Disney-comics digest #633.

Don Rosa donrosa at iglou.com
Mon Apr 10 06:36:00 CEST 1995


>AUGIE AND ANYONE ELSE WITH SOME SPARE TIME:
        Thank you for the kind words about chapter 8. It's one I was looking
forward to seeing in America since I am quite partial to telling tales of
$crooge's Yukon days. Actually, I'd already seen it in English since they
printed the "Lo$" 2 years ago in England, but the Gladstone version is
always the best, even with Disney's interference (which the foreign editions
don't have).
        I finally went out and bought a copy of that issue myself. There
were several lil' surprises inside for me... things that were changed by
more of those inexplicable Disney whims -- sorta like "we gotta have 'em
change something so it'll be this and this, so nyaah". And some odd goofs in
the lettering which is otherwise superb, being by the county's foremost
funnybook letterer Todd Klein.
        Just in case you're curious or otherwise desparately bored, I'll
tell you what I saw when I read this issue...
        My very first reaction was my usual repulsion at my art; in
particular, about the time I drew this tale (about 3 years ago) I seem to
have been drawing every last Duck head too small. $crooge's head is too tiny
for his beak in every single panel in this comic!!! After drawing episode 9
is when I looked back and realized that I was drifting in this odd
direction, and whited out and redrew most Duck heads in that 9th chapter. I
still have the problem now, but I think (I hope) I catch myself more often.
        My distress started with the splash panel where I see they left the
"The" out of the title "THE King of the Klondike". This is a bigger deal
than it seems only because all the titles of these 12 chapters are supposed
to fit the form of "The - of the --".
        My next "HUH?" came at the bottom of page 2 where $crooge is
bragging about his past exploits and the fearsome names he's been given, and
the dialogue has him saying "...and several other scary (but not quite
accurate) names!" I don't know why this change was made -- I guess it was
just a goof -- but, obviously, he should be saying "but quite accurate", not
"NOT quite accurate".
        Page 3 - panel 2: "Hog dang"? What is "Hog dang"? I think my script
had "hot dang". In panel 4 is a Disney-change that I'd been forewarned of:
my script had Wyatt Earp saying "you cheap gunny", not "sonny". You can
sorta tell Todd Klein's lettering has been tampered with. It seems that
somebody at Disney had the vague idea that "gunny" meant feces. I've never
heard of that myself, but... well, I used the same word in part 7 and no one
objected at Disney and there wasn't an outcry from enraged readers. This is
what I mean by these Disney-changes seeming to be made by throwing darts at
a comic hung on a wall.
        Page 4 - panel 2: there is supposed to be a bullet hole in the
forehead of the guy in the picture on the wall -- you can see him looking up
at it in disgust. Another Disney-change. This careless gag would obviously
have caused children to try to shoot themselves between the eyes then pose
for photographs. I'll never understand why Disney has such incredibly low
regard for comic book readers! Their own animated cartoons which are watched
by far younger children (and don't even require the intellegence to read)
still don't treat their audience as being the sub-cretins they seem to think
are reading "their" comics. (Maybe it's that it's not "their" comics is what
they resent?) Bah.
        Now I'll leap all the way to page 6. Page 5 was okay! You see in
panel one where the guy is kicking $crooge. And $crooge apparently socks him
in panel two. But... the "KICK" sound effect is stuck in with the "SOCK"
sound effect. How odd.
        Page 8 has a mistake all my own. That's Casey Coot $crooge is
talking to. That's Grandma Duck's brother, Cornelius Coot's grandson, and
the guy I showed $crooge buying the deed for Killmotor Hill from all the way
back in my "Last Sled to Dawson" in 1988. But he's supposed to have
"Gladstone Gander" type eyes. I drew him with the wrong shape eyes! (He
shows up again in that new "Hearts of the Yukon" story I just did for
Gladstone's SCROOGE MCDUCK IN THE YUKON #1 on sale in 2 1/2 months.)(With
the RIGHT eyes.)
        Oh, Augie asked about that Whitehorse bank safety deposit box that I
show $crooge keeping that Killmotor Hill deed and his Goose Egg Nugget in in
my "His Majesty McDuck" story. You'll see $crooge get that box out to show
his family the contents in chapter 9 of the "Lo$", and I mention it in my
text piece for that issue. Everything ties together. I never forget details.
Except the shapes of characters' eyes. I forget that.
        Oh, I've lost track of the page numbers, but they didn't show Todd
Klein the correct lettering for the sign on the Black Jack Ballroom. But I
lettered the sign myself in "Hearts of the Yukon".
        That half-page panel with $crooge walking down the main street in
Dawson City. Disney's dart didn't stick in the stuff in that page, like the
dead body with the arrow in it or the hideous gun-to-nose motif.
        But somebody caught my dialogue on the next page where I had $crooge
climbing out a window in a hotel and telling the occupants of the darkened
room "Sorry folks! Just passing through! Carry on!" and changed it to "Go
back to sleep". Was it so obvious that I was implying they weren't sleeping? 
        There. What a grand waste of Internet space this has been, eh?

        But one last thing -- I usually don't care much for my art, but now
and then I do... and this cover on U$ #292 might be the best I've done since
"Last Sled to Dawson". Maybe I just love these Yukon $crooge scenes. But I
think the cover for $CROOGE MCDUCK IN THE YUKON #1 will top this one -- it's
a revamp of that "Last Sled" cover, but finally with the Northern Lights
which were SUPPOSED to have been on that 1989 cover but weren't, with the
proper starry sky and the midnight sun shining behind $crooge, and
Glittering Goldie on his arm. I look forward to seeing that one! And plans
are to release it as a special computer-colored "junior" lithograph, though
I don't know for how much (but it'll be pretty cheap, I'm sure).




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