I've been unable to comment on Reading Group books lately, and I wanted to squeak something in while the Dutch scanlations are still current. It's great to be able to read these in English. I know zero Dutch and have had to fake my way through some of the books mixing English, German, and good old Google Translate.
The Second Pimpernel is fun. Though the art is rather crude it has a certain charm.
(1) I wonder why the inspector smiles all the time.
(2) It's funny how Siem Praamsma gave up on some the harder figures--especially the inspector's boss--but details the dickens out of the cars.
Something which I confess having done once or twice. While on the subject, the talking cigarette panel (panel #26 on our page 9) goes into my file of master's level cop outs.
(3) From the page numbers and the running heads I assume these scans were taken from a newer compilation volume.
The story has some interesting points. The suggestion that the next war will be engineered not by Commies but by greedy munitions manufacturers reminds me of the earliest days of Superman, when he was going after unscrupulous industrialists and such.
(4) Like everyone else, I wonder why even her sister calls Mr Rank "Mr Rank." Could Praamsma have done it simply because he thought it'd be funny to have a heroine named Mister something?
(5) I'd be interested to read future episodes and see where Praamsma is going with this.
(6) Fulgor 7: The Steel City certainly looks and reads like one of those cheapie Italian striscie-format titles. The art is respectable enough while the dialogue is rudimentary.
Maybe The Second Pimpernel used so many words there weren't any left over for Fulgor and friends.
(7) I notice that the rogue asteroid is called "Bellus," which was the name of the rogue star that destroys the Earth in the 1951 movie adaptation of When Worlds Collide. This comic came out in 1953 so I guess we have some influence here.
Overall I found this one too diagrammatic to be interesting.
(
What struck me first about The Sledgehammer #1 is the narrative style. Many captions are written as if a grandfather were reading the story to his pre-literate grandchild. Our page 28 is a good example.
"See, Hans? The Sledgehammer climbs onto the windowsill carefully calculating his jump. Go! There he goes! [...] He lands on the roof of the car. The officers didn't notice anything. They're still shooting at the car. Exciting, huh?" "What does 'calculating' mean, Grandpa?"
Hans Ducro tries hard (most of the time--see the Place des Invalides on page 36 for an exception). His earnest effort calls attention to his limitations. The script begs for an artist with better command of figures and backgrounds.
(9) I wonder if part of the problem is that the panels seem to have been drawn printed size which, as we know, was very small. In the Dutch original the typewritten copy appears to be standard Pica size. It'd be smaller if it had been typed onto larger originals which were then reduced for printing. Even seasoned artists would have a hard time putting much detail into drawings only a couple of inches square.
(1) I, too, wonder why Inspector Vierling smiles in almost all his panels, even when he is under more pressure to solve the case. He is very confident in his own ability, despite his department knowing very little about The Pimpernel.
(2) Yes, Praamsma's artwork was a bit uneven. But it was decent enough for me to be able to enjoy the story.
(3) Yes, the scans of each numbered panel were the original whole pages of the original, tiny book, which were grouped, mostly 4 to a page, in the reprint anthology book, printed many years later (I think during the late 1970s). The originals were roughly the size of an American pack of cigarettes, half again taller (about 5 inches tall, and 3 wide). So the original panels were drawn somewhat larger than you guessed, but still a bit smaller than a standard page drawn by most of my colleagues from. the 1970s-2000. I'm not sure at what size current US comic book artists draw.
(4) & (5) I plan to read and translate the remaining 7 episode issues of "De 2de Pimpernel" next, and hope to find out why Praamsma bothered to have a woman industrialist using the title, "Mr."
(6) Yes, "Fulgor" was originally an Italian horizontally-oriented mini-comic (Lilliput format) series (I'm guessing was originally a daily newspaper strip. I agree that it's artwork by Pradazza is quite adequate, and I like the action scenes. "De 2de Pimpernel", on the other hand, is mostly made up of static scenes with little action and much too much narrative and dialogue.
(7) I remember watching "When Worlds Collide" on TV during the late 1950s. I forgot that the breakaway planet was called Bellus. Only less than 2 years after the run of that film, it is clear that that was the source of the asteroid's name in Fulgor.
( That repetition of what is shown in the artwork written in the narrative boxes or the same panel's or page's dialogue in "De Moker" is a terrible waste of potential story-telling space, not to mention that it is also an insult to the reader. It is one of the first errors editors tell their new story scriptors and artists to avoid. I'd have been fired if I did that more than a couple times. It sabotages the very raison-d'etre of the comic book or comic strip form of storytelling, being a blending of visual (seeing the action with your own eyes) with the reading of the printed word (which becomes a guide for you to visualise in your mind's eye, what is happening). That hurt my enjoyment of a story that is fast-paced, and full of action, and has a strain of subtle humour, going through, but whose artwork is a bit amateurish.
(9) Yes, I agree that the size of the original drawings were smaller than optimal (probably also related to the post WWII paper shortage).
All in all, I enjoyed reading all 3 books, which were published during my youth. But my older cousins didn't have any of the Beeldromansen, as they were not very well known. I started buying comic books for myself in 1952. But, in The Netherlands I bought only comedy comics, Disney, and Marten Toonder titles, and Suske & Wiske. I read some of the adventure comics that my older cousins had, including Sci-Fi series. But they didn't have Fulgor.
Author
Topic: Reading Group #322-English Scanlations of 3 Dutch GA Comics (Read 1037 times)
