Disney-comics digest #138.

[David A Gerstein]

	Dear Folks,

	Only one comment today.

	Mattias Hallin was discussing uses of MM in Barks stories and
noted the one where a quiz-show host asks Donald for MM's social
security number.  This story was not written by Barks, who actually
noted that "I wouldn't have thought it reasonable [or some such] to
use the 'Mickey's social security number' gag" (in THE BARKS LIBRARY,
set VII).

	Actually, I wouldn't have used it either, mainly because it
doesn't treat Mickey as a peer of Donald but as a CELEBRITY... the
quiz show's question is plainly supposed to be like someone in "our"
universe asking, "What's Bing Crosby's social security number?"

	The overt reference to Mickey in a DD story is in WDC&S 85
when Donald refuses to answer the doorbell thinking it's a salesman,
then begrudgingly stomps over to get it because "it might be Daisy, or
-- or Mickey, or *somebody* I know!"

	Don has said that this story (October 1947) is too early for
him to take into account, but in that same letter, which I can't
dredge up right now, he mentioned that "Lost in the Andes" was also
too early for some of the plot's elements (i. e. Donald saying he's
from "south Burbank") to make sense in his stories, too.

	Of course these were *early* stories.  So why not show that as
a young boy -- in the *early* days of his life, Donald associated with
Mickey?  There are lots of great conflicts between MM and DD in the
Sunday Gottfredson strip, but right at the point when Donald matures
from bratty kid to pessimistic twentysomething (c. 1937) in his own
strip, he suddenly drops from Mickey's.  While he may have been dropped
at the time simply under orders from the Disney studio, it happens at
*just* the right time to give the impression that when Donald matured
and passed adolescence, he left Mickey's town (whatever it's called --
we've got four names now!).

	I *know* you don't like Mickey much, Don, but you can think
privately to yourself that no matter how the past was, that the
*mature* DD has left Mickey completely, just as you feel is true.  
If Barks catches Donald in his early twenties (his nephews are *very* 
young in the first stories), then Gottfredson and the early Taliaferro
can be viewed as chronicling some of Donald's younger years, when ... 
yes, Mickey was part of Donald's community.  Why not respect the 
Gottfredson and Taliaferro versions of DD's youth when Barks gives you
nothing to go by?

	Besides, Don, you could draw Mickey the way Barks did in "The
Riddle of the Red Hat," and you only need use him for a page or so
(recreating some gag between DD and MM early in Donald's life --
perhaps lifted from an old Sunday page).  If you do this I'll never
ask you to put MM in another DD story!!

	Your friend,

	David, who would also like to see the young Donald hanging
around with Peter Pig, who could be explained as Herbert's eventual
father!  (You know Peter, right?)

	"Look, Mickey... just a minute ago, it was sunny outside, and
now it's raining again!"
	"Yeah!  But it's swell weather... for ducks!"
	<David.A.Gerstein at Williams.edu>