Disney-comics digest #244.

[Don Rosa]

TORSTEN:
	My influences are all subconscious. I never purposely imitated
anyone's work since I never took doing comics seriously -- I never had
the least intention of doing it as a living until I was 36. But at the
same time, it's clear what my influences are since they are obviously
all the comics I was reading as a kid; I started on Barks' Ducks, moved
to MAD magazine, then to Mort Weisinger's Superman. It's from the latter
that I get my enjoyment of doing "secret origin" stories and in building
a consistant universe for a fictitious character. My Lo$ isn't precisely
like anything you've seen before since it's a mixture of both styles. As
I've said, I treat everything that has gone before, such as $crooge's
life, as existing on a specific timeline -- I feel to regard it
otherwise would be an insult to the character. But I regard as all other
stories, all stories taking place in the "present", to erase themselves
after they have occured. I violate this myself to some extent --
f'rinstance, in "Guardians of the Lost Library", I make references to
stuff discovered in "His Majesty McDuck". But at least TIME never
progresses -- TIME erases itself at the end of each tale, even if the
characters might learn some bit of info. This is certainly one big
difference between my work and Barks' -- I know of only four instances
where his Ducks remember anything that happened in a previous story. But
that's one advantage (or disadvantage?) I have over Barks -- I know
there are many people reading this stuff with a very serious eye.
	Also, here I am again to tell you "how the world works".
Gladstone absolutely CANNOT publish/market anything for any market other
than its current market, which is the U.S., Canada, and Australia/New
Zealand. That's how these licenses work. They could never get any other
license since those areas are covered by other publishers (usually
EGMONT) who would never allow another publisher into their area. Of
course, Gladstone comics are sold by mail and at specialty stores
everywhere in the world, but this is a limited distribution by
independant distributors, not a newsstand deal.