Comments on Don's comments

[Per Starb{ck]

Don Rosa wrote:

> We'll see if this method works better for me. The session where I
> answered 20 individual messages cost me over $10!!!

Gosh!  I'm so used to free net access that it's hard to think of
having to pay for it.  (My phone bills use to be pretty expensive
though. Have modem---will travel!)  Is Compu$erve that expansive?  Is
there anything that can be done about it?

> But to redraw an entire STORY makes no sense -- are we sure they've
> done this?

They have made many strange things in Scandinavia.  For a while they
had someone shorten the long beaks of old Barks comics when reprinting
them to make the ducks look more like later Barks which the readers
were more used to.  They reprinted WDC 89 which takes place at winter
in summertime, and then had someone change it to a summer setting,
etc. etc.

> The only thing I can think of is maybe some freelance writer is
> passing off these stories as their own new work since they can't be
> sued for plegarism, but only cussed by the editor in the unlikely
> event their copying is noticed (and that's not likely with tens of
> thousands of Duck stories out there and editors who don't know much).

That probably happens too, as it did in the old days.  There are
Disney stories that are remarkably similar, like a Mickey Mouse story
very much like Barks's The Gilded Man.  (And of course even Barks
himself more or less copied himself a couple of times.)

> The digest says there has been much discussion about the conflicts
> in the timelines and hometowns and family tree in the Duck comics.
> I'd like to know what such conflicts are as I'm aware of very few.
> (DUCKTALES, as I said, does not count.) And no one has even seen the
> Family Tree yet!

Well, as for family trees we didn't consider only Barks's comics when
such things were discussed.  One thing was the discrepancy between the
newspaper strip Donald Duck where Donald's cousin Della, and the
cartoon "Donald's Nephews" where Donald's sister Dumbella sent him
Huey, Dewey, and Louie.  My guess is that *you* will call the boys'
mother (and Donald's sister) Thelma, as it is in Carl Barks's family
tree, if she ever appears in Life of Scrooge.  Right?

> But any reader who wants to believe the Barksian universe and MY
> universe will have NO conflicts to worry about; this universe is
> specific and accurate and constant. And I can answer any questions 
> anyone might have on it. So...?

Great!  Hm, here is one question pulled out of my hat and there are many
more where that came from:  Is Scrooge's uncle Jake McDuck still alive
(see A Christmas for Shacktown), and in that case, how come Scrooge
was the "last of the clan McDuck" in The Old Castle's Secret?

> TORSTEN ADAIR asks me if I might someday draw Pegleg Pete. No can
> do. He does not exist in the Duck stories -- he's a Mouse villain.

Except in "Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold" of course, as "Black Pete".
(Sorry for being so nitpicky. I know you know, but I just want to set
it straight.)

> Besides, Disney has abolished his pegleg because that made fun of
> cripples or some such.

I think I've read a Gottfredson story where Pete explains that he's
now got a modern artifical leg instead of the old peg leg.
--       "
Per Starback, Uppsala, Sweden.  email: starback at student.docs.uu.se
 "Life is but a gamble!  Let flipism chart your ramble!"