INDUCKS

I.N.D.U.C.K.S.
World-wide database about Disney comics
URL Inducks.org
Commercial? no
Type of site comics database
Registration optional
Available language(s) Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.
Owner collective
Created by Harry Fluks
Launched 1994

The International Network of Disney Universe Comic Knowers and Sources[1] (I.N.D.U.C.K.S.) or Inducks is a freely available database aiming to index all Disney Universe comics ever printed in the world. It is an international project[2] which provides indexes of around 100,000 Disney comic publications worldwide.[3] It is distributed with its own licence.[4] It is complemented by its separate Disney comic scans archive, OUTDUCKS.

Contents

Origin

Efforts to catalog Disney comic stories on a large scale date back to the late 1970s and early 1980s. Among the most important works are an index of Disney comics published in Denmark,[5] a list of stories produced in Italy,[6] a list of American daily strips and Sunday pages,[7] an index of American Dell Disney comics[8] and a Carl Barks index.[9] All these lists include artists and writer credits that were previously unknown.

In August 1992, Per Starbäck (from Sweden) created the Disney Comics Mailing List.[10] Members soon contributed lists of Disney comics and gave references for printed indexes. In May 1994, expanding on information exchanged on the mailing list, Harry Fluks (from the Netherlands) created a database to organize comic indexes, and called it the Disney Comics Database.[11]

In 1999, a German member suggested the name Inducks as a cross between "index" and "duck" (for Donald Duck). It was playfully written I.N.D.U.C.K.S. to resemble acronyms seen in Junior Woodchucks comics.[12] Several meanings have been proposed, including "Internet Database for Uncle Walt's Comics and Stories", "International Network for Disney Universal Comic Knowledge and Sources",[13] up to 2008 when International Network of Disney-Universe Comic Knowers and Sources was selected.[1]

Over the years, a web search interface was introduced, later replaced by a second search engine, COA,[1][14] in 2001.

Data details

The Inducks database lists publications, stories, characters and creators which are cross-referenced. Each story is given a unique "storycode"[15] so that reprints (often from all over the world) may be found for any story. A large number of Disney comics publications are indexed for the following countries: Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Italy, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden and USA. Among countries with a significant Disney comics tradition, indexes for Mexico, United Kingdom and (ex-)Yugoslavia are still very incomplete.[16]

Inducks integrates previous studies and research works, with permission of the authors,[17] as well as its own research. Thanks to contacts with creators,[18] it provides credits to anonymous (or wrongly-credited) stories. In particular, most Disney comics weren't given credits until the 1980s or 1990s. It also contains information about unpublished Disney comics stories.[19]

Nowadays the main interface to Inducks is a search engine, browser and website abbreviated COA, which is daily updated based on Inducks data, and is available in thirteen languages. While COA uses Inducks data, it is not part of Inducks itself, but it enables users to navigate and search data which in its raw form consists of very user-unfriendly text files.[20] It has a few other features not part of Inducks, like a collection management system and an error tracker tool.[21]

Use as a source and in publications

Although parts of the database have been published in book form[22] and in specialized journals,[23] Inducks is most often used as a source by comic book historians in articles devoted to Disney comics.[24]

Inducks is also used by Disney editors around the world.[25] It is mentioned as a source by scholars[26] and is referenced in books about comics in general.[27] It has once been criticized for being a catalog of data rather than true (semantic) indexing work.[28]

Inducks sometimes gave talks and held meetings in comic-book fairs in Italy, such as in Lucca in 1997 with Don Rosa and Marco Rota[29] and in Reggio Emilia in 2007[30] and 2008.[31] In 2004, it won an Internet award from afNews, an association of Professional cartoonists in Italy.[32]

References

  1. ^ a b c Inducks lecture held at the 2008 DDF(R) summer meeting in Aalborg, Denmark, July 2008.
  2. ^ As of January 2008, 26 contributors have provided more than 1,000 indexes, see the full list: The Inducks Disney Comics database: Indexers.
  3. ^ As of July 30, 2011, see the statistics at Inducks.
  4. ^ H. Fluks, F. Stajano, Inducks Licence Version 4B (a kind of permissive, "copyleft" "free" licence).
  5. ^ Olsen, Martin (1979–1983), "Det Store Index", Carl Barks & Co. (13–15, 17–18), ISSN 0901-3555 . (Danish)
  6. ^ Fossati, Franco (1982), "Disney made in Italy", IF 1 (2a serie)  (Italian).
  7. ^ Becattini, Alberto; Boschi, Luca (1984), La produzione sindacata (1930–1980), Al Fumetto Club  (Italian).
  8. ^ Becattini, Alberto (1990 (vol. 2 undated)), Disney Index, Comic Books - Vol. 1 & 2, Al Fumetto Club 
  9. ^ Barrier, Michael (1982), Carl Barks and the art of the comic-book, M. Lilien, ISBN 0960765204  (published earlier in a shorter form in the fanzine Funnyworld in the 1970s).
  10. ^ Commonly referred to as the DCML.
  11. ^ Interviews of H. Fluks in the fanzines Ankkalinnan Pamaus 2000-02 (Finnish) (online English version), in DDF(R)appet 5, 2004 (Danish) and on the website of the Danish Donaldist Society, 2005.
  12. ^ The word Inducks is a combination of Index and Ducks. Brix Lichtenberg came up with this name as a replacement for the (more boring) name Disney comics Database. He intended it to be an abbreviation (I.N.D.U.C.K.S.) like the ranks in the Junior Woodchuck stories, but we haven't figured out yet what it is supposed to mean... in Ankkalinnan Pamaus 2000-02.
  13. ^ From the Bolderbast, an Inducks website.
  14. ^ A precise time-frame is as follow (from messages in the Disney comics mailing list): Disney comics indexes were exchanged as early as 1992 (e.g. Sep. 11); the first mention of the Disney comics database (DcD) is from Apr. 18, 1994; its first public release is on May 25, 1994; the first mention of a web search program is from Mar. 22, 1995; the first mention of Inducks is from Feb. 9, 1999; the first mention of the COA search engine is from Apr. 9, 2001.
  15. ^ Details at Inducks.
  16. ^ As of January 2008 - figures from Inducks.
  17. ^ M. Barlotti, Da Fossati al'Inducks: il progetto I.N.D.U.C.K.S., Notiziario della Anonima Fumetti, 1999 (Italian); a complete list is given at Inducks.
  18. ^ The Brazilian "branch" of Inducks lists about 30 authors who provide information (Portuguese); see also the biographical notice of comic writer Leonardo Gori (Italian) or the "book work" of archivist and editor David Gerstein.
  19. ^ As of January 2008, about 2,000 shelved stories are listed.
  20. ^ Technical details at Inducks.
  21. ^ Interview with the creator of COA, DDF(R)appet 10, 2007 (Danish).
  22. ^ A. Becattini, L. Gori, F. Stajano, H. Fluks, Don Rosa e il Rinascimento Disneyano, Comic Art, 1997 (Italian); Giorgio Cavazzano Percorsi, Firenze: Edizioni II Penny, 2002 (Italian); P. Castagno et al., Luciano Bottaro - Un "gioviale" omaggio (2006), Rodolfo Cimino - Dalla Tana del Bestio all'Angolo dei Salici (2007), Abramo e Giampaolo Barosso Fra logaritmi e fiordalisi (2008), Papersera (Italian).
  23. ^ Lapoussière, Tristan; Willot, François (2001), "Carl Barks: Bibliographie", Backup (8)  (French); Angot, Michel; Willot, François (1996, 2000), "Les belles histoires Walt Disney", Le collectionneur de bandes dessinées (81, 91)  (French).
  24. ^ E.g. Becattini, Alberto (2009), e fumetti.pdf "Sport, Disney style", Collana Toscana Beni Culturali (11), http://www.regione.toscana.it/regione/multimedia/RT/documents/2009/08/05/1249480868738_Sport e fumetti.pdf  (Italian); Stajano, Francesco (1999–2001), "Disney-serier i Italien", NAFS(k)uriren (30–32), ISSN 0282-4493  (Swedish) (revised English version); F. De Salvia, La via Italiana a Topolino, Rivista di storia e storiografia 5, 2004 (Italian); T. Lapoussière, Phil DeLara, bibliographie en France et aux États-Unis, Backup 12, 2002 (French); F. Castanet, Romano Scarpa, Pimpf 13, 2006 (French); Willot, François (1999), "Giovan Battista Carpi", Le collectionneur de bandes dessinées (89)  (French).
  25. ^ See e.g. Mickey Mouse And Friends 287; Roope-setä 2006-02 (Finnish); I Maestri Disney 20 (Italian); interview with Sérgio Figueiredo, Abril's Disney editor (Portuguese).
  26. ^ See e.g. D'Arcangelo, A, Zanettin, F (2004), "Dylan Dog Goes to the USA: a North-American Translation of an Italian Comic Book Series", International Journal of Comic Art (Akadémiai Kiadó) 5 (2): 187, doi:10.1556/Acr.5.2004.2.3 ; Mahrt, N (2008/2009), "A Comic Approach to Politics? Political Education via Comics", Journal of Social Science Education 7/8 (2/1): 119, http://jsse.uni-bielefeld.de/2008/2008-2/contents/mahrt-a-comic-approach-to-politics-jsse-2-2008-1-2009 
  27. ^ J.-P. Gabilliet, Des comics et des hommes: Histoire culturelle des comic books aux Etats-Unis, 2005, ISBN 2842743091 (French); H. Matla, Stripcatalogus (9th ed.), 1998 (Dutch).
  28. ^ S. Brügger, L. Peyraud, M. Schmid, Les images ne sont pas des mots, study presented to the Haute École de Gestion de Genève, 2002 (French).
  29. ^ Photos of the events at Inducks.
  30. ^ News report from the fair administration, 2007 (Italian).
  31. ^ Videos and photographs on the Papersera website (Italian).
  32. ^ Link at fumetti.org (Italian).

External links