Disney-comics digest #548.

[DAVID.A.GERSTEIN]

      Hi, folks.

      DWIGHT:  The huge collections you picked up would be GROOT 
VAKANTIEBOEK (or something like that -- sorry, Harry, you know how 
bad my Dutch is, let alone my Dutch from memory!).  Those are mostly 
Egmont stories anyway, with a smaller number of Oberon and S-coded 
stuff, so if the wolf and rabbit tales you read had D-codes, it's 
just due to the general makeup of the books.
      Is Gladstone interested in the minor characters?  Yes, when 
WDC&S eventually reaches some giant-sized issues again.  John Clark 
is beginning to do some preliminary work on WDC&S 600 (a giant to 
appear this autumn), and next year there will be more giant-sized 
WDC&S issues.  Right now, the minor characters (aside from Chip 'n' 
Dale, who seem to regularly appear in 1-pagers) seem to have been 
sacrificed so that Gottfredson can appear somewhere.  I love 
Gottfredson, but it's sure a pyrrhic victory.  I have a special 
fondness for Gil Turner's late-1940s wolf stories.
      You say that Egmont wants fewer Ducks these days?  Au 
contraire.  Egmont's management (the guys OVER Byron) just laid down 
the law that they'd be doing many fewer MM stories in 1995 than last 
year, and replacing them with Ducks.  Byron doesn't know why this is, 
particularly because some countries (like Britain) want at least one 
Mickey story from the main office every week.  Hopefully things will 
return to normal in 1996, but who knows?  If this is happening 
because readers have been nonplussed by Egmont's Mickey material to 
date and it showed in sales, I have to admit I understand why.  But 
I'm going to make my few MM stories of '95 as doggoned good as I can, 
and we'll see how the audience takes to them.
      Regarding Br'er Rabbit, I'm one step ahead of you, Dwight.  
I'll be writing at least one of them this year.  I wouldn't mind 
doing as many as they want.
      And as I mentioned, serious fans don't overlook Li'l Bad Wolf 
in Holland.  The Egmont ones are so-so, but at least the art is good.

      HARRY:  Glad you appreciate my dialogue job on "Lentils" Part 
II.  Would you believe that this version of the plot is actually 
SIMPLIFIED?  In the original, the Beagle Boys not only bought the 
lentils back from an agent in Howduyustan, but those were then bought 
by another agent in Unsteadystan, then by another agent in 
Hoopadoola, another agent in Bumpay, and finally by the Beagles' head 
office in Babylon!  When I fixed a major logic flaw in the third part 
(I've told you about this, Fabio, but we'll let the rest remain 
secret for now), it left no reason for this wild goose chase.  
Instead of the captions that explained how the Ducks were flying from 
one place to the next, Gladstone's readers got an explanation of how 
Donald decides to undo Paylesh's ruined reputation with Howduyustan 
-- something, as I've said, I'm reasonably certain Disney would have 
inserted had I not added it.
      Some of you may wonder why I called the country of Babylon by 
that name even in modern times.  Well, it's now Iraq, and who knows 
what Disney would have said had I implied that any Disney character 
did business in Saddam Hussein's home turf?

      AUGIE:  I agree with your letter in D&M 28;  for me, "The Crown 
of Tasbah" is an excellent Paul Murry story in a period that offered 
hardly anything even worth reprinting.
      On the other hand, I can't say I agree less with Jonathan 
Markoff's letter in that same issue.  He preferred "Tasbah" to most 
1930s Gottfredson stories and slammed Gottfredson's art, too.  Oh, 
well.  Van Horn, Rosa, and even Barks have gotten their share of such 
criticism, too.
      Your letter in USA 29 was on the mark, too.  I loved the way 
Mr. Bunz talked (in Scarpa's "Man from Oola Oola").

      I'll be back again.  Gotta switch computers (this one's 
reserved now).