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<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Nils
from Norway recently sent some very insightful comments on the topic of
continuity in Barks' duck stories.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Here
are excerpts taken from Donald Ault's compilation "Carl Barks Conversations"
which contains lots of highly interesting interviews with the grand
master. So here is what Barks thought about continuity.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>The
interview was taken in 1973 by Donald Ault (typos by me,
sorry):</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>p.
45/46:</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>CB: I
just built each story as a little story and wound it up with a comical ending
without worrying about whether it made any sense. [If Uncle Scrooge loast all
his money in one episode,] the next time I wanted to use him and his money I
just went ahead and used them. I didn't think it was necessary to worry as to
whether he got it back from this previous episode or not. The episodes were not
even connected; they were different comic books. Each one sold for a
dime. </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>p.
48/49:</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>DA:
When you first introduced your characters - Scrooge, Gladstone, Gyro Gearloose,
the Beagle Boys - you treated them as if they'd been around. It really
fascinated me. Do you have any thoughts why you did that, because it seerns
like a pattern?</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>CB: I guess I did it so as to save myself a heck of a lot of
introducing. I would introduce them in such a way that you knew what they
were and then let the story develop their character. As you read more of
the story you began to understand more about the guy. Instead of trying to
do it all in one series of pages, why it was just sort of fed to you a
little time, like vitamin pills.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>DA:
The sense of reality of the stories - I got the feeling that the events going on
between or outside the stories, and every once in a while you get a glimpse
into this world. And yet you rarely made a reference between stories. The ducks
would never say, "Remember when i to get the Golden Helmet." But when you were
introducing new characters, quite often there would be this indication that
things had be on that the reader hadn't known about. You never thought about
that? </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>CB: I think that what has happened now is that over the years all
stories have been read and the relation of one story to another has come
apparent to all of you readers, and you can see the connection to the
characters and the build-up of the characters and all. Now when I
was working, I was working from the other end of the line. All of
these charkters were all strangers to me, and each story had to stand by itself;
and when I was developing these characters, I rernember having
thoughts like "Should I mention something about a previous story that
had taken place?" And always I discarded that idea because I felt
there's no worse in picking up a comic book on the stand and starting to read
and finding that you are reading something that is continued from some
earlier book that you don't have and have no means of getting. I find
a frustration in that. I notice that is used a lot in these Marvel comics,
but I wouldn't go in for that stuff. I felt that each story had to be
a complete story in itself, and whatever introduction of a character that took
was just an incidental part of the story. lf I used that character again,
he was just introduced in the part that he was going to play in that story,
not on the strength of what he had been in the past. Take a character
like Gyro. He was an inventor, but I didn't go back and rehash a
bunch of his earlier inventions in order to show what a great inventor
he was. I let him go ahead and show what he could do in this story in which he
was acting</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>DA:
But when Scrooge had his own comic, you did sort of assume that knew who he was,
since he was the main character?</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>CB:
Well, I tried to guard against it, but occasionally it did get to where,
carelessly, I just let things go as if whoever was reading it would know
who in the hell he was. That was bad.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>DA: So
when you were doing the Uncle Scrooge comics-am I putting words in your
mouth-you were sort of introducing him every time you wrote the comic, as if
this were the first time anyone had ever read an Uncle Scrooge
comic?</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>CB:
I wasn't exactly that so much as to say that, well, here is a rich guy
-he's got such and such an influence over Donald or over the events in
this story. It's hard to put it into words. He was not deliberately
introduced as a new character each time, but he was treated as an understandable
character; that is, you understood that he was a guy with certain
characteristics. I felt he should be handled in such a way that the reader
need to ever have known about Unde Scrooge before, that he could still gather
enough out of this role that Scrooge was playing that he would still get
sense out of it.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>DA:
Scrooge wasn't ever exactly the same character in any two stories, was he?
</FONT></SPAN><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>There were certain aspects of his character that were added just fo one
particular story, and he would have those characteristics for that
story alone. For example, in the Klondike story he had a bad memory, but he
had a noticeably bad memory in only one story. In more subtle ways,
in other stories, he would have certain characteristics that were totally
developed, explored, and then dropped after that one
story.<BR></FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>CB:
Each was a gimmick, each was the vehicle or the running gag of the
story. Like the story in which he was addicted to nutmeg tea. I'm
beginning to get some clippings out of some underground comic called Creem
that implies that he was a drug addict because he was addicted to nutmeg and
that nutmeg taken in sufficient quantities can have an effect on
your</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>DA:
That's true, supposedly.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>CB: The reason I chose nutmeg was that it was something that
grew in the tropics and gave him an excuse to go to the tropics. God,
otherwise I could have said, "codfish tails," and sent him to
Iceland.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>DA:
But t his craving for nutmeg tea never appeared again.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>CB:
No, no. It was just a gimmick to make a story. (laughs)</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=250204111-21082003><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>Cord</FONT></SPAN></DIV></BODY></HTML>