DCML Digest Issue 25

Don Rosa donrosa at iglou.com
Tue Mar 23 13:40:46 CET 2004


From: <H.W.Fluks at telecom.tno.nl>
Subject: RE: old castle's new secrets
>>>One disadvantage of having the title on page 4: I don't know on which
page to look for the D.U.C.K. As a result I still haven't found it! 8-)

It's always in the splash-panel, first panel of the story... meaning not on
the prologue page. Keep looking...

>>>Don has the habit of drawing his text balloons over several panels.
Probably to get the effect like in the movies, where you still hear a
previous scene while already looking at the next scene, or vice versa. But
to me, it simply looks *ugly*. A page would look *so* much better with all
the panel borders being intact.

I'm not sure why panel borders should be "intact" -- often I and all other
cartoonists omit the borders on a panel or two on a page altogether... and
surely my page designs are the most plain and unimaginative as could be
possible (quite purposely, because I don't believe that artsy-fartsy page
lay-outs serve any purpose other than to make a story use up more pages than
needed... whee -- extra page fees for nothing! -- my only mission is to cram
as much of everything onto each page and into each story as I can). But look
back at any spot where my balloons overlap panel borders -- can't you see
why I do it? No, not to suggest any cinematic technique (but that's a cool
idea! Thanks!), it's just so I can fit all that @#$%& dialogue onto the
page! You might have noticed that my stories contain lots more yakkety-yak
than others -- it's the only way I can see to fit it all in there. And the
idea to do it that way struck me as a simple solution for too-many-balloons
when I noticed that Jean Giraud does it that way... so I figgered if it's
good enough for him, I should try it.

>>>Anyway, I liked reading this looong story. In the middle there was a bit
too much treasure hunting to my taste. (A treasure even bigger than the
biggest treasures from the past stories, which were already bigger than the
biggest treasures from the previous stories...)

If there's a problem here, it's with the previous too-big treasures, not
this one. If there is a single lost treasure that would be bigger than all
others, what could it be? Not the treasure of a single Pharaoh. Not the
treasure of a single pirate. It would have to be the treasury of a
continent-wide society that existed for centuries and was richer and more
powerful than any entire nation -- the Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar.
(If it was ever really "lost" or just looted by the Knights when they
scattered to the four corners of the world when the King chased them from
France.)

>>>But when I almost got bored, the story went into a different direction.

Oh, hey, I get *bored to death* with ALL of my stories such that I wanna
scream! Can you imagine putting every ounce of concentration and meager
effort into a *single* story every day, every minute 8 hours a day, for 3 or
4 months, non stop!? Aaaaaaaaaaggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

>>>>I also happened to read about the Templars on a totally different place.
They state that Philip IV had forbidden the Templars because of their sexual
outrages. I guess all history is coloured by the history teller...

Look at the Templar Seal -- notice there are *two* Knights riding the *same*
horse... in a very intimate position. What's *that* all about?
King Philip wanted the Templar wealth. So he created imaginary threats they
posed to the world for which to blame the Templars in an international court
and tried to take over their entire society for the profit of himself and
his cronies. He called them "Tempulars" because he wasn't really very bright
(he'd only managed to become King because his father had been King before
him). Yes, apparently he was a Republican.
Somebody remind France that their own unelected leader once tried to pull
this crap, too. Philip became NONking in less than two years after that. We
can but hope...

>>>>I loved the stuff about combinational maths. I don't know how the nephew
calculated 362,880 that fast, but the subject was very educational. (Aw
well, the nephew had a whole week time to calculate it: the time between
parts 2 and 3 of the story...)

During that week, the Nephew apparently consulted DCML member
statisticalmathmastermind Nils Lid Hjort, like I did, for that calculation.





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