Disney-comics digest #583.

[Don Rosa]

MIKE:
	Wait! Let's not start misunderstanding here! I didn't say that I might
not answer some irresistable letter in the batch from Finland. I'm just a fair
minded person and I have always made a special point of answering ALL my mail
(albeit slowly); if put in a position of having to select a few letters out of a
huge pile to reply to would be very unfair to all those other nice people, and
I'd almost feel better not to reply to ANY of the batch. But we'll see what
we'll see.
	And YES, the Finnish editor did ask me during a brief phone call last
time I was in Norway whether he could send me such a batch of letters, and I
said sure. What I've been trying to say here, once you told me that the stuff
was on its way, is that he never told me what he has told his readers I'm going
to DO with all that mail. I don't know if he's promised them or even implied to
them that I'd answer it all or not. I just don't know what he wants me to do
with it all and I hope he has sent me some communication about what this whole
deal is about. I don't know under what pretenses he solicited the mail from his
readers. All I know is I'm gonna have a big batch of mail from Finland, and I
HOPE it's in English!
	Actually, someone named Jari Laitine (I wrote it down) from a Helsinki
store named Goodfellows called me yesterday to say that the Finnish editor has
been telling people I'd be making a trip to Finland in June. This is what I mean
about being distressed to hear these European editors making plans for me. I
told the editor I would be happy to consider a trip to see him, but he never
asked me about any times or dates. June is outta the question since I'll be in
Germany for 2 1/2 weeks then, and I can't miss more work than that without going
bancrupt! These editors never seem to realize that I only lose money when I help
them promote their comics -- they never pay me to do it like in the world of
non-Disney comics or books. 

HARRY:
	You don't know why Gladstone would reprint that Danish story? Have I ever
explained to you how Gladstone is forced to select foreign stories for
reprinting. It's true that a very small number of foreign stories are known to
be popular, but the vast bulk of the foreign reprints are not selected that way.
John Clark will flip through foreign comics until he spots a story that he CAN'T
READ, but seems to have some interesting action. Then he orders the story and
when it finally arrives he can read the english text in accompanying script. If
it turns out the story sux, it's too long a process to start from scratch and
search out another story, so he has to go with whatever he was sent. This is
just another of the many problems built into this Disney comics system that seem
designed to prevent publishers from producing good comics. And that problem is
pretty miner compared to the way that system is designed to prevent any good
editors or artists or writers or letterers or colorists or anyone else from
wanting to have anything to do with an industry that's frozen in the 1940's as
far as getting credits and royalties. It's just a wretched system altogether.
The only thing that saves it is that there is a handful of people involved in
various positions who love the material so much they're willing to put up with
all the grief to try to produce decent work, while their fellows are out getting
wealthy in much less repressive systems. We have to be thankful for these folks!

PER:
	Please unsubscribe all those people who don't want to know about Disney
comics! But DON'T unsubscribe that guy who just made me pay about 3 cents to
receive umpteen lines of exclamation points -- make him read a few more unwanted
Digests.