The Art of the Romanesque

A couple of remarkable animation clips attributed to Italian comics "maestro" Romano Scarpa have recently shown up on YouTube. I was aware that Scarpa drew some DuckTales stories for the DISNEY ADVENTURES DIGEST in the early 1990s, but how about this clip dated 1988 in which Scarpa actually animates some of the characters:

The date suggests that Disney may have been fishing for overseas studios to either produce additional DT eps for American TV (the Disney outposts in Australia, France, etc. were just getting established at the time) or assist with the DuckTales: The Movie project. Whatever the motivation, it was apparently considered an important enough "test" to require voice tracks to be laid down by Alan Young (Scrooge) and Russi Taylor (HD&L). I wonder whether anyone told Scarpa and his co-workers that the DT Beagles were not clones. The animation is nice and lively, especially the bit in which Dewey announces the B-Boys' presence.

Even more amazing is the following clip (from a 1982 Italian Disney TV show) in which several of Scarpa's own creations appear, in addition to various canonical characters:

What a downright weird mixture of English and Italian. And, evidently, MICKEY MOUSE DISCO's effects were still being felt abroad.