Rosa books/albums

Per Martinson per.martinson at home.se
Wed Jul 31 11:46:04 CEST 2002


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mattias Hallin" <cmhallin at algonet.se>

> >Maybe I was a bit too hard, but the point is, I dont think Don Rosa makes
> >great comics
>
> Yes, that is the point: you *think*. What is under discussion here
> are matters of taste and opinion. You have yours. Perfectly valid and
> acceptable, and not in the least blasphemous just because Don happens
> to get more praise than criticism on this list.
>
> However, although discussing tastes and opinions can be very
> interesting ("I like X because..."; "Why don't you care for Y...?"),
> I agree with your self-assessment that you've been a bit too hard
> here. Your way of stating your opinions make them seem rather
> self-righteous to me, but then again e-mail is a notoriously tricky
> medium for stating opinions, so maybe it's I who am too hard in
> finding you too hard -- je ne sais pas.
>
> Anyway, I, too, have personal tastes and opinions that, when it comes
> to the comics of Don Rosa, are more or less the inverse of yours. I
> like his stuff very much because, in my opinion, his stories are so
> doggone good as stories, on their own. The Barks references I
> appreciate, but they are not the main reason why I like Don's work.
> But that's only my opinion, albeit a perfectly valid and acceptable
> one.
>
> >[...] I think that his work is most appreciated in donaldist
> >circles.
>
>
> This, on the other hand, is no longer opinion but conjecture. I have
> no idea whether or not it's true. However, have you tried the mental
> experiemnt of imagining what it would be like to read a Don Rosa
> story if you're, say , nine years old and don't know the first thing
> about Carl Barks? It might even be that donaldists are *more* likely
> to dislike Don's stories because they will actually catch all the
> Barks references, where an average reader would just see a Donald
> Duck story. Bu that's conjecture on *my* part... ;-)
>
> To summarise what I've been trying to say: in my opinion stating
> one's opinions is perfectly fine, as long as one does not make the
> (all too common) mistake of mistaking one's own for the truth,
> consequentially getting one's knickers in a tremendous twist trying
> to convince the rest of the world they're wrong...
>
> All the best,
>
> /Mattias


The whole discussion started with me saying that I don't want any more
hardcover books, and especially not by Don Rosa. It has then developed to be
about defending or rejecting Don's work. Maybe it's not been clear enough,
but I've only wanted to express my own opinion, and to show that Don Rosa's
position, as it sometimes feels, as "the master of the ducks", not is a
matter of course for all of us.
My utterance about Rosa's popularity outside of donaldist cicles, is only
based on my own feelings, when discussing duck-comics with less familiar
duck-reading friends, and they do not seem to appreciate the storeis as
anything special, it's his drawings that are special, and those haven't been
discussed at all here.
I've never meant to really question his place as a duck-artist, I only think
he has gotten too big space. For example, he is the only artist (except of
Barks) that are mentioned as anything special in the Donald Duck-magazines,
when there really is plenty good artists. I think this may also affect young
readers, when one creator is, kind of subjectively, put as "the best", it's
not fully obvious that it becomes questioned.
Though Don Rosa is such a popular creator, it's hard to express everyting so
it becomes clear enough for everybody, and the reactions on my opinions on
his writing style has been much more than the reactions on my opinions on
hardcover-books, even though I think such a discussion might become more
fruitful, seeing that a discussion like this probably never can get
anywhere.

Per Martinson




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