Disney-comics digest #744.

Don Rosa donrosa at iglou.com
Sat Aug 5 05:45:00 CEST 1995


>AUGIE (and others):
        NOW I have seen that new $crooge with part X of the "Lo$". And I
don't know what the problem is, but it looks like lots more than just some
miscolored battleships, at least in my issue. This is the muddiest "Lo$" art
they've ever used. If they actually received a bad set of photostats, I wish
they had contacted me and checked -- I can always send a nice set of
top-quality, personally supervised Xeroxes that are better than any casual
photostat. But they so seldom contact me with this sort of problem for some
reason. What's worse, if they did have bad stats, and even though they did
make coloring goofs, that's the way it will be for ALL future special
collections of the "Lo$". They have redrawn all the word balloons and
colored it all -- nothing could be done now but start from scratch and
completely re-balloon and recolor each page where there might be only the
tiniest mistake to correct... and they can't waste that kinda money on it.

        Funny. I just found out that my countrymen in Italy have just begun
an album-series printing of "Lo$" with new painted covers and other
illustrations by Marco Rota (his first work for Italy since '88), lengthy
text pieces all about me (I mean I can't read them, but I see it says "blah
blah blah Don Rosa blah blah blah"), accompanying reprinting of all the
Barks stories that each chapter refers to, annotated and chronological
indexing of the complete works of Barks, and all sorts of other bells and
whistles. And yet they never contacted me for help or suggestions or even to
get an address to send me a single issue just out of courtesy (though I know
they have been given my address and number). I have it on good authority
that they want to avoid me (and people in my situation... i.e. Disney
freelancers) since they fear that we will demand our fair share of the
royalties that anyone else would get from the foreign reprinting of work
that is entirely their own creation. But they're silly to worry -- I knew
I'd never get that money when I started doing Disney comics. What can I/we
do about it? We're helpless in Disney's power. (I was joking at the Eisner
Award ceremony that someone from Disney would show up to take my award and
put it in the Disney coffer with my royalties and my original art.) But I
still always cooperate with all the companies doing special reprints of my
work. I need to get into contact with the Italian publisher (owned by
Disney) and set their poor minds at ease. This new "Lo$" series they're
producing is actually much nicer than Gladstone's, and I never thought I'd
see somebody outdo that. I just hope I can get them to send me copies... but
I'll probably find that difficult. When I think about it, I can imagine it
might simply be embarrassing for a publisher to deal with someone they know
they should be paying money to but that the system they work within absolves
them of doing. It would be like them calling and saying "Hi. We were using
your work to make money and were just wondering if you'd be interested in
contributing so we could shamelessly exploit you further." 
        I don't expect Disney to pay me or anybody a penny that they aren't
forced to pay -- I'm not so naive. I need to get in touch with Disney-Italia
and assure them that I'd just be proud to help them publish my stories for
the land of my father. That would be nice.
        FABIO -- when you get back to your computer: I hope you can find me
a few more copies of ZIO PAPAERONE #70 and beyond. I probably won't be able
to get any from the publisher and I'd like to have a few to give away. Are
the previous issues of ZP as nice as this, with articles and indexes and all???




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