Charles Buchanan on Don Rosa

[David A Gerstein]

	Dear Folks,

	You may remember how I quoted Charles Buchanan on r.a.d.
regarding Don Rosa's "anti-r.a.d. posts"... and how Don Rosa had me send
a reply to r.a.d.  I can't recall the whole reply now, but I duly
mailed it to r.a.d.  It soon got a response from Charles, and I'm
posting it here, beginning now.

	* * * * *

	Gosh!  Comic writers/artists are reading and critiquing my
work!  As a small-scale cartoonist, this is a great thing to happen 
to me!  Anyway, when I made that comment I was referring to a thread 
from about a month back when r.a.d. got a post from Don Rosa 
(supposedly) which mentioned r.a.d. being a place where women debate 
the cuteness of Chip and Dale, etc.,etc.  This post provoked several 
flames from people (who wondered just who Don Rosa was, anyway), and 
overall people reacted to that original post pretty negatively.  I 
believe most of these posters thought Mr. Rosa was criticizing a 
group of people he had never posted or lurked with.  I meant no harm 
by my remark, and actually I'm surprised that someone who creates 
work that is criticized by the general public even noticed my simple 
quote!  I don't want to start any flame wars (the water wars are 
much more interesting to read), but I just wanted to explain myself.  
And by the way, Mr. Rosa, if you're reading this, I loved "Return 
to Plain Awful," "Return to Xanadu," and "The Master Landscapist."

                                          --Charles Buchanan
                                            CBUCHAN1 at ua1vm.ua.edu
                                            (e-mail before Dec. 18)

	* * * * *

	I believe that when Mr. Buchanan refers to Don's work as being
"work that is criticized by the general public" he doesn't mean that
most people criticize it harshly, but that it's the subject of debate
among huge bodies of people, and that he's surprised that with so many
folks out there who discuss Rosa's work, his comment was noticed.
Gosh, why shouldn't it be?

	Per, has Charles enrolled in our list now?  He wrote to me
that he was planning to...

	Sincerely,

	David Gerstein

	P. S.  Don, I remember that in one of your posts to r.a.d. you
made a point of mentioning how Mickey was not popular in comics.  Why
did you go to the trouble of throwing in an anti-Mickey comment?
Mickey is less popular because the two "saleable" MM creators, Floyd
Gottfredson and Romano Scarpa, have not been given adequate exposure
and were completely IGNORED for nearly forty years in comic books.
Would Donald still sell so well today if Barks had suddenly vanished
from the comics in 1948?  Of course not.

	P. P. S.  You once said that "everyone has their own idea of
how to make MM sell, but he just doesn't..."  Actually, sales figures
from John Clark show that Gottfredson sells very well, with others FAR
behind.  Gladstone's old MM comic made little to no money because it had
gigantic production costs, FAR outflanking the Duck books.  Thus its
"just-OK" sales, while they would have been good enough for a Duck
book to survive on, could not support MM.