Monday, May 7, 2012

"Pete’s Night with a Frozen Fright!"


…Or, should I call it: “A Ruby-Spears Scare is No Fair”! 
...Or, just pick the classic SCOOBY-DOO title of your choice -- and insert the name of our pal Pete Fernbaugh – or producers Ken Spears and Joe Ruby (Scooby-Doo’s original writers) into it! 

Go to Pete’s wonderful Blog HERE for his wrap-up of the Ruby-Spears thing I first plugged HERE! 

Really… go there!  Pete puts up some GREAT video clips – at least in the FIRST PART of his post!  Up through the original SCOOBY-DOO WHERE ARE YOU. 

Then, alas, he goes too far into some stuff you’ll be sorry you clicked on! 

But, you can always go back – and click on the good stuff… OVER AND OVER AGAIN!  …HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAA!  (deep breath!) …HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAA! 

Finally, on a totally unrelated note yet giving inspirational credit where it’s due My title for an Uncle Scrooge story I dialogued (…and actually did some retroactive plotting for), Uncle Scrooge Meets the Synthezoid from the Deepest Void!” (UNCLE SCROOGE # 370), had its origins in those wonderful ominously rhyming Scooby-Doo titles of yore! 

You’ll only get info like this right here, folks!   

…And, aren’t we all glad of that! 

4 comments:

Pete Fernbaugh said...

I think that might be my favorite of your titles for a comic-book story! Did you have any trouble getting that through the editors?

Thanks so much for the plug, Joe! Some of that later stuff *is* scary, but there's so much animation/comic-book history tied up in it that one must plod through the sod, so to speak.

Funny thing about the interview...Stu asked Mark Evanier if there was anything that he regretted working on in his animation career, and he immediately blurted out, "Roxie Rocket." Then tried to pass it off as if he were kidding.

I highly doubt that he was...

Joe Torcivia said...

No, trouble with the TITLE at all, Pete! But, there were some other changes made, such as elimination of the notion of the Synthezoid culture having a “Ten-Skyrillion Character Alphabet” (Barks reference alert!) –and they would keep building new versions… WELL past the “Automaton-X” (and presumed “Y” and “Z”) of the story!

Some other lines I liked were also altered… but, overall, it came out better than expected! Especially so, in the case of the “Brutopian Independence Day” gag – which was an invention of necessity to explain the unusual presence of a giant firecracker, outside of a Warner Bros. cartoon.

Evanier has more than made up for “that rocket thing” in his other endeavors. He did what he had to do, I suppose.

ramapith said...

>Snort!< Gonna make me defend my editing in public, ya rummy? Not-so-awesome sauce!

(And hey... I DID KEEP the point that Z wasn't the end!)

Joe Torcivia said...

No beef with the editing – it still worked, and worked well. In fact, your editing *IS* the very definition of “Awesome Sauce”! It’s more that we lost a unique Barks reference in a story where I tried to pile them on.

…I’ll just have to work the number “Ten Skyrillion” into a future story – provided there ARE any future stories to be seen in North America!

There ain’t NO ONE better’n you at this editin’ stuff! No one goes the extra mile – and does so as frequently, and with such spirit – as you do! It shows in everything you have a hand in! (Gottfresdon library, anyone?)

…And, if I say that “Ten Skyrillion” times, it still wouldn’t be enough!

Say, did I just use “Ten Skyrillion” in a sentence? …I feel much better now!

Before I move on, when reading the Barks Uncle Scrooge story Western Pub. called “Secret of Atlantis” for its reprinting in WALT DISNEY COMICS DIGEST # 1 (1968), how did all of you pronounce “Skyrillion”?

Was it “SKRILL-yunn”? Or “SKY (as in “sky’s the limit”) –rillion”?

Since the former made me think of Fantastic Four villains (Skrulls), and the latter conjured up thoughts of unlimited potential or gain for Scrooge and his manipulated-into-rarity 1916 quarter, I opted for the latter.

Whadda you all think?

…And, yes… I’d rather talk about THIS than almost the entire output of Ruby-Spears – Pete’s fine research postings on the subject notwithstanding! :-)