DCML Digest Issue 9

[Don Rosa]

> From: Nat Chrenshaw <natchrenshaw at yahoo.se>
> Subject: Re: Hall of Fame (Rosa)
> But for how long do you think they are planning to print his stories?
> I mean, ALL his stories, including the ones he's just brought out?
> And I wonder if these books is going to be available in stores or
> only as a "club"?
> Does Mr. Rosa himself have any information on this subject?

I guess the answer is that they'll keep printing new ones as long as people
are buying 'em. The idea is to print *two* Rosa HALL OF FAMEs a year, last I
heard. And certainly they will be sold in stores. But I have never really
asked in which Egmont countries they will be published -- Norway, Denmark,
Sweden... Germany will follow... somebody said Poland?... Iceland? Hungary?
I guess they won't be in "limited partner" Finland since they've had Rosa
hardbacks there for over a decade, even if not as a chronological
presentation of everything.

> Well, the point is, that if the holy grail becomes fiction, and
> that it never existed becouse King Arthur just made it up,

Why would you think that? Arthur had certainly heard of it, as had just
about anyone in the Western World in those days. But he was a barbarian and
didn't know much for sure about anything, so he thought maybe that big
sucker with all the power must be it. That would explain to him why everyone
wanted to find it so much.

> From: "Claudio Eckert" <c_seiten at hotmail.com>
> I'm would like to know of wich material Scrooge's first dime consists. My
> guess is silver. Is this true? Or is it a form of alloy or something?

An 1875 seated-Liberty Dime would be silver... I would think solid silver,
but I'm not a coin collector, so I'm not sure. Nowadays our silver coins are
of an alloy.
By the way, anyone want their own 1875 seated Liberty Dime (assuming you
want to accept my decision that's what $crooge's #1 Dime is, at least in my
stories)? Just go onto eBay and type "1875 dime" into the searcher, and take
your pick. A well-worn one to match $crooge's will only cost a few bucks.

> From: Olaf Solstrand <olaf at andebyonline.com>
> Subject: Re: Hall of Fame (Rosa)
> The Holy Grail was the cup of Jesus, wasn't it?
> I assume that Jesus had a cup to drink from even if king Arthur
> never went  looking for it.
>
> (though I'd always assumed it to be... plainer.)

Sure, but see, I try to outguess various publishers. What if a publisher
didn't want to mention the Holy Grail? Or at least thought it sacrilegious
what Donald (or I) was doing to it? I had to leave an "out", a way for them
to simply say that Donald broke a "very valuable chalice" which was part of
the Templar treasure. And therefore it had to be very ornate to match that
possible change in my script.
And aside from that reason, another reason would be that if I *had* drawn
the Grail as a very ordinary cup, then someone would have written "(though
I'd always assumed it to be... fancier.)" since that's the way it's always
been shown elsewhere. I actually half-copied that particular Grail off the
cover of a paperback book about a Grail Quest (as so many are).

> From: Geir Hasnes [mailto:g-hasne at online.no]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 6:13 AM
> By the way, I loved your recent story, Don. However, isn't it
> really too much that Scrooge not only has become the world's
> richest man, but also that he unknowingly resides above the
> world's greatest knowledge reservoir (JW Guidebook) and
> unknowingly grows up above the world's greatest treasure?

Yeah. Pretty wild, eh? Fiction is stranger than truth!
But when I started doing my research into the Templar treasure, the first
thing that popped up was that the accepted theories had followed the Templar
escape route to Scotland, involving secret alliances with Scottish clans
just a bit east of where I'd placed Castle McDuck, saying that the treasure
was hidden below some church or ancestral castle of some Scottish clan
somewhere in that area. Therefore it seemed to be pretty obvious what the
plot of my story should be -- people would think me screwy for passing up
the obvious idea that the McDucks were part of the secret. Wouldn't you want
the McDucks to be the clan that hid the greatest treasure in history?! When
I started out to do a Templar treasure quest, I had no idea it would end up
in Scotland, and I let the facts take me where they would. Really,
historical facts always write my stories for me... sometimes I don't think I
can even take much credit. It's all there in the history books -- I just
link the known facts and theories together and then jump back outta the way.
(By the way, to be precise, $crooge did not reside over the world's greatest
knowledge reservoir... just over a room full of empty book covers. And
likewise, he did not grow up above the world's greatest treasure... he never
lived at Castle McDuck, only his sisters and father did, which I guess was a
major point of that story.)