#matttt

The same YouTuber who made an excellent video essay about Carl Barks has made this video essay about the brilliant writer and artist of Donald Duck comics, Don Rosa.

You can love or hate Don Rosa, but you can't deny one thing about him, and that is that he has a great talent for small things and that he made a good characterization of the characters' personalities in his comics and that he strived for historical accuracy. Also, the drama and emotions were more pronounced than in other comics. It's a great pity that the Disney company ignored him all the time and that they still work against him by censoring his comics. And yes, you will find out why he is more popular in Europe (and in my country) than in the USA.

Yes, this author who made the video essay is from Norway, not the USA, so I apologize if I may have claimed the opposite last year. About Carl Barks video watch here:

Definitely a great essay and I recommend to all comic book fans especially Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics, watch this.

How one artist invented modern pop culture (Moebius documentary)

So one thing that strikes me is that a lot of this video seems to be taking Ken Penders word at face value. Now, Ken is not really known to be a liar, but that's not what I mean. I mean this video is produced from the perspective that everything Ken did was right and good.

And let it be known that I've been the kind of person who will tell you that early Ken Penders work is fine, actually, and it only becomes a problem when he starts to take too much ownership. This video does what it can to spin all of that in the most positive light possible, focusing more on Ken's intentions rather than the end results. It gives Ken every benefit of every doubt, which is nice, and a fresh perspective compared to the (at times, undeserved) dogpile he normally gets...

...But the video ultimately frames this as Ken either being "A creator securing the rights to his work or a vindictive artist getting his revenge after being fired" and nowadays I don't think it was either of those things.

I always focus on an early interview Ken Penders gave in the late 90's where he straight up admits he's writing for a licensed book and owns nothing (I've tried finding this interview again and it's lost in all the noise of Ken's lawsuits and publishing and whatever*). But he knew the assignment, and he knew the rules of that assignment. Whether there was a contract for that or not, that is the job Ken took, and the limitations behind that job, and there was a point he understood that and knowingly worked within that space.

At some point Ken Penders changed his mind and decided he could take ownership of this stuff. That he was no longer writing for a licensed book somebody else owned, and he was writing his book that he owned. When a loophole presented itself where he could establish real legal ownership, he pounced on it and turned it into the linchpin of an entire business model.

I don't really see that as revenge, and I'll never believe Ken deserves ownership of these characters, because they only exist in connection to someone else's license, something he demonstrated an understanding of at one time in his life.

There is absolutely no interrogation of this side of Penders in this video, and very little push back on statements he makes.

What I see is a man who accidentally got too close to a license he didn't own, and now refuses to let go. He poured his heart into it, but has not been rewarded for doing that, because generally people didn't like it (another crux of what this video avoids saying). Unfortunately for the rest of us, everyone around him is too unprepared to stop him from sinking his claws in deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

We live in a world where he continues to assert himself more and louder whether anyone actually likes it or not. And even if he never wants to admit it, he is irrecoverably poisoning the thing he poured his love into.

This book changed how I write

Buy Comics!

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (/ˈɒstərhɛld/ OST-ər-held; Spanish: [ˈeɣtoɾ xeɾˈman oˈesteɾxel]; born 23 July 1919; disappeared and presumed dead 1977),[1] also known by the common abbreviation HGO, was an Argentine journalist, comics editor and writer of graphic novels and comics.[2] He is widely celebrated as a master in his field and as one of the pioneering artists in modern Argentine comics.[3]

Through his comics, Oesterheld criticized the numerous military dictatorships that beleaguered the country in different periods ranging from 1955 to 1983, as well as different facets of colonialism and imperialism, choosing a subtle criticism in his early comics during the 1950s and early 1960s, and a stronger and direct approach in his later work, after the execution of Che Guevara in 1967, and onwards from then on: in 1968 he wrote a biographical comic book of Che Guevara, which was subsequently banned and destroyed by the ruling military dictatorship self-styled as “Argentine Revolution” (1966–1973).[4] However, it was later republished (and for the first time in complete form) in 2008.

Shortly before the start of Argentina’s last military dictatorship (1976–1983), Oesterheld and his daughters had joined the Montoneros, a leftist (and former peronist) guerrilla group that immediately opposed the military junta. HGO continued to publish works in clandestine form while hidden in secret locations, but he was ultimately kidnapped and disappeared in 1977. His daughters were also arrested and disappeared, as were his sons-in-law. Only HGO’s wife, Elsa Sánchez de Oesterheld, escaped the family’s fate.

After democracy returned to Argentina, and over the years, Oesterheld’s legacy has become vast, influencing several generations of new artists, particularly in the fields of literature and comic books, and he is usually named as one of the “fathers” of modern Argentine comics.[5]

The Eternaut (Spanish: El Eternauta) is an Argentine science fiction comic created by Héctor Germán Oesterheld with artwork by Francisco Solano López. It was first published in Hora Cero Semanal between 1957 and 1959, initially as a serialized comic strip. The story is focused on a handful of survivors of a deadly alien invasion in Buenos Aires.

Matttt: Héctor Germán Oesterheld & Eternauta - The comic that cost this writer his life

It is almost unthinkable not to read Eternauta by Héctor Germán Oesterheld (born 1919, presumably murdered in 1978) and Francisco Solano López (1928-2011) as an astonishingly anticipatory portrait of Argentinian society under the military dictatorship.

Mattt: ElfQuest - Marvel rejected this couple, so they revolutionized the comic industry