Digest #24

[Don Rosa]

COMMENTS ON DIGEST #whatsit:

	Yes, that's right, "War of the Wendigo", my long Peeweegah sequel, will NEVER be used in America simply because it involves Indians.

	The comment was made that it must be difficult to keep EVERY Barks fan happy. You bet! I try hard to do stories in the same SPIRIT 
as the stories I read in my youth, but while I read Barks I was also reading Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Jack Davis, and Mort 
Weisinger's SUPERMAN... so there's lots more than Barks in my brain. I think Barks fans have been magnanimously kind to me over 
the past few years... and the only ones I can't seem to keep happy are people like my friend Geof Blum (Gladstone's text writer) 
who grew up on STRICTLY Barks; his objections are that my stories are not EXACTLY Barks stories in every possible detail and 
nuance, and all I can say to him is "Hey! I'm not Barks. I'm ME! Whaddiya want?"
	Harry: I think I have the Dutch comic that used "On a Silver Platter", but I'd better check since you should know such stuff better 
than me. But why would they NOT use that story, particularly since I did it for THEM? They've used some that were far worse, 
including those that they had written FOR me (which were REAL stinkers). That "On a Silver Platter" was (in my opinion) my very 
best 10-page gag story!
	Someone commented that Barks showed the Ducks using rocket ships, so that Duckburg might be "far advanced" as in that one weird 
story. But Barks really had no feel for science fiction -- it was one genre he was completely unfamiliar with -- and you'll see 
that any time the Ducks used a rocket ship it was treated as something somewhat experimental or unusual, not commonplace... sorta 
Jules Vernesian?
	My adventure done for Norway's "Year of the Book" is titled "Guardians of the Lost Library". Stefan Dios knows of it because I let 
him read my xerox copies last time I was in Stockholm. He said it was "the best ever" at the time... and Byron Erickson (Gladstone's 
old editor and my current Egmont editor) claims it's the best story I've ever done. This puzzles me since I thought it was just 
"okay". But one thing I've learned in just doing comics for 6 years: every story I write & draw will be one person's LEAST favorite 
and one other person's TOP favorite. There's no explaining how or why a certain story, good or bad, will strike an individual.
	More about Disney's nonexistant archives: As I said, Disney never kept copies of the comic stories since they were not responsible 
for their production and, if anything, had contempt for "Disney" material that THEY did not produce. Western publishing keeps the 
comic archives -- that's who Gladstone contacts when they need a story. Over the decades Egmont has built up its own archives based 
on Western's -- but this is NOT something they are required to do by Disney. It's something they MUST do due to Disney's typical 
cavalier treatment of their licensees whom they give very little worthwhile help to... they just collect their money and take 
ownership of the stories that they (Egmont, Oberon, etc.) produce with no help from Disney. As for Gladstone using some of the stories 
that Disney has produced for the foreign market, Gladstone has long told me that those stories aren't any good and it was a puzzle 
why Disney kept producing them for years when none of the foreign markets liked them and no one wanted them when they could be using 
the excellent Oberon and Egmont stuff.
	Lastly, the Junior Woodchucks ranks. I maintain that the ranks are ever changing and part of the humor should be that the same rank 
is never heard of twice. As for the ranks that Barks may have mentioned: if  "Hightails" is the highest possible rank, and it is 
denoted by the caps with the high tails, then how is it explained that ALL Woodchucks wear hightail caps? All Woodchucks are of the 
highest rank? No, it's funnier not to try to make sense of it.