Genuinely Odd Fact Number the First: Snow White/Seven Dwarfs comics were a quite prevalent thing in Italy back in the day. In absolute terms, there weren't that many (certainly nothing compared to the duck/mouse stuff), but they kept making them, and pretty much all the big names in classic Italian Disney comics--Pedrocchi, Scarpa, Carpi, Bottaro, De Vita père, and of course Martina, along with sundry also-rans--tried their hands at the form at one time or another. The same cannot be said for the characters from any other Disney movie. One can only surmise that something about the nature of the movie combined with the time it was released just caused it to strike a particular chord with Italians. Sure, there's a comparable number of US stories, but let's face it, without having actually read any of them, it's not hard to predict that they're gonna be of minimal interest. Whereas the Italian stories--well, they could be terrible (none of the above-mentioned had perfect batting averages, certainly), but they're also generally longer, presumably more ambitious, and have top talent behind them. Someone really cared about this stuff. I've ordered a few that were published in France. We'll see what's what.
Read more »Labels: Floyd Gottfredson, Julius Svensden
