Recent digests

Larry Gerstein gerstein at math.ucsb.edu
Thu Sep 2 03:10:20 CEST 1993


        Dear Folks,

        I've been places since I last talked to you!  Most notably, the San
Diego Comic Convention, where I got some fine Dells, and more importantly
met with my managers from Gladstone and Egmont (not to mention Don Rosa,
who I was very glad to meet at last!).

        I don't think we need to worry that Carl Barks will try to one-up
any of the Rosa sequels.  His story is apparently about Scrooge searching
for the original Trojan Horse (I found out same from his agents, or at
least I *think* they were his agents).

        I now have issue dates for a few of my foreign dialogs, these being
my own choices for translation:

        WDC&S 589 [*not* 590 as stated before] Ben Verhagen's "Bugged by
Humbug" (Donald being swindled by a phony exterminator in a
plot-that-builds)
        WDC&S 591 [tentative] Vicar's "For School the Bell Tolls" (a
Donald-as-truant-officer story which I manipulated into a sequel to Barks'
1949 one;  originally, the story seemed to have been written without
knowledge of the earlier one, but I felt it was one of the best Vicars I'd
seen, so went to work!)
        US 285 [tentative] 2 Daniel Branca stories:  "His Master's Voice"
(Scrooge tries to avoid a huge debt by posing as "rich" Donald's
impoverished butler, my personal favorite of all foreign stories!) and "In
and Out" (the Beagle Boys use a "money-counting" machine to swindle
Scrooge).

        After buying those initial four dialogues from me, Gladstone has
since accepted seven more, although they haven't been scheduled yet.  They
also have arranged to use the three that Disney Comics bought from me in
1992 and didn't use.  I'll tell you about these when I know more about
their impending publication.  I can *also* give issue numbers for a few,
although I don't know if German will correspond to Danish in all cases. 
(For some Rosa stories it didn't.)

        Last week's German MM had the first chapter of the Life of Scrooge,
so they have definitely gone ahead with it.  A fine translation, I might
add.

        At the Egmont dinner I discovered that Fleetway was doing the Life
of Scrooge (Don, was this the first time you'd seen a British version
yourself?).  They are printing the long chapters in serial form, so might
they have indeed printed "War of the Wendigo" after all?  Note:  Fleetway
is on the clumsy side, they credited the Life of Scrooge as being "A Carl
Barks Classic"!!!

        I think some of Barks' current soreness with Rosa, completely
unwarranted of course, is simply due to how Rosa's success proves him
wrong.  For years Barks forgot how exploited he obviously felt when he made
the duck stories, saying that of course he got taken advantage of, but big
business is like that and he's perfectly glad to accept the anonymity he
had for so long, etc. etc.  Don, you're a shining example of someone who's
done what he had to to receive proper credit for his work, at least in this
country, and Barks has no doubt seen what success that brought you.  That's
why we see him getting an agent now and going all-out to promote the name
Carl Barks (as opposed to "the good artist", for example).  After all, he's
still not in WHO'S WHO, is he?

        But that's no reason to be sore with Don, just with *himself* for
his own arch-conservative attitude that he deceived himself with for so
long!  Of course, he's missing the point by being unkind to Don, which is
completely unwarranted and very unfortunate.

        I talked to Barks once, in 1987.  I naively asked him what he
thought of Don's stories, and he said then that he thought they were okay,
but that the artwork in a few places was "too busy" (detailed?).  I like
the details, and Barks had 'em too in his late-'40s golden period!

        Let's see what you think, folks.  I'll be back on-line at Williams
in a few days, and you can reach me (and send all digests to)

        David.A.Gerstein at Williams.edu

        Your friend,


        David Gerstein.

        "Why a duck?"

                --- Groucho Marx




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