+Postage Due+Disney-comics digest #191.

[Don Rosa]

ROC:
	A long message, but I can only offer a few cogent comments. In
the American newspaper strips, an "Aunt Fanny" sent a letter to Donald
introducing "cousin Gus". That's the way I depict the set-up in my Duck
Family Tree.
	I've grown up knowing that Grandma drove an old Studebaker
Electric. But who "invented" it? I never considered that. Was it in the
newspapers first or in Barks' comics?

HARRY:
	Why is Egmont reviving the Gottfredson Mouse? I am certain it is
Byron's work! He is a huge fan of the FG Mouse. And what does Bob Foster
do? He is in (partial?) charge of commissioning stories for use in the
DIGESTS, as Byron is in charge of the comic books. 

TRYG:
	Where is Duckburg and-slash-or Calisota? We've discussed this
before you popped in. I don't mind the idea of this being one of those
things left to the imagination, especially since, as the name implies,
it seems to be a state which, for story purposes, has California climate
part of the time and Minnesota climate at other times. As I began each
chapter of the Lo$ with a map of that chapter's action, I was compelled
to show EXACTLY where Calisota and Duckburg are, but only if someone
goes to the extra trouble of comparing my map with an actual map of the
coastline of the western USA. That'll be in chapter 10 which you'll see
in nearly TWO YEARS but which will be used in Europe any day now.

	And this matter of who is the $crooge in DUCKTALES and MICKEY'S
XMAS CAROL. I mostly agree with Harry and Tryg. I also enjoy DUCKTALES
and I enjoy MCC, sorta. The fact that I know that's not the "real"
$crooge doesn't preclude my enjoyment. However, Disney's use of the
classic characters (whom they abandonned into the realm of merchandising
in 1940 for MM and 1954 with DD) as simply ACTORS filling out roles only
shows that they've lost all direction or understanding of who those
characters originally were in even Disney's shallow original uses, and
have given up on them as anything but visual shapes of ink lines.
Obviously, the only "REAL" $crooge can be the Dell comic book version,
in its *slight* variations -- not as an actor. And anytime I refer to
the "real" DD, I make sure I say the real COMIC BOOK DD, which is the
only one I think is especially worthy of particular interest as I see no
reason to be especially infatuated with a merchandising ink-line
configuration. I believe in characters, not shapes. Substance over form.
When Disney deals with these characters (which they own through a mere
legal loophole), they deal with simple form; when the comic books use
them, they deal with SUBSTANCE. Even though I'm an American, I still
profess a preference to the LATTER as unpatriotic as it may be these
days. I hope that we on the Disney Comics Forum are more interested in
substance than form. The people on those Disney BBSs who argue about how
cute Ariel is or how many times they've been on Splash Mountain this
week -- they are the ones more interested in form than substance. (If I
were interested in form, I'd be able to DRAW DD better!)
	The use of $crooge as simply an actor in MCC or as an
inaccurate form in DUCKTALES isn't WRONG... it's just very, very
shallow compared to the use intended by the character's creator, Dell
Comics / Carl Barks.