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Dear Folks,

Harry Fluks on "The Gleam":

> And I don't know where David got the 1941 date; I think my dates are
> correct.

The technical term for where I got that 1941 date, as Gary
Gabner once mentioned, is "Oops." Sorry about that, folks -- and
Harry's dates are indeed right!

I'll be back...

David Gerstein
"Ramble on, buxom bumble bee! Go sit on a cowslip --
far from me!"

Don,

>James, did you say you're currently writing a Duck story that involves a
>witches' coven that is trying to corrupt the eternal souls of humanity?

Not exactly. Here's the basic concept. Magica gets mad at the way
witches are being portrayed in a comic books. So, one night she sneaks
in and makes the comics more "authentic". The only problem is that
when people read these comics aloud, they unknowingly cast these
"authentic" spells. Chaos results and Magica has to save the day.

>but I could mention the Holy Grail in those pages, whereas NOT in a
>Duck comic -- nor, I think, should I.

Agreed. I think religion has little or no place in a duck comic.

>Who's reading the COMPUSERVE Disney-comics-section?

What's to read. There's only been two messages in the last
week. The more time I spend on other Disney lists, the more
I'm amazed by the quality of this one.

James Williams

> [...] I discovered something very shocking in the first few years of
> Taliaferro's Grandma strips. Grandma consistently refers to Donald
> as her son! I don't know how this is going to affect anything
> (especially as AT created Grandma).

Doesn't surprise me at all. As I've said earlier I've always thought
that Grandma was meant to be Donald's mother in the daily strips, even
though I didn't know it was made explicit anywhere.

Too bad Barks missed that and made her a grandma instead. (Or did
anyone else do that before Barks?)
-- "
Per Starback, Uppsala, Sweden. email: starback at minsk.docs.uu.se
"Life is but a gamble! Let flipism chart your ramble!"

DAVID:
I recall you posting a message about Grandma's husband being
named "Humperdink" several months ago when you were just popping in and
out here. Tell me what issues of WDC&S this appears in. And you imply it
was mentioned more than once? That is unusual to see ANY sort of
continuity in these comics in those days.
I can easilly be persuaded to use that name -- I picked "Dabney
Duck" for reasons I can certainly no longer recall after 3 years. But
since Barks never gave him a name, "Humperdink" has a precedent in those
old WDC&S and does not conflict with Barks, so I can use it. But no
matter what the creator of Grandma intended her to be, Barks said she
was Donald's grandmother, so that she has to be (as far as I'm
concerned).

ANDY:
I actually DID do a 10-page "gag" story last month... my first
since 1990. And it wasn't so hot. At least it didn't seem very good when
I was doing it -- I'd had an idea for a story in my notes for many
years, and decided to use it. But getting it to actually WORK was like
pulling teeth... which tells me that it was NOT working. I can't judge
whether it ultimately worked or not, but since it was a difficult story
to do, I didn't enjoy it and therefore felt that it SUCKED. We'll see.
Good ideas for 10-page stories are always very easy to make stories out
of -- I think I wrote "On a Silver Platter" in about an hour.
I might try another 10-pager, but I really can't get inspired by
the whole idea. I see these as ADVENTURE characters -- and only
adventure stories seem worth dealing with. "Gag" stories are too
forgetable.

Dear Folks,

James said that the 1937 Gottfredson Medioka adventure
appearing in WDC&S currently "so far has been extremely predictable and
very slowly paced. I also think it suffers from being transformed into
a comic book instead of being printed in strip format." Well, I have
to agree that it's slowly paced. Also that it may have been better
in strip format. But the real way to enjoy this story was to buy
Gladstone's 1990 album that contained the whole damn thing. All 106
pages of it. I happen to find this one to be my favorite Mickey
story; it may be a little slow getting started, but you'll see it
gets better and better. The real problem is that this should be in
four issues of Mickey's own comic, not *six* issues of WDC&S. That
way its length would be more tolerable. But since that album (at
$15) was too expensive for most collectors I know, I think that the
current printing will at least give more readers a chance to enjoy
this story. The dialogue, also, gets uncommonly good later on.
And you talk of the story being predictable? Well, okay, the
moment Mickey is mistaken for someone else, you get what's going on.
But the excitement, and comic wit, fly fast and furious once Mickey's
on the throne in Medioka. Just wait!

I haven't yet mentioned LO$ 5 (the one everyone's been talking
about), so my thanks are long overdue to Don Rosa. This one was
absolutely spectacular. By emphasizing Scrooge's relationship with
his kin and forefathers, you have included a sort of warmth that
rarely occurs in Barks' stories (and though I don't have a
translatable version of Part 11, I know that this makes the emotional
sequences there even more meaningful).
I loved the sequence with the ghosts, no matter what anyone
says. It harks back to the ancient myths, whose writers asked the
Muses to invoke them with the necessary bravado preparatory to
penning their epics.
Only one problem with the story, and it's Egmont at fault: it
could stand to be sixteen, not fifteen pages. I felt that the scene
of Scrooge's ancestors parading in glee at his future miserliness
should have been the width of the page, for instance; then there
were other scenes that seemed a little too cramped. But you *know*
all these things, otherwise you'd not always tell me how you wished
you *could* make 'em longer!
One slightly confusing thing: when a character reaches into a
panel with one arm (the rest of him not being seen, that is), you've
often had the arm -- or whatever appendage -- protruding not from the
edge of the panel, but from behind the edge of the previous panel.
The obvious example is when one Whiskerville swiped Scrooge's bank
order. Since Scrooge was right up against the right-hand border of
the preceding panel, the arm that reached for the deed almost looked
like it was somehow supposed to be *his* -- and Sue Daigle-Leach
thought so too, for the hand on that arm was colored white!
Hopefully all this will be fixed for the album printing.
Am I nuts, or is Gladstone's printing just not as good these
days? I've been disappointed with the color in EVERY recent issue
but DDA 29! The color looks duller than it once did, and very often the
red and blue ink that's used to reinforce solid blacks is misaligned
so that panel borders and characters' pupils appear muddy.
Especially true of some pages in this comic. In fact, coloring
problems always look the worst in Rosa stories, because the detail is
so intricate that the misaligned tones are more obvious.
If Gladstone has had to lower printing quality (these mistakes
started becoming common around this last March) to keep the price of
the comics at $1.50, I wouldn't mind paying $1.75 for them. When you
get around 27 pages of comics in each issue, that's sure a better buy
than (Fill In Name Of Any Other Comic Publisher Here)'s issues.

Well, it's time to be off for now. But I'll be back sooner or
later. "Like a bad penny, or a ghost!" "GHOST? Eeeek! Merciful
goodness, what have I *done*?"

David Gerstein

While I really enjoy the adventure stories, I like to read
a "gag" story every now and then too. I feel that Don has maintained a
good balance between the two. I'm curious, though, which stories he
defines as "gag" stories. Certainly, the Master Landscaper and
Window Washer stories fall into this catagory, but what about some
of the other stories. Here I'm thinking of stories like "On Stolen Time"
(my personal favorites) or when Donald turns into a superhero by drinking
the special formula. These have a quasi-adventure aspect aspect.
Will these disappear too?

Also, I know that we've discussed this before, but I really
enjoy the book length adventures. I'd really like to see more of those.
I realize that this is unlikely since Don draws for Egmont, and they prefer
shorter stories, but I'm just putting in my 2 cents.

Frank

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>Since in "This Is Your Life, Donald Duck," we see that Grandma
>raised Donald on the farm,

I think that most of us would not consider "TIYL,DD" cannonical, but
it does raise an good question. Where did Donald grow up and who
raised him?

>Of course, this raises the question of what happened to Donald's
>parents, but then as we have discussed many times before, parents are
>conveniently absent from most Disney comics.

The lack of parents never bothered me, the lack of friends always will.
Make a list of Donald's closest friends. Subtract from it anyone
who is related to Donald. I bet when you're done, the list is empty.

James Williams