Oops - apologies to Don and [Re: DONALD DUCK #286 published?]

Mark Semich mas at cs.bu.edu
Thu Apr 21 06:05:09 CEST 1994


>	I'm wondering if DD #286 has come out this week.  If so, it
>has probably hit the comic shops today.

Nope, but DD #285 did... :-)

>... I do wonder exactly what's in it, and particularly whether there
>are any suspicious gaps in continuity other than Sundays.

DD in "Cheltenham's Choice" by Carl Barks (WDC&S 168, April 1954) and
Al Taliaferro's dailies from March 17 to April 22, 1938, and there
are *no* missing strips...

>	What's on the cover...

One of Bruce Hamilton's Al Taliaferro re-designs - this one has H&D
looking on as Donald jumps about with mattress springs on his feet.

>and is there a 1-page ad for all the 
>month's issues somewhere, or a blurb for DD 286 in the letter column?

Both. :-)  D&M 24 has Barks' "A Descent Interval" (Donald deep-sea
diving) and more "Don't call me Tut!" but the *big* news is that USA
27 contains Don's "Guardians of the Lost Library" (!)

Which leads me into the apology section of this letter:
(Warning - SPOILER for "Guardians of the Lost Library" follows)
------
Many months ago, I first heard on this list of Don Rosa's story,
"Guardians of the Lost Library".  I also read that it contained the
origin of the Junior Woodchucks.  I was very excited about this story
and anxious to read it, so I fired off a letter to Gladstone that
basically said,

"Do you have any plans to print Don Rosa's 'Guardians of the Lost
 Library' (which features the origin of the Junior Woodchucks)?"

It wasn't until *after* I mailed this letter to Gladstone that I
discovered (from one of Don's messages) the the origin of the Junior
Woodchucks was the SURPRISE SECRET ENDING of "Guardians of the Lost
Library"

Unfortunately, my letter was just published in DD 285, so I managed to
*spoil* the SURPRISE SECRET ENDING of "Guardians of the Lost Library"
for *every* Gladstone reader!  Argh!  As one who *hates* having
stories spoiled, I am most upset that I did this.  For what it's
worth, I apologize - it was unintentional.
----
Anyways, the blurb for DD 286 says that it will contain:

Carl Barks' "Victory Garden," his first 10 pager;

Floyd Gottfredson's "The Vanishing Coats," the first "adventure"
(starring MM) in which DD participated;

Don Rosa's "The Duck That Never Was," detailing what the world would
have been without Donald in it;

Federico Pedrocchi's "Donald Duck and the Secret of Mars," first
published in the December 1937 issue of Italy's Topolino, and "which
we believe was the first solo Donald adventure to be printed in comic
form anywhere!"

William Van Horn "ties it all together with his cover and a ten-page
framing sequence commisioned especially for this edition"
----
I wonder if "The Duck That Never Was" is a depressing story - I
imagine that Uncle Scrooge never recovered from his grumpy, depressed,
trapped-in-his-dusty-old-mansion-all-alone stage (from which Donald
rescued him).  And since DD wasn't around to care for HD&L, they must
have gone to some child reform house for misbehaviour (when their
mother couldn't stand them anymore) and grown up to become criminals.

The letter column also mentions that Disney banned the nephews' first
appearance, and they use David's letter asking to see foreign 1930s
Donald stories as a segue into the DD 286 blurb.

See ya in the funny papers...



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