Mickey Mouse (and location of Duckburg!)

[Per Starback]

Fredrik:
> Another very good MM story was actually written by Carl Barks. The
> English title of this story should be something like "MM and the red
> hat".  Does anyone know any background facts about this story? Why,
> for example, did CB do a MM? And why once and never more?

The title is "Mickey Mouse and The Riddle of the Red Hat".  Barks has
written: "About how I happened to do the Mickey and Porky series in
1944 and '45---I was _asked_ to do so by the office.  I wouldn't have
ventured into those characters' field by choice."

A few years later Bill Wright got to be the regular guy for doing
Mickey Mouse Oneshots, so then the need didn't arose anymore I guess.

As for why Donald is a better character than Mickey (not only because
Barks did the Duck) I just read The Barks Collector Annual #1 from
1983 which I got the other day, and there's an article "Donald Duck =
Artist's Dreamfigure?" by Volker Reiche where he points of how rigid
Mickey is: "invariable ears; (Can wear a hat only with distorted
drawing); no hair to stand on end; small, expressionless eyes;
unmovable nose ..." whereas *every* line is variable when drawing
Donald: "variable eyebrows; expressive variable eyes; beak:
super-nose-mouth-chin combination (1000 variation possibilities from
accordion pleated to out-stretched in form of a flute!) ..."

BTW: in that same TBC Annual is also excerpts from an interview with
Barks by Klaus Strzyz (originally published in Der Hamburger Donaldist
#14), from which the following about the location of Duckburg may be
of interest as it has been discussed here.

Barks: "I always based its location on Burbank, Calif., the site of
        the Disney studio, but its climate and varying geography often
        made such a location impossible.  When the story was about
        snow and ice, the assumption would have to be that Duckburg
        was far north of Burbank.  No one should attach much
        importance to the technical location of Duckburg.  Please
        treat it as a city of fantasy which moved around to wherever
        it fitted best into the elements of the particular story that
        was being told.  Most of my stories, however, could have
        happened in the climate and geography of Burbank.  That city
        is near the ocean and the desert and a range of fairly high
        mountains."
--       "
Per Starback, Uppsala, Sweden.  email: starback at student.docs.uu.se
 "What is Mickey Mouse's social security number?"