A little while back I made a slightly cryptic remark that I had "been  a
fan of Don Rosa's work before I even saw any". I suppose I should
explain myself.... (I should warn you all I'm prone to be a little
self-indulgent from time to time, and this post is such a time I
think.)

Back in the 60s and 70s we had in Australia reprints of US comics,
produced locally. (Actually, they started much earlier than that, but I
first found them back in the late 60s.) Like many people (I now realise)
I quickly found a taste for Barks stories (the "good duck artist" ya
know), and built up a big collection of these comics. Then, to my
horror, the Disney comics disappeared, and months later horrible Whitman
editions started to show up, with poor printing, bad paper, and worst of
all, almost no Barks stories. I wasn't sure, but I decided that
the "good artist" must have retired, so I just lost interest in new
comics, pulling out the old ones from time to time. It's hard to
describe the impact those long Scrooge tales had on me as a kid, maybe
some of you felt the same (I'm pretty sure Don and Steven Speilberg did
anyway.) That was about 1976, and I didn't buy another comic for almost
a decade... 

When I was a poor post-graduate student back in the mid-80s I happened
to walk past the comic section of our local newsagent on the way to the
football magazines, when I saw something I recognized, a Barks cover,
but on a Reader's digest sized comic. I picked it up, and lo and behold,
but there is a "good" duck story I have never seen before! (It was
Tralla La, for some reason never reprinted after it's 1950s appearence
out here) I bought it, and read it several times, learning the name
"Carl Barks" for the first time. On reflection, it was _absolutely
clear_ to me that this sort of story was too good for the genre to
disappear, and sooner or later someone would pick up on it and produce
similar stuff. (I knew nothing of page rates and royalties at the time
:-) ) It was also clear to me that I would buy the new stories (and any
other old ones I hadn't seen before) with great delight. So, imagine how
I felt a couple of months later when I saw the Gladstone ads for U$219
with Son of the Sun in it. This was it! Just as Don felt it his "manifest
destiny" to write these stories, it was clearly mine to read them!

So, now to find U$219... Aaargh, as time went on, it was clear that I
had somehow missed it. Gladstones scheduled on either side came onto the
shelves, but no US! Panic time. I asked the newsagent - he was bemused
at best, and had no idea what had happened. I got onto my pushbike and
rode around to 25+ other shops, but no-one there had seen it either. I
tried the Direct shops, but their copies (like, all 1 or 2 of them) had
disappeared 3 months ago. I then, in desperation rang the newsagent
distributers, and was told "oh yeah, we got a lot that were water
damaged - that was probably them. They were thrown out." To cut a long
story short, I gave up and went to work, but at the train station, on
the newsstand there, was a single wrinkled, waterstained US219. Yahoo! I
wasn't disappointed with it, and I have enjoyed Don's work ever since.

To DON:

It is a bit sad now to read reports of Barks' reaction to your
popularity (and I'm sure that's the root cause of his obvious
bitterness), but it's not the first time someone who's work I've admired
has turned out to have the same flaws and pettinesses that other people
have. All I can say Don, is that you must feel pretty lousy about it,
and I don't blame you, but please don't "drop the torch" as it were.
When it's all said and done, does Barks think he _owns_ the ducks? That
is pretty sad from someone who worked for Disney for 30-odd years. In
any case, how could anyone resist the urge to investigate the impact the
ducks visit had on Plain Awful, given the impact Rhutt Betler had? (That
idea had occured to me too incidentally.) And the latest story
"Guardians of the Lost Library" is just masterful. You took something
that had been a sticking point with me for two decades - how could that
book have all those things in it? - and turn what was a somehwat clumsy
plot contrivance into a plausible, wonderfully convoluted story. As
well, you touched something I have a sense of wonder about, the Great
Library of Alexandria. Most of my favourite Barks stories do the same
thing - space travel, lost civilizations etc etc. Makes me feel like a
kid again.

I know my words of praise won't balance Barks condemnations, but I think your
work holds its own admirably Don. By the way, was the surname "Fonebone"
a tip of the hat to Jeff Smith?
(Finally, I'm not sure why you had to have Cleopatra in the story as the
female antecedent of the JWW. The last keeper of the library of
Alexandria was a woman called Hypatia, who died at her post at the hands
of those who sacked the library - so Carl Sagan says anyway.)

Sorry to go on so long everyone, but I did warn you!

	Andrew Davies

P.S. Don, if you would like some old Australian Disneys for your
collection, I would swap some for some Captain Kentuckys.

