, I still find even the worst of Rosa's comics superior to what Angones is doing.  

[Sandopaper]

Nov 22, 2020 14:26:28 GMT duckhuefan said:

So who would YOU have picked for season 3's main villain if not FOWL?
Only people not liking it are the same nostalgic ones that were gonna criticize no matter which direction they took so there isn't really pleasing those kinds of nostalgic purist fans.

- Rosa's Black Knight.

- Any proof? Because it's such a bold claim to make.

[Pan Maciej]

If it was up to me Beagle Boys would be the main villains of season 3. Magica got a season long story-arc and so did Glomgold. The Beagle clan felt very underplayed in this show anyway (which is a shame as I realy dig the voices and personaliteis on the main 3 Beagles) and the entire thing about them wanting to reclame "Beagleburg" felt like a underused story-line they hinted few times. Let's give them a moment to shine as well


That being said - I do think F.O.W.L. is a cool idea as it a good way to team-up diffrent villians (Blot, Rockerduck, Steelbeak) I would love to see on this show anyway. 

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Nov 27, 2020 14:31:34 GMT Pan Maciej said:

and the entire thing about them wanting to reclame "Beagleburg" felt like a underused story-line they hinted few times. Let's give them a moment to shine as well

At a guess I'd say it's likely to be, or be part of, the main S4 storyline, if a S4 there is.

[That Duckfan]

Nov 26, 2020 20:35:32 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

You see, that's just the thing, and why Rosa's Donald feels… unpleasant. Rosa's Donald feels like he's jinxed. He's put through all kinds of mayhem for no particular reason, and is just downcast and crushed through them all. This is also something DT17 has copied. Barks's Donalld, as GeoX once articulated, is above all else vital, always full of bounce and energy and resistance to whatever comes his way; and the slapstick, when it works, is usually sort of karmic, being, if not necessarily a punishment for a particular wrong, at least the cosmic pushback against Donald pushing his luck too much/acting with hubris.

I'd like to point out that Barks' Donald wins quite a lot as well, sometimes ridiculously much (Trail of the Unicorn and The Gilded Man are some clear examples that spring to mind, with Luck of the North as well). Barks would sometimes allow Donald to win, even from Gladstone, because that was the funniest/most unexpected/most fitting outcome.

I find this so fascinating about Barks' Donald. Later writers would be more concerned with character continuity, meaning that Donald didn't win from Gladstone, but Barks' Donald wasn't tied to anything. Barks gradually divorced him from his original, perpetually angry and unlucky setting, but never felt the need give Donald any definite traits. This used to strike me as odd and out-of-character when I first read Barks comics, it reads like a type of early installment weirdness.

For Rosa, meanwhile, character is LAW. I'm not sure where he got this influence from, maybe it was his engineering degree or maybe it was his superhero years. Look at something like Oolated Luck, and the sheer amount of hoops Rosa needs to jump through before he can reach a conclusion where Donald wins over Gladstone. Yeah, the gander "never beats the odds..."? IDK, maybe the translation I read was just unclear.

Nov 26, 2020 17:13:45 GMT djnyr said:

However, although Rosa is always at pains to disavow kid readers and doesn't like to write about kids, I agree that his work has great appeal to some kids; I myself was Rosa-obsessed during my childhood. I think he appeals to the strong urge in many kids to enter a coherent, fully constructed world with every character's personality, history, and family connections carefully catalogued and documented. I was also obsessed with the chronology of the English kings, the Sherlock Holmes "canon," and with Tolkien's works during my childhood, and I think Rosa had a similar appeal to me.

What I've always admired about his work is how grounded his universe seems to be. There's a greater sense of emotional depth, and his methodical drawing style adds to this. You can literally see Scrooge's whiskers grow each episode during the Life of Scrooge.

I will agree that Rosa is much more sincere than Angones, although I think Rosa also suffers from a less accentuated version of the same problem that damages New Ducktales--i.e., his humor is so abrasive and his character interactions so frequently reductive that his big sentimental scenes can seem a little jarring and unconvincing by contrast. A good example is the Donald versus Scrooge dynamic you mention; Rosa makes some emotional attempts to push the idea that Donald is morally superior to Scrooge, but this is undercut by Scrooge's witheringly sarcastic and contemptuous attitude towards Donald, the Nephews' almost invariably pitying but somewhat superior treatment of Donald (as opposed to Barks' nephews, who could be either skeptical or hero-worshipping about their uncle), and the brutal, unpleasant slapstick Rosa frequently subjects Donald to ("The Last Lord of Eldorado" and the "Escape from Forbidden Valley" are two of the worst examples).

...and this is where he can't have his cake, and eat it. The slapstick is particularly egregious, and borders on straight abuse at times (looking at you, Treasure Under Glass). I know Rosa loves MAD, but you can't have that amount of detail and that amount of slapstick. There are times where Donald's phyical mishaps add some pathos (The Duck Who Fell to Earth), and there are stories where the slapstick works (Incident at McDuck Tower). But it's a very tough tightrope, and he clearly feels more affection toward Scrooge after the Life and Times. That's when the needle starts to go the way of The Duck Who Never Was! and An Eye For Detail, culminating in things like Donald breaking the Holy Grail or smelling of rotten fish for an entire story.

Nov 26, 2020 22:04:41 GMT djnyr said:

I'm never able to buy into the idea that Scrooge envies Donald in Rosa's stories, because Rosa usually fails to show any enviable aspect of Donald's life--he heaps that cosmic unfairness on Donald so heavily, that the idea of Donald as, ultimately, a more well-adjusted and happier duck than Scrooge, rarely comes across effectively the way it does in Barks' stories like "The Second-Richest Duck" (where Donald is the voice of sanity throughout and gets a very effective last word).

Whereas in Barks, Scrooge is the less-adjusted one. The only Rosa stories that spring to my mind where Donald is clearly more well-adjusted than Scrooge are The Treasury of Croesus and Attaaaaack!!!. By and large, Rosa becomes too enamoured with Scrooge to dwell on his ill-adjusted side after the Life and Times.

[djnyr]

To me, Barks' disregard of rigid character consistency actually makes his ducks feel more real to me, not less real, than Rosa's--since real people are rarely so consistent that you're able to predict what would truly be "in character" for them and what would not. The web of our life is a mingled yarn, good and ill together.

Barks' Donald is panicky, cool-headed, jinxed, preternaturally skilled, irritable, laid-back, selfish, or generous at different times and in different stories--just like real people are. Rosa's Donald, at least as Rosa ultimately came to crystalize the character, is a perpetually unlucky, dispirited, resentful figure--I've met many people with some of those traits, but I've never met anyone who was always that way, all the time.

Similarly, Barks' Scrooge is paranoid, greedy, crafty, and cantankerous, but also dreamy, absent-minded, and naïve. Rosa's Scrooge is too world-weary and worldly-wise, since he bears the weight of Rosa's carefully documented "history," to ever show the more childlike traits of Barks' Scrooge; when Rosa gives Scrooge day-dreaming moments, they're marked with melancholy nostalgia rather than eccentricity. And, as I've already mentioned in this thread, Rosa's fixation on making the Nephews consistently noble and selfless makes them less believable as kids than Barks' version.

Even the Beagle Boys suffer from consistency and continuity preoccupations in Rosa's work--they drag around the weight of all their past failures to rob Scrooge, and thus have to be depicted as slovenly, slow-witted and disgruntled--they're never the eternally cocky, confident, Chesire-Cat-grinning Beagles of Barks' work, who are always completely certain that their latest plan will devastate Scrooge and make them rich (can you picture Rosa's Beagles dancing and singing "Fifteen locks on the banker's safe"?).

I do agree with you about Rosa's art style clashing horribly with the slapstick pain he inflicts on Donald--"Treasure Under Glass" is one of my favorite Rosa stories from what I think was Rosa's best artistic period, but it's almost ruined for me by the completely gratuitous and unfunny conclusion, with the gruesome-looking welt on Donald's hand. As Scrooge is a fairly inactive character and Donald a pretty assertive one in that story, it's almost like he felt he had to restore the balance of his universe by punishing Donald at the end.

Good point about "Treasury of Croesus," although in "Attaaaack!" Donald to me really doesn't come off very well--his snickering over the insulting remarks at Scrooge, and then his terror when they're attributed to him, are examples to me of Rosa's irritating tendency to show Donald at once mean-spiritedly envious of Scrooge and scared to death of him, which is not really in keeping with Donald's angrily defiant or bemusedly sarcastic attitude towards Scrooge in Barks' stories.

Rosa, in his commentary on "Guardians of the Lost Library" in the Fantagraphics series, mentions that his casting Donald as the carping couch potato in that story was objected to by "some Donald fans, the kind who have never liked that I treat Scrooge as the most important character in Duckburg." To me, that says all that needs to be said about the idea that Donald is the moral center of Rosa's universe; I think he made a point of giving Donald some more heroic moments in his later stories (as in "Quest for Kalevala" and the second Black Knight story) in order to appease those "Donald fans" he grumbled about, but his heart never seems in it to the extent it is when he's depicting Scrooge's heroic moments.

[Minotaur]

Guys, if you want to talk about Rosa's work, it's better to open a new thread on "Disney Comics" section (despite that the same topic has been discussed over and over again on different threads).

[djnyr]

I think this discussion is still related to the new Ducktales, albeit tangentially; I think it's obvious that Rosa's takes on Scrooge (as a cranky, hard-bitten super-adventurer), Donald (as a put-upon parent and dispirited loser), the Beagles (as dull-witted thugs from the bottom shelf of Scrooge's rogues' gallery), and Glomgold (as maniacally and entirely consumed by an obsession with Scrooge) have influenced Angones' takes on those characters--although Angones has taken Rosa's already excessively reductive versions of the characters and reduced them to a more dimensionless level. Even the depiction of Huey on DT 17 seems like a reductio ad absdurdum of Rosa's perfect Boy Scout versions of the Nephews. I find it ironic that Rosa loathes the new show so much; I agree with him, but at the same time I wonder if he realizes that the series represents a mutated version of his own work.

[That Duckfan]

Related to that is that both Rosa and DT17 operate in this kind of knowing postmodern sphere with regard to Disney comics, which puts them together in a relatively small category. It informs their view of the show and its characters.

Djnyr, while I agree with a lot of what you've written, you and I differ on the Beagle Boys. The Beagles have been plagued with pathetic incompetence since the '60s, in their Gold Key series. You also see this in the '90s Beagles stories from Egmont (which is probably my least favorite take on them, mainly due to the sub-quality talent behind those stories and the volume of them that reached Holland). They're not exactly known as the most formidable foes in Italy or Holland either.

[aldwayne]

Nov 29, 2020 15:49:44 GMT djnyr said:

I think this discussion is still related to the new Ducktales, albeit tangentially; I think it's obvious that Rosa's takes on Scrooge (as a cranky, hard-bitten super-adventurer), Donald (as a put-upon parent and dispirited loser), the Beagles (as dull-witted thugs from the bottom shelf of Scrooge's rogues' gallery), and Glomgold (as maniacally and entirely consumed by an obsession with Scrooge) have influenced Angones' takes on those characters--although Angones has taken Rosa's already excessively reductive versions of the characters and reduced them to a more dimensionless level. Even the depiction of Huey on DT 17 seems like a reductio ad absdurdum of Rosa's perfect Boy Scout versions of the Nephews. I find it ironic that Rosa loathes the new show so much; I agree with him, but at the same time I wonder if he realizes that the series represents a mutated version of his own work.

One can still however point out that for all Rosa did to make Scrooge be some tall tale figure, he also did all he could to point out that Scrooge at the end of the day built his empire on exploitation and robbery. Something missing from DT17 since the show never really tries to go with the notion that Scrooge ultimately doesn't have a wide line between himself and the likes of Glomgold. Making him more or less a duck version of Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne.

For Glomgold himself, DT17's version is far too unbelievably infantile and malfunctioning for him to have successfully become the #2 richest duck while being far younger than Scrooge. Glomgold's character suffered from how the showrunners are unwilling to make their villains be too threatening/taken seriously (monsters being friendly or "misunderstood", singing pirate showman Karnage, Steelbeak's personality, etc.).