Keskustelujen arkisto

> Ummm, can i also express my subjective opinion? Just a guess though,
perhaps
> Don himself can clarify all this mess. i believe that this flashback thing
> is one way to achieve the actually-meant-for-serials-episode to fit better
> to be both a one-shot story and a part of the chapters.

Ups, just read a little more careful and i noticed that the real problem was
the Last Sled which i haven't read yet, so my previous mail was a bit
off-course and unrelated.

Best,
Arie Fachrisal
Just goes to show how slowly my brain is to capture the actual meaning of
those English sentences :-)

Into the home of the site www.igayara.com.br you can see a picture off me
with Waldir Igayara, the second Disney drawer in Brazil. In his site there
are some covers he did for the "Z? Carioca"in his time. There are also
pictures and work of Wilson Magalh?es, one of the best brazilian Disney
inkers. Arthur Faria and I are indexing the work of him and Igayara's. The
site is in portugues, but it is very simple. So I think nobody will have
problems to look at it. Igayara has now a School of Drawing in S?o Paulo,
after working 25 years to Abril. He is the creator of the Fethry's nephew
Biquinho. Take a look, people!

Fernando Ventura!
"That hate see pictures of himself! ARGH!"

Just some news on the DCML pages at <http://stp.ling.uu.se/~starback/dcml/>.
(I thought that if I send something like this out now and then that
will force me to make sure there are some news. :-)

* The Italian part of the Inducks is updated.

* I have fixed a long-standing bug regarding contents listing of Western
issues. Now pages like
<http://stp.ling.uu.se/cgi-bin/starback/dcml/issue?us-DD+42>
(for DD 42) work again.

* Branko Collin who has written Dutch Disney comics has sent
a short bio of himself: It's at
<http://stp.ling.uu.se/~starback/dcml/creators/branko-collin.html>

This is excellent, and I urge other Disney comics writers and artists
who frequent this list to send similar presentations of themselves for
the web pages. Branko hasn't done many stories for Disney, but that
is no reason to abstain.

New pages on other writers and artists and updates to the ones that
already exist are of course appreciated as well!

Last month there were 32045 hits to the creator part of the DCML
pages, that is 43 each hour on average. Unfortunately many of those
are to pages with very little information. Please contribute!
Some artists with many stories but almost no information on the DCML
web pages are Vicar, Jack Bradbury, Manuel Gonzales, Giuseppe Perego,
Al Hubbard, Massimo De Vita, and Pete Alvarado. Any takers? (For
those or anyone else?)
See <http://stp.ling.uu.se/~starback/dcml/creators/>.

--
Per Starback <starback at ling.uu.se> <http://stp.ling.uu.se/~starback/me.html>
"Life is but a gamble! Let flipism chart your ramble!"

>But now I must dash! I have some preparations to make for a lil' dinner
>party I'm giving tonight here at my place for friends Mike Kaluta, William
>Stout and Mark Schultz who are all in Louisville for a model-makers'
>convention. (I never said I was not a name-dropper!)

Cool! Tell William Stout and Mark Schultz that they have a very big fan on
the DCML list. William's artwork is *awesome* and I really love 'Cadillacs
and Dinosaurs'....
Give us a report on how it went!

rebecca

Fellow Quackeroos:

My first posting on the "Rosa trip" had ended with "as evening shadows
fell" at a Day's Inn in Carrollton, ~40 miles from Louisville, KY.

*DAY 2: Wednesday, May 31, 2000*: After a tiresome first day of near
continuous driving, we woke up ~8:00 a.m. and went to have breakfast.
Outside it was warm and muggy and the forecast for the next 2 days was for
more of the same: humid and hot (~90 F!).

When we returned to our motel room we gave Don a call and told him of our
exact location and that we'd be at his place in ~1 hour. A few days earlier
Don had faxed me a "map to Rosa" (which I think is a "collector's item" in
itself!). Using that map it was a piece of cake to find his place. After
getting off interstate 71 and driving a few winding and curvey miles
passing a "scenic ovelook", a little creek, a dude ranch, and the "famous"
'echo trail' (!), a right turn took us to Dawson Hill road! A "landmark"
before reaching Don's house was "Ferg's Mower Repair", with Ferg looking
exactly like Don had caricatured him on the map! (big, flappy ears!). One
more creek, one more turn and...there it was! The gate was open and we
drove in the long driveway to Don's house.

We parked in front of the house and got out. Shortly thereafter Don came
out to greet us and offered us cool ginger-ale. He was wearing shorts and a
"Rosa" t-shirt, from a Rosa-eatery in Italy. Before anything else he went
afoot to close the gate so as to let his 3 basset houns roam free in his
estate.

When he returned he introduced us first to his 3 basset hounds: Daisy,
Chloe, and Suki. The first rule we learned in petting them was the
following: we could pet Chloe and Suki at any time, but we could pet Daisy
only in the absence of the other two! Failure to do so would jeopardize the
well-being of Chloe and Suki in the claws of Daisy!

Initially we had a brief tour of the house (of wooden, rustic style) and
its immediate surroundings. Don's estate comprises of ~10 hectares of land,
with the house located approximately in the center of the property. There's
a huge lawn northwest of the house with a small pond at its end. There's a
meadow east of the house with a barn and garden. To the west, southwest,
and northeast, there's forested area, with a field at the very southwestern
part. After getting a first glimpse of that area I fully realized what Don
had meant when writing of needing so much time to mow the lawn!

We were then introduced to Gyro, the Rosas' cockatoo! Gyro started
screaming (boy, he can *really* scream!) once he realized there were
visitors in the house, wanting to come out of his cage and be petted!
However, Don didn't do that until later on.

After catching our breath and with a cool glass of ginger-ale in our hands,
we visited the "Expo center" (a small barn where the old owner would store
his car collection!). In the "Expo" Don currently keeps his own car
"collection", i.e. his "famous" (I had first seen it in an old "Captain
Kentucky" panel) 1948 Dodge that he still uses, albeit not that often, and
a 1938 Nash Lafayette of which we only caught a glimpse. Don promised us
he'd take us on a ride on his Dodge the next day!

We then proceeded to visit the garden which is right behind the barn. Don
and his wife Ann (who was attending a teaching seminar all that week and
would be back in the afternoon) raise all kinds of vegetables and Don
showed us the green onions we'd later have at dinner! After tip-toeing thru
the garden we walked along the meadow which was full of wild flowers Don
had planted. Don would show us and name all the different types of wild
flowers we'd meet. It was hot, Don was wearing a hat to avoid the
horse-flies while Orjan and I braved the hot sun uncovered despite Don's
offer to put something on. When we returned to the house we (and especially
I) were sweating and were desparate in need of a cool place to sit down!

What was the coolest room in the house? Well,...., the famous "comics
vault"! We descented down the stairs and got inside the room we had read
about so many times in the past. It's a relatively small room, with
wall-to-wall comic-book "carpeting"! Rows of metal shelfs were loaded with
boxes full of old comic books, nicely arranged by type and labeled by year.
The first thing we saw was his "TV Guide" collection. Don asked me if I
wanted to check what was on American TV the night I was born. I said sure,
and after uttering my birthdate (October 26, 1961), Don pulled out the
relevant issue of "TV Guide" and we checked the TV listings!

Of course, we could have spend days in there, not mere hours! We asked to
see some Dell Disneys (I asked for the first Uncle Scrooge issues and Orjan
for the early WDC&S). I asked Don whether he'd be interested in ever
selling his huge collection, and he replied that he'd do it only to someone
who'd be interested in buying the entire set of a series; he wouldn't want
to sell issues individually because of the time he has spent in completing
a collection.

While we were there, we also asked to see his pre-Disney work which he
keeps in a file of its own. Before we left the room we took a number of
pictures holding various comics in our hands. (Hey, if you can't boast with
proof to other people about things like these, what good is it? :-)))

It was afternoon already and after exiting the comics vault we thought that
visiting Don's studio would be a nice "encore"! One enters Don's studio
after passing thru the garage and climbing the stairs. Donald Duck
paraphernalia catch your eye immediately! The room is chock-full of such
Donald and Scrooge paraphernalia, ranging from small statuettes to larger
busts. The glass showcases where most of the Donald collectibles are stored
are literally bursting at the seams. There's a desk at the other end of the
stairway and Don's drawing board at the left. A couch, a love-seat, and a
giant T.V. screen complete the furniture. One also finds piles of
international comics printing his stories and Don invited us to take as
many as we pleased from his pile of second and third copies that he usually
gives away to kids at conventions (we graciously obliged the next day!). In
file cabinets he keeps copies of his initial and finished artwork of his
stories.

We didn't know that we were up for a real treat (as though everything so
far wasn't a treat!). On his desk there laid the just finished rough
story-board pencil version of his *LATEST* story! A "Life of Scrooge"
chapter he's doing for "PICSOU" magazine, set in Panama in the early 1900s
where Scrooge encounters President Roosevelt again! Don said that he'd
wanted us to read it during our visit and let him know of our impressions
(the only thing I'll divulge at this point is that it's a really funny
story, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the finalized version and
how Don re-works some "contentious" sequences!).

We spent a couple of hours in Don's studio discussing many topics and
listening to Don describing to us the entire process of developing a story,
from initial idea, to final inked art. It felt really special living all
this in the very "sanctum sanctorium" of Don Rosa's place. During that
first day in his studio we also saw copies of tens of fan artwork pieces
that Don has done in the past 10 years or so. Many of them I had seen for
the first time and it was a real treat!

We had to catch our breath after all this and we felt we also needed a
chance to unwind and process all the images of the last few hours. We went
downstairs (in the meantime we had met Ann, Don's lovely wife who had
returned from her seminar) and sat outside in the smaller deck waiting for
the sun to start setting before moving to the larger deck in the western
side of the house for dinner. Earlier, Don had asked us to choose what type
of dinner we'd prefer having and we opted for good, ol' American steak! As
we enjoyed our cold ale in a very hot afternoon we talked about many
things, many of them actually not comics related. For example, Don would
tell us of all the types of birds and animals that frequent his property,
and we did some bird-watching. We even saw some humming-birds as Don's
house is surrounded with humming-bird feeders.

We had grilled steak for dinner in the western deck as the sun was setting.
Orjan admitted that this was the *fattest* steak he'd ever eaten and he
also tried green onions for the *first* time picked fresh from the garden!

After dinner we had to do something to burn off what we had just eaten! It
was dark already, so armed with flash-lights we embarked on a forest
expedition! Don had told us that he has developed an elaborate system of
pathways in his property's forested area, and we thought it'd be a good
idea to "explore" some of them! We entered thru a path on the west and
proceeded thru a daedalic system of paths to the field at the south-western
part of his property until we finally returned to the driveway and back
home. Along the path-ways, Don has placed benches and we stopped for brief
rests during that "jungle exploration", always careful to avoid the
*dreaded* poison ivy that Don has been fighting relentlessly to exterminate!

Upon our return we were treated with cheese-cake from Ann and after
shooting the breeze for a few more minutes we decided it's time to call it
a day! As I laid on the bed in the guest-room, holding on my hands Don's
most recent story (I was probably the third person to read it!), I thought
to myself that all in all that was a pretty memorable day! And just before
I went asleep I dashed downstairs to hand over to Orjan's awaiting hands
the first 12 pages of the "Panamanian" Lo$ story I had just read!

(To be continued...)

Cheers,

Archontis

------------------------------
Archontis L. Pantsios, Ph.D.
Visiting Associate Professor
Department of Economics
Binghamton University
Binghamton, New York 13902
USA
tel: (607)777-4726
fax: (607)777-2681
------------------------------

Hey Eta! (And Rob, if you get this...)

>As it is unclear from the
>picture whether or not she could be one of the three little pigs in
>disguise, I rather doubt that she is. I suspect that she is Patricia Pig
>from the 30's cartoons and comic strips.

She might have been intended (by the gag writer who came up with the
idea) as Patricia Pigg, but do remember that Patricia is a tall, extremely
fat adult pig, with a body many, many times bigger than her head. Even
though her appearance changed over the years, she at least remained
consistent in this way.
So regardless of whom that cover-pig was intended to be, it didn't
*end up* as Patricia - who appears, as her recognizable self, many times
inside other issues of Mickey Mouse Magazine.

Best wishes,
David

Hello

> I asked Don whether he'd be interested in ever
> selling his huge collection, and he replied that he'd do it only to someone
> who'd be interested in buying the entire set of a series;

At no more than cover price? Hmmm...

:-)

Kriton (e-mail: kyrimis at cti.gr)
(WWW: http://dias.cti.gr/~kyrimis)
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"Calling the Doctor! There's no escape. Repeat: there *is* no escape!"
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