Chalker's IBO$M, New Zealand Gophers (fwd)

[Tryg Helseth]

Oops... I accidentally sent my Chalker message directly to Don instead of
the mail-list and his reply came back to me.  He asked that I forward it
to the list, so here it is...

Tryg
 
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 29 Mar 94 09:24:04 EST
From: Don Rosa <72260.2635 at CompuServe.COM>
To: "\"Tryg Helseth\"" <trygve at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: Chalker's IBO$M, New Zealand Gophers

	No, I can't agree. It says in the book that they treat all
stories "by Barks" in those first 71 issues as canonical. And yet they
actually treat ALL stories in those issues as if they were by Barks. You
are wrong when you say they only treated those two Barks-drawn-only
stories as, again, canonical. As just one example, I recall being
sidetracked by information in Chalkers' history that stated that $crooge
had been in the mining and lumber business, and then finding that
Chalkers got all that from the back-up non-Barks story in #50. And
another instance that claimed he had a love affair shown in #52... but,
again, it was in the back-up non-Barks tale. And all this, even though
in his own preface and introduction Chalkers ridicules the idea of
treating these same stories as "fact". This is why I could never make
sense of what he was doing, and therefore could only use his footnotes
for my own investigation. And I couldn't even use the book's own
bibliography for that purpose; the stories listed in there are often
NOT the stories that Chalkers is referring to when he footnotes an
issue # -- many times, as I say, he was referring, inexplicably, to the
back-up non-Barks story in that issue.
	Also, he DOES use stories from WDC&S and DD 4C in a few
instances, but it's difficult to trace these as he doesn't footnote the
"facts" with that numbering that can only refer to U$ issues. As just
one example, all of the ancestral info from "The Old Castle's Secret"
is included, but none of it is footnoted; not to mention the odd
attempt by Chalkers in his intro to discredit any Barks story not
appearing in the U$ title for no reason other than that fact.
	My biography may not be as good or clever as Chalkers', but
it's definitely based more on Barks "facts" if that's what $crooge fans
want.