Donald's uncle Ludwig

Lars Jensen lpj at forfatter.dk
Tue Apr 20 17:04:41 CEST 2004


Sorry it has taken so long for me to respond, Mickey, but life got in
the way. You wrote:

> I don't agree with you, in general, because you say (or I understood
> so) that some ideas by Don about familiar connections cannot be
> extended to the other Duck universes. "Regard Don's ideas as exclusive
> to his stories alone". I wanna regard Don's ideas as valid to other
> stories. It's not a crime...

OK, now I understand. I think you have partially misunderstood my
posting. The sentence you quote ("Regard Don's ideas as exclusive to his
stories alone") was part of this paragraph:

> Anyway, if you dislike the idea of retcons, or Don's ideas in general,
> then simply disregard his stories. Egmont produces thousands of pages
> each year that never once mention Hortense, Ludwig, José, Panchito or
> the nephews' possible relationship to the founder of the Woodchucks.
> Regard Don's ideas as exclusive to his stories alone.

In other words, I was simply telling people that if they don't like Don
Rosa's ideas, they can just pretend these ideas don't exist anywhere
else than in his stories. I believe this is what Don himself has said
time and again.

As for your line "You say (or I understood so) that some ideas by Don
about familiar connections cannot be extended to the other Duck
universes"...

Well, sometimes they can't. Daniel J. Neyer pointed out that in the
cartoon "Kids is Kids", Ludwig Von Drake is a bachelor. Don Rosa has
stated Ludwig is married. How do those two "facts" fit with each other?
They don't. So should we ignore the official word from Disney? Bad idea.
Instead of dismissing Don's suggestion, why not simply choose to believe
(as I do) that in some stories (including "Kids is Kids"), Ludwig is a
bachelor, and in some stories (including Don's material), Ludwig is
married?! Problem solved, and, hopefully, everybody is happy.

If you don't like this compromise, and if you want Don's idea to be the
"truth", then we would have to ignore a cartoon from Disney themselves.
How can we possibly do that? They *created* the character!

Don Rosa has several interesting ideas, but some of them only work in
his own carefully-thought-out universe. Don has shown that Scrooge has
no brothers, making him the last male McDuck. That works very well in
adding an epic dimension to Don's Scrooge. Outside Don's stories,
though, Romano Scarpa has created a brother of Scrooge's named
Gedeone. Should this character be killed off, just because he doesn't
fit into Don's view of Scrooge?

Don dislikes Fethry Duck and has stated this character doesn't exist in
his universe. At least in Scandinavia, Fethry is immensely popular with
readers. Should every story ever made with Fethry be banned from being
reprinted?

The Italian version of the Money Bin is drawn with a dome on top of its
roof. Don uses the Barks model in his stories. Should Italian artists --
after 50 or so years -- be forced to drop the dome and draw the Bin in
Barks' style?

These are just a few (rhetorical) examples. As you can probably tell: If
Disney creators were forced to adhere to Don Rosa's ideas, a lot of
changes would have to be made in non-Rosa stories. Changes that, I
suspect, especially Italians would find annoying. Why irritate millions
of readers? And why limit the number of useable Duck characters and
elements? Why not simply let the creators do as they wish (within
reason)?

Lars





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