+Postage Due+Disney-comics digest #126.

[Don Rosa]

BJORN:
	Thanks for the history lesson... but what was your final point?
That there were no libraries in Byzantine Constantinople? There was a
huge one right where I said it was (according to my sources).
	And what's this you say about me not drawing a proper picture of
Constantinople of 1204. I didn't do that. The drawing in the story was
supposed to be modern day. My original script made that clear -- but
what did the caption say in that Norwegian edition? I do know that they
didn't stick closely to my original script, as is always the case. The
only place you're SURE to see the original script to my stories (good or
bad) is in the eventual Gladstone issues.
	And you made a clever observation on those names! "Wilmer Rivers
Evan Flood?"  "Nah, it's not raining hard enough!"

PUNS: What they told me when I first went to work for Egmont and
specifically asked them about using puns was that I should write my
stories as if they were going to be seen in English. If I use a pun in
one spot, this compels the translator to create a different pun in his
language, or at least create some other gag; otherwise the translator
just translates -- they aren't paid to be funny when there's nothing
funny in the original script. However, I've found that other Egmont
editors have told other writers just the opposite -- DON'T use puns. But
whatever the case, I KNOW that my dialogue is not as sharp as it used to
be. When I know that it's going primarilly into the foreign market, I
don't think I'm compelled to spend as much thought as I used to on witty
words, even though it's not a conscious lack of effort.

	Oh, and I forgot to say to Bjorn: even if I had drawn a bad
cityscape of a city, PLEASE give me a break! You can't imagine how much
I DETEST drawing such things. In "Lost Library" I drew the entire story
before going back and doing all those cityscapes that I'd skipped over.
Such drawings are enormously tedious and not the slightest amount of fun
to do -- and after spending so much time on them, readers will just
glance over them to get on with the story. Maybe if I knew the secrets
of how to draw such scenes it wouldn't be so tiresome -- but I still
feel like a rank amatuer who hasn't the slightest idea what I'm doing
compared to all those other great Disney/Egmont/Oberon/Italian artists!