It's July 25th! Only 5 shopping months left until Christmas!
Well, that reaction's a bit hasty. But Hallmark has already begun rolling out their 2012 Christmas Ornaments in stores. Enjoy the image above for a bit of Christmas cheer to cool you off during these hot summer days: the second illustration in my "See You in Disneyland" series!
Showcased here are just a few members of the team of Disneyland's "Silly" Reindeer who cavorted around the park and in Christmas parades for decades until recently, when they were replaced by less stylized (and decidedly less funny) reindeer.
A fun article on Disneyland's "Silly Reindeer" can be read at Kevin Kidney's Miehana blog HERE
Besides floppy hanging tongues, the silly reindeer also had the ability to wink/blink their eyes at guests. Many seem to remember them fondly, yet they were never really utilized on merchandise, beyond print ads. In the background, you'll see another long-time tradition at Disneyland: the mammoth star decoration that once topped the Matterhorn during the Holiday season.
The first in an ongoing series of original illustrations
celebrating the many inhabitants of Walt Disney's original theme park:
Disneyland, USA.
The first friend featured is the goony Sea Serpent brave travelers
discovered at the conclusion of the original Submarine Voyage in
Tomorrowland. Guest-filled submarines slowly drifted by a menacing long tail and snaking torso, only to reveal his comical, wavering head with spinning eyeballs. Here's a rare picture of the actual Disneyland Sea Serpent through the submarine porthole:
Disneyland's Sea Serpent... it ain't Cecil, but probably a close relation!
The Sea Serpent appeared as a surprise towards the end of the
Submarine Voyage, his appearance prompting your Sub Captain to decide
to submerge. The current incarnation of the Subs: "Finding Nemo
Submarine Voyage" includes a tribute to our friend the Sea
Serpent, in the narration and within the rock work outside your
porthole view, so keep your eyes open next time you visit Disneyland!
We're in the heart of the Summer season, and around here there's a strict rule: one must always have appropriate music handy to accompany their days at the beach/pool/BBQ/vacation or when they're just cruising around.
Here's a playlist of 9 songs I've been listening to steadily in the past few weeks: you can use them as a springboard for your own playlist, then add the songs that capture a snapshot of your summer.
You've definitely heard a few of these on TV and radio, but there are some deeper cuts represented I think deserve wider play. Indie-pop group Tennis is one of my favorites, and Glasgow-based band The Imagineers were brought to my late-night attention by this gentleman:
Every song listed below is available on Amazon.com and iTunes. Next to the title of each song, I've included links to the album for both stores, where you can listen to audio samples and purchase 'em if any suit your tastes. I don't get a piece of the profits if you make a purchase, I just included the links to make things easier. The 9th song is actually a FREE MP3 download with a direct link to PBS Digital Studios... if you've kept up with your YouTube viral videos this summer, you already know the tune!
Caught in One AmazoniTunes
Artist: Dum Dum Girls
Album: Only in Dreams (Bonus Track Version)
Get BurnedAmazoniTunes
Artist: Sleeper Agent
Album: Celebrasion
Somebody That I Used to Know (feat. Kimbra)AmazoniTunes
Artist: Gotye
Album: Making Mirrors
Junk of the Heart (Happy)AmazoniTunes
Artist: The Kooks
Album: Junk of the Heart
TravelingAmazoniTunes
Artist: Tennis
Album: Young & Old
That's What's UpAmazoniTunes
Artist: Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
Album: Here
Settle DownAmazoniTunes
Artist: No Doubt
Album: Settle Down (Single)
Dearest OneAmazoniTunes
Artist: The Imagineers
Album: The Legend of John the Terror (Notorious) / Dearest One (Single)
Note: Prior to posting, I sent the final draft of this blog post to Don Rosa himself, to make sure I had my facts straight. He graciously responded, only correcting a few dates and exclaimed:
"I read your piece. And I think I'll read it again! It is nice when people like my stories, but there is no happiness greater when I see that a reader TOTALLY UNDERSTANDS what I am trying to achieve. Looking back on my own work, I realize more than ever that I was NEVER a 'professional.' Everything I did was done as a FAN... that's why everything I did was based strictly on someone else's work and makes constant allusions to all my favorite movies and TV shows and everything else. I (my ego) never felt an urge to create anything totally new that would be "all my own". I (the fan) only wanted to pay homage to everything that I love. That never changed. Anyway, your piece is one of the few that clearly display an understanding of 'Just where I was comin' from.' Thank you."
I'm grateful to Mr. Rosa for his thoughtful response, and I'm darn proud of that reaction. So, let's see what Don liked. Here's the article in full:
Keno Don Hugo Rosa forges funnies of fowl feathered friends for a fan
A growing trend in our era of user-created content are "mashups" – a re-purposing of media resulting in transformative content. A YouTube search utilizing the phrase will garner thousands of results of re-combined and/or manipulated audio and video. Here's a good example:
YouTube "Mashup" of Queen, Joan Jett & Weezer: We Will Rock and Roll Beverly Hills
The notion of combining isolated or incongruous elements is nothing new, but in the right hands, the application and execution can often bear unique and wonderful fruit. Cartoonist Keno Don Rosa has done exactly this throughout his career: pulled inspiration from several logical, yet isolated sources, then carefully grafted them onto a one-of-a-kind vine. Upon harvest, a single taste of such pericarp can provide complex and delicious flavors.
It just takes a long time to mature. Due to its scarcity, it's a rare treat.
For those unaware of his output, Don Rosa's best-known work is his continuity-driven interpretation of Carl Barks' Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic book stories. Rosa's laser-focused research of minutiae within all of Barks' 500+ stories were combined with an equal focus on fact-checked world history, science and pop culture, giving way to a familiar, yet fresh new angle on the denizens of Duckburg.
Color illustration of a famous scene from Don Rosa's first Uncle Scrooge tale, The Son of the Sun (1987)
Where Barks occasionally contradicted his own stories, Rosa assembled 99% of that world, and placed his new stories squarely in the early-to-mid 1950s to maintain Barks' continuity of the characters and their surroundings. For example, in 1953, 86 year-old Scrooge McDuck maintains a plausible past as a prospector in the Yukon gold rush of the 1890s, or recalling adventures with the likes of American legends such as Theodore Roosevelt and Geronimo.*
Young Scrooge McDuck crossed paths with real American Legends such as Geronimo, "Buffalo" Bill Cody, P.T. Barnum and Annie Oakley
Panels from The Life & Times of Scrooge McDuck, Chapter 6B: The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff
It's not kid stuff. The same way George Herriman's Krazy Kat and Walt Kelly's Pogo aren't kid stuff. They're the rarest of treasures peeking out of the sand... you need only brush off a few grains to see them shine.
The "mashup" status for Don Rosa applies to the aforementioned strict adherence to an established timeline, clearly maintaining the unmistakable Barksian flavor and character, but breaking away from Barks' fluid cartooning style. The combinations fuse together further, as Rosa's formal art education did not consist of creative drawing or illustration technique: he was trained in technical drawing. His early forays into cartooning were self-taught, and considered a hobby (though his pre-Disney comic art was certainly rich enough in style and substance to have paved roads to a syndicated or national publication). The unusual marriage of the two creative disciplines then combined the tools of one with the technique of the other: his comic art is drawn with technical drafting pens. This technique boasts bolder, straight-forward iconography, rounded out by Rosa's signature "hyper-detail" rendering. Some criticize this micro-attention to detail as too cluttered and busy, others contend this gives the reader more for their money. Note the remarkable extra details and rendering in the panels below:
The McDucks show their mettle, repelling an invasion against Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders
Panels from The Life & Times of Scrooge McDuck, Chapter 10: The Invader of Fort Duckburg
It's easy to place Don's line work on the same latitude as underground cartoonist R. Crumb. Many compare his dense cartooning style to that of MAD Magazine cartoonist Will Elder, and there is equal (if not more) connective tissue to Rosa's style in Elder's MAD contemporary, Wally Wood. However, the multiple zingers per-panel style of MAD isn't the driving force with Rosa's comics. The staging and timing of his storytelling are nothing short of genius, often allowing silent panels spin a yarn far better than 10,000 words ever could.
A perfect example of a (basically) dialogue-free comic panel, jam-packed with gags AND exposition!
Splash panel detail from The Life & Times of Scrooge McDuck, Chapter 8: The King of the Klondike
Don Rosa's early, pre-Disney comics were based out of publications with small print runs, and are hard to come by, even in their country of origin. His first series debuted in 1971: The Pertwillaby Papers was a comic strip Rosa started as a college student for the University of Kentucky's newspaper Kentucky Kernal, and later continued in the fanzine The Rocket's Blast Comicollector. The Pertwillaby Papers takes a cue from to the great movie serials of old and the finest Carl Barks long adventure stories; "Indiana Jones" style epics written over a decade before Raiders of the Lost Ark premiered. The lead character of Lancelot Pertwillaby was Rosa's self-caricature.
An opening panel from an early Captain Kentucky comic strip Note how Rosa's title treatment pops, yet melds with the aesthetic, à la Will Eisner's The Spirit
In 1979, Don began a Sunday comics sized comic strip to his local newspaper, The Louisville Times. Captain Kentucky was a parody of super hero comics, and became Lance Pertwillaby's super hero alter-ego. The strip was even more outrageous than The Pertwillaby Papers, featuring real people, events and locales around Louisville, KY. Don did 150 episodes of Captain Kentucky before ending the strip in 1982, after a 3 year run. It would be five years before he returned to the drawing board to draw his first official Uncle Scrooge story for U.S. publisher Another Rainbow/Gladstone.
Appetite whet? Then here's a few sample pages of both The Pertwillaby Papers and Captain Kentucky, click on the links above the images:
As stated earlier, Rosa's early works are not easily available or accessible, but there is currently a successful funding and preorder campaign for a deluxe book set of BOTH The Pertwillaby Papers and Captain Kentucky. The project is being organized by Jano Rohleder, a longtime friend of Don Rosa and the German editor/translator of his Disney Duck work. What's more, Rosa himself is an advisor on the project, and will provide a new introduction for both books. I can tell you that Don's written articles are just as engaging as his comic book stories!
You can get details and preorder both books at Jano's indiegogo site here:
I've already contributed to the fund, and I hope this post might provide some folks a doorway to do the same. The comic art of Don Rosa can never be read once and cast aside, it begs to be re-read and re-discovered due to his unique style of storytelling. Half the fun of reading his work comes from picking up the little details and inside jokes within the framework of an already entertaining tale. A cartooning "mashup" pairing some unlikely sources, producing flavors you won't find anywhere else.
* Scrooge McDuck was a pure comic book creation of Carl
Barks, created strictly as a story vehicle for a Donald Duck Christmas
tale. By contrast, Donald Duck was created for animated shorts and his
persona developed for several years under many creative hands (Barks
being one of them, during his time as a story artist at the Walt Disney
Studio). With no specific or solid backstory, Donald is an evergreen
character; therefore more accessible to adapt to any generation. Through
the prism of both Barks and Rosa, the original animated depiction of
the character evolved beyond a squawking mischief-maker harassing cute
li'l chipmunks: here, he is the American everyman, tasked with the
mundane situations we all must endure. He has lofty goals, but little
time, patience or humility to achieve them. Even the triplet ducklings,
Huey, Dewey and Louie differ significantly from the bratty hellions of
their animated counterparts. On the comics page they are noble, wise,
studious and most importantly, a force able to polarize the contrasting
personalities of their "Unca" Donald and Great "Unca" Scrooge.
