The secretary's secret(s)

[Gerstein, David DK - ECN]

	Hey Sigvald,

>In the stories by Carl Barks and Don Rosa a
>well grown-up lady, Miss Emily Quackfaster, is
>Scrooge's secretary.
	[...]
>However in most Italian
>stories... Scrooge has
>a much younger secretary with blond hair. In
>Norwegian she's also called "Frk. Vable".

	And in Danish and other languages there is an equivalent situation.

>I can see a few [possible] explanations here:

	And from within Egmont, I can tell you the one that's right.

>a)
>This is two unrelated characters. The elder
>is "Miss Quackfaster", the younger is "Miss
>Typefaster" [sic]

	Nope.
	(And I'm really confused, Sigvald. You're just *guessing* that there
are two different characters here, so how can you *conclusively* say which
of the so-called different characters has which name?)

>b)
>This is one character in two versions.

	Here you're correct.
	When Italy makes the character tall and somewhat younger, they call
her Miss Paperett, but they also use that name for Barks/Rosa/Egmont's
shorter, older version of the character.
	Egmont, meanwhile, uses the short version in stories for the weekly
and the tall version in D-coded stories for the pocketbooks, and we call
her, originally, Miss Typefast in all cases.
	So yes, both Egmont and the Italians agree that it's the same
character in two visual variants.
	You also theorize that

>The younger one is just another version of the
>secretary because someone in Italy or Egmont
>or somewhere else didn't like the Barks/Rosa
>version.

	Your reference to the "Barks/Rosa version" confuses me a little in
this context. You're talking about a decision- the Italian decision to
redesign Barks' Miss Quackfaster- that was made in the 1970s or 1980s. This
was before Don Rosa made duck stories. Therefore, the Italian creators who
redesigned Miss Quackfaster could not have been doing it to express an
opinion about Don Rosa.

>As for the name, even though it
>contradicts Barks and Rosa, Egmont prefer to
>give Scrooge's secretary the name "Typefaster"
>in stead of the original "Quackfaster".
	The character is Miss Typefast (note the spelling, it's not
"Typefaster") at Egmont because that was her traditional name in Britain,
then one of our major publishers, at the time we first used the character in
our own stories (late 1970s).
	We've known for a long time that in the USA, her name is
Quackfaster, but by this time it's far, far too late to turn back.

	Now, on to your last possible explanation for Miss Q.'s two visual
styles

>c.
>The younger one is the older one's niece
	[snip]

	Nope.
	They are, however, both related to Zeke Wolf. By marriage.
	(You've guessed I'm joking? Damn.)

	Really, there's just one secretary, drawn two ways.

	David Gerstein