Keskustelujen arkisto

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DON:
I'm all mixed up! Now you say "Of Ducks and Dimes and
Destinies" is going to be in US #298? Maybe John misinformed you,
because it's going in US #297 (the first issue after LO$ ends) and has
already been advertised in DIAMOND PREVIEWS that way.
I'm not sure what's going to be in US #298. Last time John
told me, it was undecided whether William Van Horn's "The Pauper's
Glass" would appear there or in USA #39. Those are the last issues of
those titles to be published in the current Gladstone licensing
period, BTW. If the license gets renewed, my own "Two in One" may be
in one of the first releases of the next period. Originally, I had
thought IT was going to be in US #298, but apparently not.

EVERYONE:
JOHN CLARK told me today that William Van Horn's Uncle Rumpus
character will return in "Say Uncle," which is to be published in
WDC&S 603. I don't know what the plot's about, but the old windbag
comes into conflict with Uncle Scrooge, and the feathers, they fly.
MAYBE I'll use Uncle Rumpus in a story if I like him enough after this
one, but we'll see... I don't want to misinterpret a character while
his creator's still "finding" him.

David Gerstein
<96dag at williams.edu>
"Have a chestnut, boys! ... OW!"

I thought the panel was in "The Flying Dutchman". If not that one, I am
sure it was in one of the stories where the HDL and U$ and probably Donald
are in a boat/life raft or some such.

Hope this helps.

Kathy

>Per Starback <starback at Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE> wrote...
>>> http://www.kaapeli.fi/(J~(Bsarjaks/sarjainfo/uutiset.html
>>I've seen it now! Remarkable panel, indeed! Too bad it doesn't say
>>what story it is from. Does anyone know?
>
>The text given above for the Barks panel reads:
>This Barks half-page original was stolen from the Galerie Laqua [sp?] in
>Berlin a couple of months back [no date given?]. The Galerie has asked
>collectors to be alert if they are offered the stolen goods.
>
>The text for the four-nephew panel reads:
>Occasionally the attention of even the most vigilant company falters: one of
>the blackest moments for the danish Disney comics producer company Egmont
>must have been this panel, where we have Donald, Scrooge, Huey, Dewey, Louie
>and... and who? No, it isn't the first appearance of Phewey, a duckling with
>a sequestered childhood, but a simple error in the part of the artist.
>Surmising from the style, the innumerate duck-artist is the spaniard Torres.
>
>The most amazing thing of course is that the panel got through Egmont's
>controls and appeared at least in the danish edition. But has the story been
>published in the Finnish-language Donald Duck? Do any of our readers
>remember the adventure and was the panel corrected in the Finnish edition?
>
>-- Paula
>
>

AUGIE:
I don't know what they wrote in the WD GIANT #3 about my first cover
idea for that issue, but your version of it is all wrong. I submitted a
cover sketch based on the famous cover of SUPERMAN #1 -- John Clark at
Gladstone DID "get it", being an old comics fan... but the Disney people
didn't get it since they are NOT comics fans/collectors. Strangely enough,
the Disney people only said to change DD's awkward pose, but approved the
general cover design (and the cover of SUPERMAN #1 is a hideous looking
thing, with all the bad lettering and weird borders). So Disney APPROVED the
cover, as is, when told what it was based on. But John and I later decided
that only old-time comics fans would catch the gag, and WE decided to do an
entirely different cover. I mean, that would have been a GREAT gag cover,
but for anyone who didn't understand the joke it would have made for the
worst cover ever on an American Disney comic book (except, of course, that
3D Disney comic of a few years back). I suggested a DD pose in front of
panels from the original Barks story -- that story was one of my very
favorites as a child, even though I didn't know what a super-hero was at the
time, as my sister didn't buy anything but Dells. Also, that "Super Snooper"
issue from 1949 was the OLDEST comic she left me.
Also too, you are wrong to say that the DD pose is the same as from
the other Disney Disney comic that used that "Super Snooper Strikes Again".
It originally wasn't even on my mind, but I think I did look back at the
pose to help me get my new pose more "graceful" (which is not one of my
strong suits). (Needless and irritating detail is my only strong suit.)
Plus also too, this is the 4th time that same story of mine has been
printed in America. Once in the Disney Disney issue, once in their DONALD
AND $CROOGE "Don Rosa" $9 album, once in the hard-to-find 3-issue "Don Rosa"
DONALD AND $CROOGE set sold only at Walmarts, and now once more. But you did
NOT see the "first printing" of the story -- it was a reprint when you first
saw it, remember. All this stuff appears in Europe first.

MIKE:
Hm. The pendulum swings back, but never stops where it should. "I
don't dislike MM" and "I LIKE MM" are rather different. As I kept telling
reporters in Finland, I'm simply apathetic toward MM. He's okay, but I
personally don't have any interest in him as a comic character.

WILMER:
I'm afraid that I can't do a story about Pisa! I was being asked
everywhere I went in Italy (and Finland)(and Norway) to do a story set in
whatever spot I was visiting. But the ancient Italian city-state rivalries
still live on -- they would never let me back into Lucca to visit another
comic fair if I did a story about Pisa. I promised to do a story about Lucca
first. Well... if I do a story about Pisa, Lucca will have to be the "hero"
-- that's possible. But then the people in Firenze and Siena and Rapollo
and... wow, this is tricky...

I guess I'm one (of the few?) who really love both GotLL and LCOC, finding them exciting,
intense, sufficiently historical tongue in cheeck as well as great (and good (and
excellent)). That's an advantage, as Don constantly turns out such stories (lets not forget
the Croesus story as well!)! In fact I've always been jubilant for my ability to love stories
which are good. Not everyone share that gift.

Based on our discussion some weeks ago, I've finally found a source book on the
question of chronology. "Asimov on Numbers" (at least the Norwegian edition) has
some interesting stuff on this. The Romans of course used the alleged founding date of
their city as starting point, thus making e.g. Caesar's murder taking place in 710 A.U.C.
(Anno Urbis Conditae). This was the standard way of counting time in Europe until
Christianity made its mark on learned culture and had Caesar being killed in 44 BC
(however, still March 15th).

The Church Historian Eusebius (around 1050 A.U.C.) based a new chronology on the
birth of Abraham 1263 years before the founding of Rome, thus making 1050 A.U.C. the
year 2113 after Abraham. This was however not widely taken up.

Others made attempts at starting with the creation, however, there were no concensus on
when that had been, suggestions ranging from 3007 to 4755 before A.U.C. The first of
these two latest figures is, BTW, used in today's Jewish calender (the present year of
course being 5756).

About 1288 A.U.C. the Syrian monk Dionysius Exiguus calculated (at least 6 years
wrong) that Jesus had been born in 754 A.U.C.. This was not used much until the time of
Charlemagne two and a half centuries later, as the suggested focal point for world
chronology. To emphazise this, Asimov even has a separate section on Charlemagne
(with a picture) as the driving force behind the official introduction of the Christian time
reckoning, around 800 AD.

The viking raids after his death (and his incompetent heirs) severely stopped the
Carolingian Renaissance (as it has been termed) in education and culture - and
possible also the general adherence to the Christian chronology for still some hundred
years.

This makes it highly (to put it mildly) improbable that Brendan (if he would have thought
of putting up any fixed year at all) did use the Christian time line on his stone cross.

If still possible to change, perhaps the solution may be to erase the year, instead having
some woodchucks telling that according to the JW Handbook such crosses were made
in Ireland in the 6th century only (if that is true - they may in fact be younger as I believe
wooden crosses were used in Bendan's day), thus proving when this Brendan did set it
up.

Any experts on medieval Irish crosses, around?

Hopefully, such ungratefull nitpicking and hair splitting will not in any way make you
reluctant to keep up the tradition of making your marvellous historical plots and plays,
Don!

Bjorn-Are

bjorn-are.davidsen at s.prosjekt98.telenor.no
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- The Weaver in the Web that he made -
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On Fri, 17 Nov 1995 disney-comics at Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE wrote:

> ======================================================================
> Date: Thu, 16 Nov 95 01:30 EST
> From: donrosa at iglou.com (Don Rosa)
> Subject: Re: Disney-comics digest #848.
>
> MELANIE:
> Thanks for all the very kind words, but please don't think that my
> art is in any way influenced by "underground" artists. I think my similarity
> to Robert Crumb's art is simply that we both grew up reading the same
> comics, doing our own private comic books as a hobby, and neither of us took
> it seriously enough to try to develop a style that was pleasing to anyone's
> eye. I drew like this long before I saw my first Crumb comic sometime in the
> early 70s.

Sorry to have made this attribution without checking it out. I have some
of the old undergrounds and the stylistic similarity was evident to me
right away. I've rather lost my admiration of Crumb after seeing the
documentary about him, though I still very much like that detailed drawing
style reminiscent of the 40s.

I hope you will continue to use those peripheral family members you
developed in Lo$. I am thinking especially of Scrooge's two sisters. The
Duck comics would benefit enormously from the more frequent inclusion of
strong female characters such as Goldie.

Best regards,

Melanie

We missed you. I, for one, would enjoy reading a report on your trip, however
brief. If you can find the time, please give us one. Having been to a lot of
US conventions and such, but never one in Europe, I'd be interested to hear
about them, as well as any other impressions.

DAVID:
I just miscounted. I meant "Of D&D&D" will appear in U$ #297. If it
was in 298, I'd still have time to do the cover. But today I at least FAXed
them a text piece to accompany the story.

DWIGHT:
Are you there? Do you have access to a FAX machine? I received a fan
letter from Germany today that's written completely in, of all the dang
things, GERMAN! I always answer all the mail I receive, so I need to know if
this writer is asking me any questions I need to specifically reply to.

BJORN:
Looks like I assumed too much with putting that date on that cross.
The name of Brendan on it would be all they'd really need to date it -- but,
do I even have that spelled in the proper 6th century Irish manner? I need
to call up my old history professor buddy that I used to sneak out of the
engineering building and visit back in college.

TODD:
I was hoping someone would ask me specific questions about the trip
since I wouldn't know where to limit myself in talking about the whole tour.
Since I really had little idea what was going on at the conventions, as I
can't read Italian or Finnish, I can't say a great deal about what I saw --
naturally I could go on at great length about the medieval Italian towns
like Lucca and Siena and all the sights in Florence, but this List isn't for
travelogues.
Let's see -- it should be noted that the idea that I'd used Donald's
parents in a comic book continued to sweep the nation in Italy, appearing in
every major newspaper and TV station every day for a week or two! I never
thought much of my showing Hortense and Quackmore in those two innocent
panels in the middle of the 10th chapter of the "Lo$" -- if I'd thought it
was a big deal, I'd have built the story around it, or put it in the FIRST
chapter. But to me, Barks had created these characters in his notes 40 years
or more ago, and my slipping them into the background of a story was no big
deal. I actually had several press conferences with many reporters and
photographers and the network TV news camera pointing at me. When's the last
time that happened to a comic book guy in America? But these Ducks are so
popular, and cartoonists so appreciated in Europe, that it's not so unusual
there. I appeared on their version of the TODAY show, and they wanted me to
close the interview by repeating a sentence in Italian that they tried to
teach me to say in 10 seconds in front of a crowd (which included some
schoolkids who happened to be at my art exhibit when I met the TV crew
there), and I had difficulty wanting to embarrass myself with my ignorant
pronunciation of their language on national TV -- my wife filmed me and I
look forward to seeing my nervous embarrassment when they asked me which of
the words they wrote down was I having trouble with, and I pointed and said
"Only this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one
and THIS one!" I even found out later that what I thought was the TV
reporter's name was the name of the TV show!
I'm told that "Lo$" caused such a sensation that newspaper and TV
commentators were writing columns or filming editorials about it, and the
Italian heads-of-state were being asked for their opinions on it! I think I
was being regarded as a tradition-breaker, which is exactly the OPPOSITE of
how I saw the "Lo$", which I regarded as a reaffirmation of all the facts
from stories I'd read all my life (though, unavoidably, with my own twists).
What I'm very worried about is that all the Italian Disney writers
and artists might resent the attention I was getting. There I was intruding
in their country, and when anyone asked me of what I thought about the
Italian Disney comics, they were quite shocked (and I was very embarrassed)
when I had to tell them that we have never seen any of the Italian Disney
stuff in America! (A half-dozen Scarpa stories don't matter much considering
they turn out 15,000 pages a year for decades on end!) And only one Disney
writer ever stopped by to say hello, so they seem to have been avoiding the
convention altogether, or avoiding me, which I hope not.
I did meet the biggest Disney comics fans in Italy, who seemed to
happen to live in the area, in Florence! And these were (along with my
ambassador, Fabio!) some of the very nicest people I have met in my entire
life! I felt right at home with them every moment, and they treated me like
an old friend from the very start! Is it my Italian ancestry that made me so
comfortable? Hm. But I can't ever repay them for their hospitality! Alberto
Becattini, Leonardo Gori, Luca Boschi (these three know more about Disney
comics, even American ones, than anyone I've ever met) and Roberto Papini
(who knows his stuff, too) were a quartet who were especially kind to me,
but I met MANY other nice folks during my week-plus in Italy, as usual too
many to mention here.
Look -- you can see how I ramble on with the simplest report!
Perhaps I'll just say a few syllables about different aspects of the
conventions over the next few Digests, and not risk running off at the
type-writer. Oops...too late!