Post by Baar Baar Jinx on Jun 20, 2017 14:56:21 GMT
Reading IDW's recent reprints of Italian stories, it strikes me how much the Beagle Boys (and here I'm confining myself to non-DuckTales, identical Beagle Boys) differ physically when depicted by different artists.
For example, Rosa's Beagle Boys are fat. And he makes that a staple of their appearance ("heap fat white men"). On the other hand, the recent Italian Beagle Boys are almost painfully skinny (for example, Cavazzano's art in "The Villainous Vase Case", in Uncle Scrooge 26). Barks tended to portray them as average to above-average weight, in general. I've seen some stories where they're actually muscular.
My personal preference is the overweight Beagle Boys. To me, the cachectic-looking Cavazzano Beagles just don't seem right; they look almost sick.
Yeah, the freakishly skinny BBs turn me off, too. I figure the BBs are a little over average weight, buff when they're newly out of prison since they work out in prison out of boredom, and flabby once they've been out a while, since they just sit around, eat lots of pizza, and scheme. And occasionally, when they run out of cash, knock over a corner store, where they don't need to use guns because they overwhelm the lone shopkeeper with their sheer numbers.
I also prefer by far the fat Beagle Boys rather than the skinny ones that we have in Italian stories. The Italian Wikipedia says Giovan Battista Carpi was the first one to draw skinny Beagle Boys, but it doesn't say when the change happened.
Anyway, two other things that I dlsike in the Italian portrayal of the Beagle Boys are the pointless gloves (but that's a problem for all dognoses and other anthropomorphic animals with pink skin) and the masks which are often so little that you could mistake them for glasses.
Post by Baar Baar Jinx on Jun 20, 2017 18:02:04 GMT
We had an entire thread about the Beagle Boys and gloves on the old DCF. I think it's clear that Rosa's Beagle Boys don't wear gloves (in his characteristically detailed style, he often draws fingernails and hair on their hands).
But Barks was inconsistent; there are several examples where he does clearly give the Beagle Boys gloves.
Also, I found this interesting; looks like Rosa's Beagle Boys inherit their prison numbers from their fathers somehow.
And .. is Grandpa Beagle's first name Sherman? I'm actually surprised that Rosa, who gave Whitewater and Pothole real first names, didn't come up with this one:
Another varying characteristic; some artists give the Beagle Boys floppy ears (as in all the examples above), and some give them human ears; Barks was inconsistent with this, too.
Anyway, two other things that I dlsike in the Italian portrayal of the Beagle Boys are the pointless gloves (but that's a problem for all dognoses and other anthropomorphic animals with pink skin) and the masks which are often so little that you could mistake them for glasses.
The first one is clearly a relic from the cartoon time, in which every character had these. I find them unnecessary too, but the only artist I know, who is drawing them without gloves is Don Rosa, because he wants to depict his characters as human as possible. He even wanted to ban the dog noses from his comics (as Al Talliaffero made it in the early years), but Disney didn't let that be). To the masks: I read many Italian stories, in which the Beagle Boys are dressing up as other persons. Maybe it is because of that. If someone would come to you, and had a big mask on, which you just know from a terrifying gang, you wouldn't let him in. But with beards and glasses, little masksare diappearing.
I find them unnecessary too, but the only artist I know, who is drawing them without gloves is Don Rosa, because he wants to depict his characters as human as possible. He even wanted to ban the dog noses from his comics (as Al Talliaffero made it in the early years), but Disney didn't let that be).
I'm surprised to hear that. Rosa likes to be as loyal to Barks' style as possible, and I'd think he'd want to continue the Barksian tradition of having dognoses rather than humans in his stories. Do you have an exact quote from him with regards to this? Also, I'm not sure how much Disney cares about human characters in the comics ... in Barks' case, I believe it was his editors at Western that found it disconcerting when he tried to slip human characters in.
I find them unnecessary too, but the only artist I know, who is drawing them without gloves is Don Rosa, because he wants to depict his characters as human as possible. He even wanted to ban the dog noses from his comics (as Al Talliaffero made it in the early years), but Disney didn't let that be).
I'm surprised to hear that. Rosa likes to be as loyal to Barks' style as possible, and I'd think he'd want to continue the Barksian tradition of having dognoses rather than humans in his stories. Do you have an exact quote from him with regards to this? Also, I'm not sure how much Disney cares about human characters in the comics ... in Barks' case, I believe it was his editors at Western that found it disconcerting when he tried to slip human characters in.
This time I have a quote from "Die tollsten Geschichten von Donald Duck Sonderheft" #339. Here Wolfgang Fuchs (Germany expert) is saying the following sebtence: "Rosa wanted to use normal human noses for his Men, but the guidelines of Disney didn't let him do that." It's the same as with the hat colours of the nephews, they are Determinante which one belongs to whom.
We had an entire thread about the Beagle Boys and gloves on the old DCF. I think it's clear that Rosa's Beagle Boys don't wear gloves (in his characteristically detailed style, he often draws fingernails and hair on their hands).
Everytime I hear that something was already discussed on DCF I feel sad that most of the archives are apparently lost forever.
But Barks was inconsistent; there are several examples where he does clearly give the Beagle Boys gloves.
I don't think Barks was inconsistent: the image of the left seems to show the Beagle Boys without gloves, but for some reason the colorist thought they were wearing gloves and left their hands white. In the image of the right, they are wearing gloves, but only because they were handling explosives: we are not supposed to think that they wear them 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
In Barks' stories and illustrations/paintings, not only the Beagle Boys don't wear gloves, but the same thing is true for every other dognose character. Since colorists can't be trusted, the best way to verify this is to check stories in which characters wear short sleeves or are half-dressed: we can see that in Barks' comics dognoses don't wear gloves, while in Italian comics they do. I used to think it was a strange idea on the Italian artists' part, but then I think I figured out why they do it: in Gottfredson's stories (unlike in Barks' stories) dognoses do wear gloves, and they also wear them in Taliaferro's strips (at least, in the early years). So, apparently Italian artists decided (or were asked by their editor) to uniform the appearance of dognoses in the mouse and duck universe: this could be done by either removing the gloves from the former or by adding gloves to the latter, and the second options was chosen. The choice seems to have been made since the earliest Italian stories, though some exceptions popped up here and there, like this one (it's a translation of a Cimino/Scarpa story):
There are also stories in which the same character goes from having gloved hands to having bare hands in a few panels of the same story for no reason (basically, a blooper). Anyway, ths inconsistence in American comics between dognoses of the mouse universe and dognoses of the duck universe seems to have often confused the colorists, who in many cases thought various characters were wearing gloves even though they were not (I am talking about not only Italian colorists, but also American colorists).
The same thing is true for anthropomorphic pigs. The Pig Mayor? He has no gloves in Barks' stories...
... but he has them in Italian stories:
Soapy Slick? He has no gloves in the Barks universe...
but he has them in the Italian universe:
And the same thing is true for other characters as well. Again, I can't really blame Italian artists for that, since I see that, prior to Barks, Taliaferro had drawn anthropomorphic pigs with gloves. And before that there was Peter Pig in "The Wise Little Hen" who had gloves.
By the way, the worst thing is that even a character like Gyro was, albeit occasionally, shown with gloves. Which was ridicolous enough when the gloves were colored yellow, but it is even more ridicolous in modern stories, since the gloves are now white:
I should check about other Western's duck stories, but my guess is that their dognoses are like Barks' dognoses, i.e. whithout gloves. And I should also check modern stories from other countries, as I think that Italians are not the only ones to use gloves for dognoses. As for animation, I know that DuckTales followed Barks in that most dognoses have no gloves:
However the Beagle Boys themselves have gloves:
The fact that they have gloves, plus the fact that the gloves are yellow rather than white, plus the red color of their sweaters... all these facts suggest that Italian comics, in addition to Barks comics, were a source of inspiration from the series (other hints of that are the curved Money Bin with a dome, the golden coins, and the colors of Scrooge's clothes). But Italian comics were not well known in the USA of 1987-1990, so how did the producers knew about Italian comics? I guess the answer has something to do with the fact that Romano Scarpa was considered as an animator for the series and even created an animation test.
Anyway, there is at least one episode of the series in which they have no gloves (possibly because they are a past generation of Beagles):
Also, I found this interesting; looks like Rosa's Beagle Boys inherit their prison numbers from their fathers somehow.
It may be, but we don't know which are the two dads referred in the dialogues, and there's the fact that we have seven sons for just three fathers, so the sons have more numbers than their fathers. Plus, the numbers of the three dads are inconsistent in both Barks and Rosa.
And .. is Grandpa Beagle's first name Sherman? I'm actually surprised that Rosa, who gave Whitewater and Pothole real first names, didn't come up with this one:
Actually, Rosa had already given Grandpa Beagle a first name (Blackheart), by revealing that Barks' Blackheart Beagle was just a younger version of Grandpa Beagle. Indeed, not only Rosa gave GB a first name, but he also never used the expression "Grandpa Beagle", as even in his stories set in the present the character is either "Blackheart", "Blackheart Beagle" or "Grandpa Blackheart"; Rosa also has Grandpa wearing his captain hat even in the present.
Anyway, there are at least two non-Rosa stories in which Grandpa is referred to as Blackheart, and the first one is the one which includes the image you posted. Here is the full scene:
The whole "Sherman" thing is just a joke, as Grandpa Beagle had used the alias Sherman earlier in the story as part of a disguise, and Scrooge is mocking him by revealing that he saw through the disguise. But, as one of his grandsons says, even in this story his name is Blackheart.
Another varying characteristic; some artists give the Beagle Boys floppy ears (as in all the examples above), and some give them human ears; Barks was inconsistent with this, too.
Anyway, two other things that I dlsike in the Italian portrayal of the Beagle Boys are the pointless gloves (but that's a problem for all dognoses and other anthropomorphic animals with pink skin) and the masks which are often so little that you could mistake them for glasses.
The first one is clearly a relic from the cartoon time, in which every character had these. I find them unnecessary too, but the only artist I know, who is drawing them without gloves is Don Rosa, because he wants to depict his characters as human as possible. He even wanted to ban the dog noses from his comics (as Al Talliaffero made it in the early years), but Disney didn't let that be).
It's true that in cartoons Disney characters had gloves, but that's because they had a black body and their hands needed white gloves so that the audience could clealy distinguish them from the rest of the body when they were in front of it. There are exceptions (as I said above, Peter Pig had gloves despite having a pink body), but I don't think there were many of them. Like you said, gloves are unnecessary for characters who have a pink skin and are basically humans with a black round nose.
Anyway, it's not true that Don Rosa is the only artist to draw the Beagle Boys without gloves: as I said in my answer to Baar Baar Jinx, Barks (who created them) drew the Beagle Boys without gloves, just like he did for all other dognoses.
And where did you read that Rosa wanted to ban the dog noses from his comics? If anything, that was Barks, as he wanted to use humans (see "Dangerous Disguise") but was forced to keep using dognoses because his editor did not like to have humans in duck comics.
To the masks: I read many Italian stories, in which the Beagle Boys are dressing up as other persons. Maybe it is because of that. If someone would come to you, and had a big mask on, which you just know from a terrifying gang, you wouldn't let him in. But with beards and glasses, little masksare diappearing.
One thing that I like about the Beagle Boys is the idea that they wear their masks not because they have an identity to hide, but because the masks themselves are basically their identity. And I like the gag about people failing to see through their disguises even though they keep their domino masks. What I meant is that I dislike when their masks are so small that a casual reader may mistake them for glasses, like in the example below:
Last Edit: Nov 28, 2019 9:06:01 GMT by drakeborough
Notice in that Barks example with the gloves, they have the three lines on the back of the hand that indicate it's a glove. So it wasn't just a colourist's mistake.
I find them unnecessary too, but the only artist I know, who is drawing them without gloves is Don Rosa, because he wants to depict his characters as human as possible. He even wanted to ban the dog noses from his comics (as Al Talliaffero made it in the early years), but Disney didn't let that be).
I'm surprised to hear that. Rosa likes to be as loyal to Barks' style as possible, and I'd think he'd want to continue the Barksian tradition of having dognoses rather than humans in his stories. Do you have an exact quote from him with regards to this? Also, I'm not sure how much Disney cares about human characters in the comics ... in Barks' case, I believe it was his editors at Western that found it disconcerting when he tried to slip human characters in.
Indeed, it was Western who complained about humans, not Disney. In a 1971 interview Barks said that "As soon as I took "Dangerous Disguise" in and Carl Buettner took a look at it, he said "That doesn't go good, having real humans. It takes the ducks out of their own worlds.""
This time I have a quote from "Die tollsten Geschichten von Donald Duck Sonderheft" #339. Here Wolfgang Fuchs (Germany expert) is saying the following sebtence: "Rosa wanted to use normal human noses for his Men, but the guidelines of Disney didn't let him do that." It's the same as with the hat colours of the nephews, they are Determinante which one belongs to whom.
Barks originally wanted to place Donald in a world of realistically drawn humans, but was finally ordered by his editors to back off from that. So he started using humans with round black noses and saying they were “dogs”. I would imagine these Barks dog-humans looked very weird in 1948, but I grew up with them to such an extent that I thought that’s how you were supposed to draw humans. I never for a moment thought those were dogs — I thought that cartoonists drew humans with those black snoots — and all my old comic books that I drew when I was 7-14 years old were all about humans with round black noses.
Post by Baar Baar Jinx on Jun 20, 2017 22:30:21 GMT
Yes, I am aware that Grandpa Beagle is now, by consensus (and mainly as a result of Rosa's efforts), accepted to be the same character as Blackheart Beagle (I don't think that was Barks' intention, and "Grandpa" Beagle doesn't seem to know Scrooge in "The Money Well" which would contradict Rosa's theory, especially since, in Rosa-dom, Blackheart is pretty sharp and sees Scrooge as a major adversary); I just wondered if "Blackheart" was not really a first name but more a nickname. After all there was no reason for Rosa to come up with more normal-sounding names for Whitewater Duck or Pothole McDuck, but he somehow felt he needed to. However, I either did not know or forgot about the "Sherman" joke in that story. The younger Beagle Boys' reaction ("you told us your name was Blackheart!") makes little sense then, since I thought it was a funny way that we learned that Grandpa Beagle was trying to hide a wimpy-sounding name he didn't like behind a more macho name (a common trope in comedy).
As regards Barks and gloves on Beagle Boys, are the Beagle Boys wearing gloves here or not?
Notice in that Barks example with the gloves, they have the three lines on the back of the hand that indicate it's a glove. So it wasn't just a colourist's mistake.
Do we know for sure that three lines on the back of the hand always indicate a glove? Couldn't they also indicate the knuckles of the hand? I have in front of me a version of the story ("The Doom Diamond") in which their hands are colored pink (implying that they have no gloves), though at the moment I can't make a scan of it. Should I assume that the version I have is the one where the colorist made a mistake and the image below is the one correctly colored?
I would find it hard to believe it: when a character is wearing gloves, there should be a line (or a double line) somewhere that separates the arm from the gloves, like in the image below:
Of course, in a single image the line could be hiddedn by the "camera angle", but if the line never appears in a full-lenght story (like in "The Doom Diamond"), then I strongly doubt there are gloves at all. Especially considering the first panel in the Barks scan above, which seems to show bare hands. Not to mention that it wouldn't make much sense for Barks to suddenly put gloves on characters after drawing them with gloves for a decade and half.
Yes, I am aware that Grandpa Beagle is now, by consensus (and mainly as a result of Rosa's efforts), accepted to be the same character as Blackheart Beagle (I don't think that was Barks' intention, and "Grandpa" Beagle doesn't seem to know Scrooge in "The Money Well" which would contradict Rosa's theory, especially since, in Rosa-dom, Blackheart is pretty sharp and sees Scrooge as a major adversary);
True, today they are accepted to be the same charater, even though Inducks lists them separately, which creates some confusion in a few pages.
As for what was Barks' intention, I don't think he had one: he had probably forgotten who Blackheart was by the time he wrote "The Money Well", and he likely also forgot who Grandpa was after that. Other pre-Rosa authors picked up Grandpa Beagle and made him a recurring character, but were probably unaware of Blackheart and so never bothered thinking if they were the same or not. Finally Rosa made them the same character, and I think this choice works better, from a narrative point of view, than having Grandpa be one of Blackheart's three sons (other options would be needlessly complicated). After all, Blackheart in the riveboat story has a relationship with his sons that is similar to the relationship Grandpa has with his grandsons in "The Money Well", not to mention that both Blackheart and Grandpa in their debut stories differ from the rest of the Beagles in both appearances an personality, while the sons of the former and the grandsons of the latter are identical among themselves in evrything. Having one of Blackheart's sons be Grandpa would imply that after being a mere unit in a group of three indistinguishable people he got an unique look and personality and is now the only one that can be told apart in another group of identical people (he plus the modern Beagles), not to mention that he would have had to change his number from 176-something to 186-802... all of this could potentially work, and would even give Grandpa a more realistic age (i.e. few years older than Scrooge, rather than some 20 years older), but it would be much less "elegant" than just have Blackheart himself be Grandpa.
In "The Money Well" Grandpa doesn't seem to recognize Scrooge, that's true, but the story spends a single panel on this, so the issue cand be easily explained away in many ways. What if being hit by Scrooge's head on the chest impaired his sight for a few second? That idea of mine has always been my favourite explanation. Anyway, this is Rosa's take of the issue:
"Barks did "The Money Well" with Grandpa Beagle in 1958. I told of how Grandpa Beagle had already met $crooge on the Mississippi in the 1880's, and the reason I did that is because Barks originally said that was so in a story he did in 1957. [...] the Grandpa Beagle in Barks' "Money Well" was either supposed to be the same as "Blackheart Beagle" (as I decided was so) or one of Blackheart's sons shown in that 1880 Mississippi story a year earlier. Either way, the character should still know $crooge in modern times. It was Barks who contradicted himself, but he didn't do it through an error... it just wasn't his style to refer back to old stories and perhaps confuse a reader who had not seen that story. And it doesn't actually need to even be considered a contradiction -- let's say that in "The Money Well" Grandpa Beagle only *momentarily* did not recognize $crooge or understand what $crooge would be doing in his shack."
I think his explanation works fine. By the way, has it ever been a similar case in fiction, i.e. a case where two characters are introduced in stories taking place in different in-universe periods and one of them is later retconned to be a younger version of the other?
I just wondered if "Blackheart" was not really a first name but more a nickname. After all there was no reason for Rosa to come up with more normal-sounding names for Whitewater Duck or Pothole McDuck, but he somehow felt he needed to.
I think giving Grandpa a real name (i.e., retconning him and Blackheart to be the same character) was enough, and giving him yet another name on the grounds that Blackheart may be a nickname would have been overdoing it.
However, I either did not know or forgot about the "Sherman" joke in that story. The younger Beagle Boys' reaction ("you told us your name was Blackheart!") makes little sense then, since I thought it was a funny way that we learned that Grandpa Beagle was trying to hide a wimpy-sounding name he didn't like behind a more macho name (a common trope in comedy).
I think the joke about their reaction is that Scrooge, Grandpa and the reader know why Scrooge called Grandpa "Sherman", but the younger Beagle Boys do not know that (I should check the story, but if I remember correctly they were not present when Grandpa met Scrooge disguised as "Sherman") so they act surprised and start thinking they don't know their grandfather's name. On a meta level, I think the main point about the joke was that Blum wanted to point out that for him Grandpa's name is Blackheart, so he created that little scene as an excuse to showcase the name Blackheart.
It would be interesting to know if Blum was inspired by Rosa in identifying Grandpa with Blackheart, or if he came up with the same idea on his own. At any rate, it's worth noting that this story is probably the only non-Barks/non-Rosa comic in which Grandpa Beagle has the prison number 186-802 (I am not counting IDW's localizations in which the sign "GRAZIA" used in Italian stories is constantly replaced by 186-802). Outside of comics, that number has also been used in Grandpa Beagle's only video game appearance, "The Duckforce Rises" (2015).
By the way, in addition to the fat vs skinny issue, the bare hands vs gloved hands issue, and the big masks vs small masks issue, there's also another thing: the way their number appears on their sweaters. In Barks' earliest stories the were plates hanging with a string around their necks, but then were replaced by numers actually written on their sweaters (or on a piece of paper that was glued to their sweaters). The latter had been mainstream for a long time when Rosa started doing duck comics, and yet Rosa went through both stages like Barks did, i.e. he started with hanging plates and later changed them to numbers written on their sweaters.
Finally, I want to point out that in Barks' The Case of the Sticky Money (1963) the Beagle Boys are shown without clothes, and they have their prison numbers written on their chests. However, I think that in modern Italian stories they have no numbers when they are without clothes, though at the moment I can't name any story when this happens.
Finally, I want to point out that in Barks' The Case of the Sticky Money (1963) the Beagle Boys are shown without clothes, and they have their prison numbers written on their chests. However, I think that in modern Italian stories they have no numbers when they are without clothes, though at the moment I can't name any story when this happens.
Why was the name "Sherman" chosen? A reference to US Army General Sherman, who was brutal in conquering much of The Confederate States' southeastern territory during The US Civil war? Certainly, it was way too early (by at least 6 or 7 years) to be taken from Mr. Peabody's understudy, "Sherman".
And, something I never noticed, and wish I never read on this forum: I have a huge problem with The Beagle Boys as prisoners, being portrayed as having their prisoner numbers tatooed onto their chests, given that just after World War II, more than half the people with whom I was raised, had "prison" numbers tatooed into their skin (from having been prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, and the like). At least The Italians were sensitive to that issue. I would have guessed that The Americans would have been, as well.
Maybe our Canadian copies had the numbers erased. But, I had thought that our issues were printed in USA, and the local Canadian adverts were placed into the books by the editorial staff assemblers in New York. So, there would have been no Canadian office nor staff to make such changes. As I remember, Canadian issues often had extra 1-page gags where US adverts had appeared in issues going to US markets, and there were no special Canadian pages (only a reference to Canadian subscription prices).
Do we know for sure that three lines on the back of the hand always indicate a glove? Couldn't they also indicate the knuckles of the hand? I have in front of me a version of the story ("The Doom Diamond") in which their hands are colored pink (implying that they have no gloves), though at the moment I can't make a scan of it. Should I assume that the version I have is the one where the colorist made a mistake and the image below is the one correctly colored?
I find the "knuckle" theory rather hard to believe. Usually, lines indicating the palm bones are only drawn when it is meant to emphasize that the character has skinny, skeletal hands, which isn't at all the case with the Beagle Boys. Find me one other example of a character anywhere in Disney comics whose knuckles are drawn in this fashion even though he isn't old, supernatural or skinny.
Finally, I want to point out that in Barks' The Case of the Sticky Money (1963) the Beagle Boys are shown without clothes, and they have their prison numbers written on their chests. However, I think that in modern Italian stories they have no numbers when they are without clothes, though at the moment I can't name any story when this happens.
Also to Robb: about that, I always thought that was a gag, and not a tatoo — that they'd been wearing the same T-shirts with the numbers on it that the ink had become imprinted on their skin. Nothing to do with actual prison tatoos a la WWII.