Now, I see that I was already in USA when "A Case of Sticky Money" was first published. But, now that I see it was a Gold Key comic, rather than Dell, I know why I would not have noticed The Beagle Boys having their numbers "tatooed" or stained onto their skins. The Gold Key colouring was so very bad, that I couldn't tell what was going on in the stories. And so, no matter how well-written and well-drawn the Barks stories were, I didn't enjoy reading them, and hardly was able to comprehend what was going on. So, I only read them one time, until they were printed in a Dutch publication, and actually, never read the Gold Key issue again.
Now I am curious to see if the first Dutch printing showed the numbers on their bare skins, and what the dialog said concerning that. But, unfortunately, being in Denmark now, I'm not with my comic books, and only have access to the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian issues, and the US Carl Barks Library printing.
Another comment on the gloves on cartoon characters: I am no expert, but I have always assumed that the white gloves were necessary in the days of black-and-white cartoons for a couple of reasons: as drakeborough says, so that the hands of black characters will show up when held in front of their bodies, and also (related reason) so that you can show more detail in the fingers--the same reason the center of the face has to be white, so you can show the details of eyes, mouth and nose. You saw the same thing with the black cat on Freccero's cover for WDCS 738 coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=XUC+WDC+738A --both the face and the paws had to be white to enable detail.
I've wondered what the Dutch readers make of the skinny Italian Beagles--isn't the Beagles' name in Dutch essentially "Fattie Boys"?
Another comment on the gloves on cartoon characters: I am no expert, but I have always assumed that the white gloves were necessary in the days of black-and-white cartoons for a couple of reasons: as drakeborough says, so that the hands of black characters will show up when held in front of their bodies, and also (related reason) so that you can show more detail in the fingers--the same reason the center of the face has to be white, so you can show the details of eyes, mouth and nose. You saw the same thing with the black cat on Freccero's cover for WDCS 738 coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=XUC+WDC+738A --both the face and the paws had to be white to enable detail.
I've wondered what the Dutch readers make of the skinny Italian Beagles--isn't the Beagles' name in Dutch essentially "Fattie Boys"?
"zware", as an adjective for a person, can indicate character, as opposed to physical traits. I always took Zware Jongens to mean "Tough Boys", or "Tough Guys", as opposed to "Heavy Boys". If they wanted to call them "Fatty Boys", they'd probably have called them " De Dikke Jongens".
And, I HATE the skinny Beagle Boys' design. They should be heavy, stocky and built like fireplugs - just as Barks had them. I liked Barks' earliest versions (along with his proto Beagle Boy thugs), who were tougher, and had stubble two-day growth close-cut whiskers (5 O'Clock Shadow), rather than the silly, stupid, incompetent, sensitive, lovable, completely unthreatening boobs they've turned into in recent years.
Another comment on the gloves on cartoon characters: I am no expert, but I have always assumed that the white gloves were necessary in the days of black-and-white cartoons for a couple of reasons: as drakeborough says, so that the hands of black characters will show up when held in front of their bodies, and also (related reason) so that you can show more detail in the fingers--the same reason the center of the face has to be white, so you can show the details of eyes, mouth and nose. You saw the same thing with the black cat on Freccero's cover for WDCS 738 coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=XUC+WDC+738A --both the face and the paws had to be white to enable detail.
I've wondered what the Dutch readers make of the skinny Italian Beagles--isn't the Beagles' name in Dutch essentially "Fattie Boys"?
"zware", as an adjective for a person, can indicate character, as opposed to physical traits. I always took Zware Jongens to mean "Tough Boys", or "Tough Guys", as opposed to "Heavy Boys". If they wanted to call them "Fatty Boys", they'd probably have called them " De Dikke Jongens".
But in this interview Rosa seemed to imply otherwise: 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.
Well, I will write Mr Fuchs an E-mail and I'll ask, where he got that. It would not be the first time he's getting something wrong, he is just blathering around, which makes him to the most hated comic expert in Germany...
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.
I don't recall other instances of Barks adding lines to show very skinny hands, especially not in a way that's an established trope of cartoon gloves. Yes, having the glove cuffs would help distinguish them, but they're under the sleeves already. "Cartoon gloves have three lines" is a very well-established trope, so if there's a cartoon comic with hands showing three lines on their back, I'd very much say yes, it's a glove. Here, just from a few google image searches:
So yes, if the print you have of that story still has the lines on the hands, it's very much an error that the hands aren't coloured white.
That said
As you say, Barks rarely drew them with gloves too, and there is a panel there without the lines. If I had to guess, this might've been an editor or something going "hold on aren't these supposed to have gloves" and adding the lines in, but I'm speculating.
But in this interview Rosa seemed to imply otherwise: 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.
Well, I will write Mr Fuchs an E-mail and I'll ask, where he got that. It would not be the first time he's getting something wrong, he is just blathering around, which makes him to the most hated comic expert in Germany...
Hey! Wolfgang is a friend of mine, and I consider him a top-notch professional journalist. Anybody can make an error when dealing with thousands of data points in over 7,000 pages of Barks material. He's usually pretty accurate from what I've seen of his work. Perhaps he was quoting someone else whose research was incorrect in that case. I hadn't heard of Wolfgang interviewing Rosa directly. So, it's likely that he got that "incorrect information" second hand. And, if he didn't double check it, it probably came from a source which he had trusted in the past because he hadn't before experienced it being inaccurate.
Well, I will write Mr Fuchs an E-mail and I'll ask, where he got that. It would not be the first time he's getting something wrong, he is just blathering around, which makes him to the most hated comic expert in Germany...
Hey! Wolfgang is a friend of mine, and I consider him a top-notch professional journalist. Anybody can make an error when dealing with thousands of data points in over 7,000 pages of Barks material. He's usually pretty accurate from what I've seen of his work. Perhaps he was quoting someone else whose research was incorrect in that case. I hadn't heard of Wolfgang interviewing Rosa directly. So, it's likely that he got that "incorrect information" second hand. And, if he didn't double check it, it probably came from a source which he had trusted in the past because he hadn't before experienced it being inaccurate.
Oh... Then I am sorry that I said "blathering around", but as he uses a lot of references to old cartoons (which just doesn't matter most of the time), the majority of people reading that are very bored (me too sometimes). But there are some really good texts by him, indeed.
Hey! Wolfgang is a friend of mine, and I consider him a top-notch professional journalist. Anybody can make an error when dealing with thousands of data points in over 7,000 pages of Barks material. He's usually pretty accurate from what I've seen of his work. Perhaps he was quoting someone else whose research was incorrect in that case. I hadn't heard of Wolfgang interviewing Rosa directly. So, it's likely that he got that "incorrect information" second hand. And, if he didn't double check it, it probably came from a source which he had trusted in the past because he hadn't before experienced it being inaccurate.
Oh... Then I am sorry that I said "blathering around", but as he uses a lot of references to old cartoons (which just doesn't matter most of the time), the majority of people reading that are very bored (me too sometimes). But there are some really good texts by him, indeed.
My guess is he mistook what Rosa was saying about Barks' desire to use human characters in his Duck stories for what Rosa was saying about himself. But perhaps Robb can ask him, since he knows him.
I actually just got a mail by the "Die tollsten Geschichten von Donald Duck Sonderheft"-editorial office (that was fast...), in which they apologized for the mistake and said it was a mistake that nobody saw. Well, that should clear things up.
I like these dog-noses more too, as they seperate Disney Comics from others like super-hero Comic books.
Oh... Then I am sorry that I said "blathering around", but as he uses a lot of references to old cartoons (which just doesn't matter most of the time), the majority of people reading that are very bored (me too sometimes). But there are some really good texts by him, indeed.
My guess is he mistook what Rosa was saying about Barks' desire to use human characters in his Duck stories for what Rosa was saying about himself. But perhaps Robb can ask him, since he knows him.
I forgot to mention it, but I am surprised to see Scrooge refer to his first dime as a "she" rather than a "it". Of course, something similar happens in Italian stories all the time, but that's only because we have the grammatical gender, which doesn't exist in English. Does Scrooge often refer to the Number One Dime as a "she" in English-language comics?
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).
Isn't it a bit too much? I understand that Barks' choice of giving them numbers on their chests may be controversial, but saying you wish you never read that bit of info here on this forum seems like overreacting.
Anyway, maybe the Beagle Boys consider their numbers part of their identity (since they use them instead of their names) to the point where they willingly decided to tatoo them on their chests. Or, as Scrooge MacDuck suggested, it may be that they have been wearing their sweaters for so long that the ink ended up being imprinted on their skin.
At least The Italians were sensitive to that issue. I would have guessed that The Americans would have been, as well.
I don't think sensitivity has something to do with the fact that Italian authors don't give them numbers on their chests. In fact, Barks only used that gag on a single page of a single (not very famous) comic, so it's likely that modern Italian artists are not aware of it and so they have no reason to put numbers on their chests.
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.
I admit that at the moment I can't think of any example from a story, since I usually don't remember small details like lines on a character's hand. And even if I find an example of three lines used to show the knuckles, how can I prove that they are actually knukles and not the sign of gloves, given that colorists can't be trusted? Maybe I will do a reasearch in the future, but I don't know if it's worth the time and trouble, since a couple of exceptions wouldn't invalidate the rule, and my original point was that in most of his stories Barks' dognoses have no gloves.
Another comment on the gloves on cartoon characters: I am no expert, but I have always assumed that the white gloves were necessary in the days of black-and-white cartoons for a couple of reasons: as drakeborough says, so that the hands of black characters will show up when held in front of their bodies, and also (related reason) so that you can show more detail in the fingers--the same reason the center of the face has to be white, so you can show the details of eyes, mouth and nose.
Indeed, before the introdcution of gloves there were no details in the fingers. Actually, there were no fingers at all, since Mickey's hands were basically black circles:
It's not wonder that he got gloves when he had to be shown playing a piano.
As you say, Barks rarely drew them with gloves too, and there is a panel there without the lines. If I had to guess, this might've been an editor or something going "hold on aren't these supposed to have gloves" and adding the lines in, but I'm speculating.
I don't know if an editor felt the need to order Barks putting gloves on the Beagle Boys (which would be really weird, as for his whole career editor had nothing against Barks' use of gloveless dognoses), but at any rate if Barks really ever put gloves on them then what's sure is that such cases are a minority in his body of work.
I actually just got a mail by the "Die tollsten Geschichten von Donald Duck Sonderheft"-editorial office (that was fast...), in which they apologized for the mistake and said it was a mistake that nobody saw. Well, that should clear things up.
Indeed, the issue about Don Rosa and dognoses is clear now. By the way, is Wolfgang Fuchs a relative of Erika Fuchs?
Anyway, maybe the next stage of our discussion could be about listing examples of Beagle Boys without their masks.
I forgot to mention it, but I am surprised to see Scrooge refer to his first dime as a "she" rather than a "it". Of course, something similar happens in Italian stories all the time, but that's only because we have the grammatical gender, which doesn't exist in English. 1Does Scrooge often refer to the Number One Dime as a "she" in English-language comics?
Anyway, maybe the Beagle Boys consider their numbers part of their identity (since they use them instead of their names) to the point where they willingly decided to tatoo them on their chests. Or, as Scrooge MacDuck suggested, 2it may be that they have been wearing their sweaters for so long that the ink ended up being imprinted on their skin.
I actually just got a mail by the "Die tollsten Geschichten von Donald Duck Sonderheft"-editorial office (that was fast...), in which they apologized for the mistake and said it was a mistake that nobody saw. Well, that should clear things up.
1 No, the English language versions always refer to coins as "it". But the Dutch printings have Scrooge and Donald and Magica refer to Old Number One as "he". 2 I prefer to think that The Beagle Boys numbers on their chests are stains from their shirts. However, that doesn't really seem to work well, as their numbers are normally on some sort of a white paper or card, sitting IN FRONT of their sweatshirts. 3 No, Wolfgang is NOT related to Erika. Fuchs (English "fox") is a VERY common name in The German speaking lands. But both those people lived in Muenchen (where I live part of each year). Jan Gulbransson introduced me to Erika many years ago.
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.
I don't really think you need gloves to handle explosives. You do need them to handle corrosive or toxic chemicals, but the components of a bomb may not necessarily be corrosive.
I actually just got a mail by the "Die tollsten Geschichten von Donald Duck Sonderheft"-editorial office (that was fast...), in which they apologized for the mistake and said it was a mistake that nobody saw. Well, that should clear things up.
That's kind of strange, actually, considering how quickly they responded to you. How did they know it was a mistake? Did they contact Mr. Fuchs, who realized he had made an error purely from his recollection? Or did they contact Mr. Rosa, who clarified that that statement did not represent his position? It just seems to have happened so fast that it's hard to see how they could have researched it thoroughly enough to have realized they made an error.
Can someone post a panel of the scenes in "A Case of Sticky Money" where the Beagle Boys have their numbers tattooed on their chests?
With regards to the Barks scene where the Beagle Boys are wearing gloves after handing explosives, does the rest of the story seem to show them wearing gloves? I don't know what story it's from.
I agree that the posted page from "The Doom Diamond" is confusing with regards to whether Barks meant to have the Beagle Boys wear gloves or not. The three lines seem to indicate they are, but there are several occasions in which their sleeves ride high up their forearms (for example, the first and second panels) and there's no evidence of gloves where there clearly should have been if they were wearing them. I suppose the editors could have added the three lines, but it seems pointless and not something they consistently did.
Jun 20, 2017 at 5:55pm drakeborough said:
Anyway, maybe the next stage of our discussion could be about listing examples of Beagle Boys without their masks.
I hate to say this, but I clearly recall a thread from the old DCF that dealt with this very topic. Actually, I would divide this discussion into two separate categories: Beagle Boys intentionally shown without masks, and Beagle Boys unintentionally shown without masks.