Disney-comics digest #517.

Don Rosa 72260.2635 at compuserve.com
Sat Dec 10 06:33:46 CET 1994


DAVID:
	I also got aholt of an U$ #290 yesterday, and, yes, the printing
and coloring was beautiful, finally! I've already sent a FAX to John
Clark to have him thank Sue for doing such a nice job coloring it... but
I do that just about EVERY time they print one of my stories since it's
so nice to see some effort put into the proper presentation of one of my
stories, after seeing them used across Europe. Well, I didn't thank them
for their use of "Guardians of the Lost Library" -- the coloring and
lettering on that'n pretty much sucked, but "Terror of the Transvaal"
was great. Such a difference comparing it with "New Laird of Castle
McDuck" -- the black ink in that issue was gray!
	I'd sent John my original story-board script to fill in space
since I had very little to write about in that "making of" text as far
as Barks references went. But, like you, I could sense the reasons they
picked those two pages. They might have wanted to show how I describe to
Byron what I'm going to do in one of my half-page spectaculars ("as you
can imagine, half the animals in Africa will be in this scene"), and
also John obviously wanted to have the satisfaction of getting my
mention of "Zulus" back into the story in spite of Disney's taboo on
mentioning (much less showing) any sort of primitive native cultures. I
was sorta upset when I noticed "Zulu" missing from my dialogue, but that
use of the script made it okay.
	My original title for that chapter was "The Prey of the
Transvaal Viper"... that's why you see Flintheart referred to as "viper"
so often and with such feeling. But Byron nixed that title, and unlike
other instances with Gladstone's use of the Lo$ series (where I switch
the titles back to my original version) I left Byron's change alone
after I think I tried both titles out on a few others.
	$crooge on the cover... I don't know about his beak being too
narrow -- but I purposely made his outline extra thick just so he
WOULDN'T blend into all that background clutter! That's exactly what one
should do to prevent that from occurring! Disney made two changes on the
cover art before I inked it... one was that originally $crooge's was
giving that finger gesture with his other hand, and Disney said that
looked like maybe somebody somewhere might possibly perhaps maybe think
it was an obscene gesture forming maybe. After all, with only 4 fingers
and viewed from that angle, it seems to be that finger. I wouldn't omit
the hand gesture because it was my favorite part; not only is $crooge
not afraid, but he's INVITING the melee. So I switched hands. The other
change they wanted was to remove the dinosaur as "no dinosaur appears in
the story". To that I said "oh, please, give-me-a-break!" and left the
dino in. (Did you see Mickey in the corner?)
	I also received that new weekly in the mail with the Rota story.
How do you figure Rota is imitating MY style? Wht would he imitate
someone who can't hold a candle to himself? But then, there's the main
character named "Rosa", so I wonder. Of course, I can't read the Danish
issue I have, so I don't know what the story is like. But I know I love
the art and style just from the middle panel at the bottom of page 7
(page 4 of the story). That's just the sort of great panel you wouldn't
see in something like...uh... like that Strobl story in the back of U$
#290.
	What about that Strobl story? I don't say much good about my own
stories, but you've never heard me get started on stuff like this Strobl
story. I can't imagine someone liking BOTH the stories in that issue.
But it's my idea that it's good to have variety in these comics rather
than one style for the lowest common denominator, as they like to do in
places like Sweden. Maybe the adult fans read my story, and read the
strobl story to their children at bedtime?




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