peculiar mails

Sat Apr 2 21:09:31 CEST 2005

Last month I read a discussion which did not make much sense to me. However, after
receiving the following mails I understand that, from the side of Mr. Rosa, there consist
feelings of intense personal hatred against fans that have different than only positive
feed-back on his work. I do understand that it will never be pleasant to receive
criticism on your work, nonetheless I think that such a generalizing mail as this can be
considered somewhat unprofessional.
==================================================================
From: "Don Rosa" 
To: I. Bomer
Subject: re: Worries over "Barksfront"
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2005 13:36:53 -0500

Sorry for the slow reply! I just returned from 10 days in France where I was
a Guest-of-Honor at the Anglouleme Comics Festival...

>>>>>I email you because I am a little worried about what's going on in
especially the Dutch Don Rosa Fansite "McDuck"
People are discussing your stories there in an incredibly nasty way; they
are analyzing your beautiful stories and they find a lot of weak points in
them, it's really so low to the ground.
More and more people find the stories not as good anymore as they once were
and even the better stories appear to have a lot of doubtful things, they
say. It's horrible to read, Don, all this criticizing, and it really affects
a lot of people's views upon your great work. Some of them also say that you
really screwed up C.Barks's world, but what are they talking about, he's a
nice artist but is not the God they think he is, especially compared to you.
You really made his rather common fairy-tale world into a realistic  one.
And now a lot of people are in doubt, your albums don't sell as good anymore
they say. Why are they so much against you, WHY? It's terrible Don, it's
terrible! What can we do about those  people, WHAT CAN WE DO?

There's not a single reason to worry about it.
My stories are still the most popular Disney comics currently being produced
by a VAST margin. But even if the few mean-spirited Barksfans you refer to
could make any difference (which they can't), it still doesn't matter
because I don't get paid on the basis of how well my comics sell in Holland
or anywhere else. The Dutch publishers take my work without paying a penny
to me, and are the only Disney publisher on earth too cheap to even send me
complimentary copies... not even of their all-Rosa album series where they
use my name and likeness without my permission. No, there's nothing here to
be concerned about at all.
What *does* make me wonder is not why someone would dislike my work (I'm not
that crazy about it myself... especially my art), but rather why, in all the
world, it's only DUTCH comics fans that are so nasty as to act this way?
It's fine to not care for somebody's work. One man's meat is another man's
poison, we say. And there are surely people in all countries who dislike my
stories. But for 15 years it has been *strictly* a few Dutch fans who are so
vocally negative about it in the most vicious manner. It begins to seem to
indicate that the Dutch have a national trait of being the nastiest and
pettiest people in the world. But why would that be? Do you find the Dutch
to be this nasty and vindictive in everything they say or write? It's very
sad!
It seems to be some form of resentment, but again, why is it only the Dutch
who suffer from it? You might notice that they are *very* vicious to an
unreasonable extreme. This suggests that it is not my stories that they
dislike so much as that they *hate* how my work enjoys virtually unanimous
popularity all over the world. They have this warped idea that this
popularity "threatens" the popularity of Barks' stories, which is nonsense.
Barks is the greatest storyteller of the 20th Century -- nothing can ever
change that. Another proof of this is how they constantly say that I am
"ruining" Barks' world -- how do they figure anything I do is affecting
stories that Barks created 50 years ago? Are those stories changing? Of
course not! It's a silly comment for them to make. But they can't think of
any other criticism.
Another proof is that you'll notice that, as much as they claim they hate
the stories, they seem to *always rush out and buy them and read them*. Why
are they bothering to read comics they don't like? No, there's a "hidden
agenda" with them that I think you can understand if you just observe their
antics.
I keep referring to "them" but I have never seen any evidence of this nasty
resentment except on a few occasions in the past 18 years, notably one Dutch
kid who used to write similarly nasty messages to the "Disney Comics Mailing
List" named something like "Daniel Van Eiden" (just going by memory). I am
only assuming the message writers you refer to are similar? Perhaps he's one
of the contributors?
At any rate, these are just a few very unhappy, very lonely, very nasty
little boys and you can be comfortable to just ignore them. All they want to
do is stir up trouble, to make you angry, so the most insulting thing you
can do to them is simply IGNORE them. They just don't matter. Don't let them
bother you!

>>>>>Don't bother about these stupid idiots who are criticizing you on the
Internet, we'll deal with them!

Ah! Well, then we agree! I wasn't even aware of whatever message group you
refer to since I can't read Dutch. But you should ignore them as well.
But I'm sorry that you can't be enjoying Duckcomics in any other country in
Europe or North or South America where there are not these "fans" who are so
resentful and pointlessly nasty as they seem to be in the Netherlands. Well,
as I said, sad, sad, sad.........
Thanks for the nice message!!!!!!!!!

From: "Don Rosa" 
To: "'I. Bomer'"
Subject: RE: Worries over "Barksfront"
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 03:42:33 -0500

I'm sorry, Daniel, didn't I send you the sort of reply that you hoped to
post across the internet?

Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 12:17:43 -0800 (PST)
From: I. Bomer 
Subject: RE: Worries over "Barksfront"
To: Don Rosa 

Dear Don,

Thanks a lot for your nice email! I am glad that you do not worry too much about all
these nasty sounds on the Internet,
although they often make me very angry, especially when people get really personal.
But ignoring is indeed the very best thing
to do, Don.

I guess that this email you send me later was ment for someone else?

Okay, keep up the great work and I hope we'll soon be able to enjoy your newest
story! I' m really looking forward to it!

Bye bye!

Warm greetings,

Ingmar Bomer

Don Rosa <donrosa at iglou.com> wrote:

I'm sorry, Daniel, didn't I send you the sort of reply that you hoped to
post across the internet?

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