Violence!
You heard me: VIOLENCE!
Anyway, here's a page from a story that I feel is unlikely to be approved for US publication (as translated by yours truly):
That's from a Scarpa story, "Mickey and the Coral Kangaroo." To be fair, it's not just violence for its own sake; the idea is that Minnie is getting increasingly annoyed with Mickey's two-fisted exploits, which kicks off the action. Also, note that in spite of everything, Scarpa is careful to clarify that no one was hurt in the explosion. STILL, it is what it is!
Anyway, here's a page from a story that I feel is unlikely to be approved for US publication (as translated by yours truly):
That's from a Scarpa story, "Mickey and the Coral Kangaroo." To be fair, it's not just violence for its own sake; the idea is that Minnie is getting increasingly annoyed with Mickey's two-fisted exploits, which kicks off the action. Also, note that in spite of everything, Scarpa is careful to clarify that no one was hurt in the explosion. STILL, it is what it is!
posted by GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. at
10:34 PM
23 Comments:
That could easily be fixed up to be "kid friendly" by removing the flames from the barrel, and adding a "Crash!" to the explosion.
Well, I think Mickey and Casey just blasting an indiscriminate barrage of bullets all over the place is gonna be the REAL deal-breaker.
Huh! Typical Mickey Mouse...
That "Shoot first, ask question later" rule of his is going get him into some trouble one day!
...and the management just realizes that it referred to O'Hara as "Casey." We regret the error and apologize for all the suffering it has caused.
Ah yes. I indeed felt something off about the character being referred to as Casey when I read it, but I didn't really notice the mistake. It's very much like the "Dreamtike Duck" incident…
I real life I'm very anti-gun myself but damn! Think how Scrooge's life would more easy if he had a gun and was prone to use it like our pal Mickey over there.
- HA-HA! McDuck! This time I'll finally got your numer one dime...
BANG!
- AAAARGH!!! My spell-casting arm! Curse you McDuck! Curse you and that trusty-hand gun of yourse!
BANG!
- Ok, Ok, I'm going!
But it dosen't have to end there for Scroogey and his gun...
- You where right 176-761! This tunel led us rigt inside of McDucks Money bing...
BANG! BANG! BANG!
- I Flintheart Glomelgold em happy to participate in this public ceremony to recive the title of riches duck in the world...
BANG!
- Run Mr. Rockerduck!!! I've seen his list! You're next!!!!
BANG!
Good ol family friendly fun... ^_^
I wanna dialogue this one, just to see how many changes I'd have to make to get it in print!
"Fire these harmless tranquilizer bullets at will!"
That's a good start!
Well, theoretically Scrooge is supposed to have an arquebus (<--- hope Google Translate is not tricking me with this work, I mean a centuries old shotgun) handy in his office. At least in the Italian tradition. I guess most of the time he does not use it because it takes tot much time to reload :) .
I remember a LOT of stories where Scrooge carries old timey heat- usually the above mentioned shotgun. In the german translations it´s often clarified that he loads it with salt and whenever he actually shots it (which happens) the action seems to support that. In Mickey's case- plain old bullets, the killing kind! And to be honest, just reading the story I probably wouldn´t have even realized how crazy this sequence is- for me as a kid the gunplay was in the same vein as Lucky Luke for example, so no big deal. Looking back, there´s a lot of pretty hardcore shit in my old Disney books, be it shown violence or danger, or the threat of it. Pete setting a house on fire with the intention of Mickey and several others to BURN TO DEATH. No biggie! Makes it seem pretty arbitrary whenever something did get censored, like shown, not even fired handguns in other stories.
Yeah, it's all VERY arbitrary. I believe there's a scene in an old Ducktales episode, where Scrooge is firing a shotgun at Fenton, that was censored in syndication.
Anyway, at the end of Anderville
https://coa.inducks.org/s.php?c=I%20MM%20%20%20%200-1
there [spoiler] is a serious gundown with military guns among common civilians in a train station.
Cavazzano revealed that 5 pages from that part of the story were censored, without adding more on the subject. People suspect that Faraci and Cavazzano initially developed a more violent version of the shooting (which is, by the way, very funny). Some years later the two authors did all what they were not allowed to do with Mickey (dead people, racial problems) on their hard boiled funny animals story Jungle Town:
http://sobrecomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/jungle-town-2.jpg
Some awesome VIOLENCE in that page! :D Though I have to wonder if the original Italian version included an onomatopoeia in panel 4, to give the explosion proper impact.
By the way, uh, where can we find your full translated version of this story? I can't see it anywhere in the translation index.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, if bad news it is, but I just translated this one page.
Just got a bunch of Italian Disney comics at the library's fundraiser book sale (50 cents each). In Minni Amica del Cuore 43 there's a story, Paperina e la Contessa Fritz, in which a bad guy points a gun at Daisy to force her to lie to Donald & HDL (who are outside the door), and later in a fight Daisy gets the gun and ends up pointing it at the "Contessa"! The gun is never fired, but still, that's a scene we're not going to see in the current American comics.
That still seems pretty mild- does that really cross a line in current American Disney comics? There´s a lot of riskier stuff in Barks comics- are "floppy" comic books judged differently? But even in the Fanta edition that´s specifically for kids (Ghost of the Grotto etc) there´s more violence (or the threat of it) than that. Donald almost gets shot in the head in the titular story!
I think it´s a really interesting question in general. There are lots and lots of examples in Disney comics (or comics aimed at kids in general) that could be hard to argue for on paper- but i still would´t want to miss them! A western, crime, adventure story without even the threat of violence? Not that it can´t be done, sure, but that excludes a LOT of stories I loved as a kid and still love- and I don´t think they did my developing brain and moral compass any harm...
BUT! And i can´t speak for current American Disney stuff outside Fanta- it would be sooooo easy to go through these books with a red pen and argue against them- which for sure has been done a lot historically, but not so much anymore. I guess comics aren´t really on the list anymore. And as far as Disney comics here in Germany go, they seem to have never been. All that crazy Italian stuff gets printed and reprinted since the 60s. Really, i think ALL issues of the Italian-Disney-digest-stuff-flagship (480 and counting) are still available from the publisher. And sure, there must have been a few cases of censoring here and there- but I could´t tell except for some random stuff.
This post came to my mind when I read one of the DoubleDuck stories:
https://coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+2797-1P
In it there's a panel where Donald's traitor boss shoots him in the head. Sure, in the next page it is shown that the boss deliberately missed but that's not the impression you get (unless you remember that of course Donald can't die) from the picture itself: http://i.imgur.com/6q0vxdv.png
That made me stop for a moment, in a good way. They get away with a lot of stuff in Italy.
Generally Doubleduck could be a very good different kind of series, but the short appearances by Scrooge (who never says anything but "work for me for free") and Daisy (whose jealousy is getting very unhealthy: "You were in a car with a woman! Did you cheat on me with her?! You landed a plane in a middle of a city? Are you using that plane to cheat on me?! I'll call Gladstone!") are always downers.
To be honest, in Italy readers complain a lot about political corectness in nowadays Italian Disney Comics . The good times when in Italy "they got away with a lot of stuff" are long gone. :)
Huh, I was going to answer with a list of some stories that I remember reading, which had actual horror a plenty, but these were actually all made in Denmark, oops. I was confused since they were published in Finland in a series which has mostly Italian stories.
Anyway, these stories had scary-looking duck skeletons whose late inhabitants were part of the story, A Call of Cthulhu parody where we find out the whole world is just a dream of a sleeping tentacle-creature, a ghost of a boy who haunted the place where he had fallen into an old unused well...
These were most... interesting Duck stories that I have seen, against those some merry shooting around in a comedic setting doesn't sound bad at all.
I remember the Cthulhu story. When I first read it, I hadn't even heard of Lovecraft's “Call of Cthulluh" and of Eldritch Abominations in general, so I did not know the story was part of the "Grand Parodies" tradition, and I thought it was supposed to be a normal story. And all the while I was wondering, what the hell? How did that one EVER slip past the Disney executives? Now looking back, I can more easily see how it got published, even though it still is potentially pretty controversial.
Dammit, the sooner they replace ALL guns with walkie-talkies in PG rated media, the better. I look forward to the day when Donald no longer needs the 'deus ex machina' of a metal sheriff's badge to save his life, because let's face it, you'd have to toss a walkie-talkie pretty frikken hard (& repeatedly!) to inflict anything approaching a fatal wound.
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