Any naming differences between the US and UK English versions of The Golden Medallion comic

[PxChris]

Hello all,

As I continue to dive down into some of the history of the classic Pirates theme, certain questions pop up into my head.

I was going through my copy of The Golden Medallion comic today, and it dawned on me that all of the wording in it is definitely in line with the US naming scheme of sets and characters. It got me thinking, did the UK version of the comic alter the wording in it to reflect the UK naming conventions?

Some examples from my US version of the comic:

• It's Captain Red Beard, not Captain Roger.
• The pirate's ship is the Black Seas Barracuda, not the Dark Shark.
• Governor Broadsides ship is the Caribbean Clipper, not the Sea Hawk.
• Their fortress is Eldorado, not Sabre.

Do any Eurobricks members have the UK release of the comic and can verify the naming conventions used?

I know that the Ladybird books (which I also have) which are a product of the UK all use the naming conventions from the UK (Captain Roger, Dark Shark, etc). I also know that some of the non-English language comics did use names that fell in line more with the UK conventions (I only have scans of the German and Dutch comics to check).

I also know that there are images from LEGO of the comic being called The Golden Sovereign in the UK English version, but from what I have seen, that seems to only be a mockup and that there was never an English version of it actually published with that title/cover. Does anyone have input on that?

Thanks for the help from the community experts!

[TalonCard]

Great topic! I've been wondering about this myself lately. I still haven't seen scans of the UK version of this comic, but I'm fairly sure that the US version must have been localized from the translation done for the UK market--they missed changing at least one instance of "Captain Roger" to "Captain Red Beard" on the last page. ("Captain Roger can have it for 300 sovereigns".) I think there may have been one or two other instances of this, but I don't remember right off the top of my head.

The fact that it was changed to Red Beard for this comic is particularly funny since this is probably the least bearded the character has ever been. 

[PxChris]

6 minutes ago, TalonCard said:

The fact that it was changed to Red Beard for this comic is particularly funny since this is probably the least bearded the character has ever been. 

Haha, that's the truth! While I do love the comic and the artwork in it, it's always bugged me somewhat just how little beard Red Beard actually has in it! The Ladybird books are a little better, but not by a lot.

I never caught the use of Roger before in my reads of the comic, I'm going to have to go look at that again!

[TalonCard]

IMO during that time in his life Redbeard's beard was falling out due to his suppressed guilt at kicking his own son out of his crew because he couldn't grow a beard. 

I'd be interested to learn if it was always the intention to call the character "Redbeard"--the name first appears in the 1987 "Ships and the Sea" Word Show, and we know that by that time the line was pretty much finalized internally. But the early artwork for the characters and comics doesn't always feature a beard or a red beard, and this character design was used pretty frequently in the early years of the theme, even in LEGOLAND parks, and I don't think the character was even consistently called Redbeard internationally until well after the Pirate theme ended the first time.

[TalonCard]

Sorry for the double post, but I was looking at the 1990 UK catalog and noticed that the comic appears both with the original mockup "Golden sovereign" title and the "Golden Medallion" title we're all familiar with on two different pages. This seems to support your theory that there may never have been a published English version of the comic with the "Golden sovereign" title.

[PxChris]

That's a very good catch @TalonCard and I agree, definitely some good evidence to my theory.

[PxChris]

With much thanks to Georgio Martonik on the LEGO Pirates International FB group I was able to determine with certainty that there is indeed wording differences between the US and UK versions of The Golden Medallion. Not only in the names of some people and places (Captain Red Beard/Captain Roger, Black Seas Barracuda/Dark Shark, Eldorado Fortress/Fort Sabre) but even in some more mundane areas where wording was changed to better fit the grammar and vocabulary of UK English vs US English.

I wish I was able to get a full scan of the UK comic, but so far no luck with that. However he did provide photos of a few pages which proves the wording differences exists. Fascinating development!

[TalonCard]

This also confirms that you were correct; the UK editions weren't published under the Golden Sovereign title (which indicates that it was never actually used beyond the mockups.) But the good news is that the covers are different enough that it should still be relatively easy to identify the version based on the cover image. This should make it easier to track down. The hunt continues!

[PxChris]

5 hours ago, TalonCard said:

This also confirms that you were correct; the UK editions weren't published under the Golden Sovereign title (which indicates that it was never actually used beyond the mockups.) But the good news is that the covers are different enough that it should still be relatively easy to identify the version based on the cover image. This should make it easier to track down. The hunt continues!

Yes, that minor difference in the covers (which I never noticed before it was pointed out to me yesterday) makes spotting the two editions very easy!

[Mister Phes]

16 hours ago, PxChris said:

(Captain Red Beard/Captain Roger, Black Seas Barracuda/Dark Shark, Eldorado Fortress/Fort Sabre)

So this is also consistent with the regional set naming and marketing?

[PxChris]

7 hours ago, Mister Phes said:

So this is also consistent with the regional set naming and marketing?

Yes. It means that they actually took the time to do the lettering differently for both english markets to keep everything internally consistent. It's a surprisingly high level of attention to detail.