Disney-comics digest #597.

[DAVID.A.GERSTEIN]

      DON:  Yes, Gladstone is actually using the (never-paid-for) 
WDCiC cover.  The comic is apparently in the shops now, or so Mark 
Semich has told me.  I sure look forward to seeing it.
      Are there other covers which you drew completely but which 
Gladstone or Disney rejected?
      Another thing about Gladstone's planned album series of your 
stories:  please get them to use your covers for "The Duck Who Never 
Was" and "From Duckburg to Lillehammer" which didn't show up in their 
American printings.  And you might also have them use your third 
German cover for the LO$ album series, because unlike the others, it 
is substantially different from the Gladstone version.
      The one thing that I don't like about the CBLDD albums is that 
they do not print Barks' original covers to the stories, which in the 
case of these long adventures are often excellent.  I don't like the 
WDC&S covers nearly as much, but I wished they included more of 
those, too.  We got the Gyro covers and the (Carl Buettner) cover to 
"Riddle of the Red Hat" as full-page illustrations.  Why can't we 
have anything else?  Does the cover of album 9 include the cover to 
either "Lost in the Andes" or "Voodoo Hoodoo"?  I find the former 
cover to be my favorite Barks cover.
      (IMHO, a very small image of the original comic crammed into 
the lower left corner of the album is not a genuine reprint of the 
cover.)

      GOOFY BEETHOVEN is not, as far as I know, among those which 
John Clark is going to be using.  He tells me that after the current 
one, there will be a break for a while as a few Danish stories, and 
that Italian which-way story, are used, and then the next Goofy story 
will be "Goofy Ulysses."  That sounds more promising than those to 
date, but what do I know?
      Also, is someone implying that the ones published in DM (and 
the earlier GOOFY ADVENTURES) have had elaborate BORDERS trimmed off 
the edges of the pages?  I saw some albums of these stories at 
Fabio's house, and "Goofy Frankenstein" (aside from having about 12 
pages cut out completely in Disney Comics' version!) didn't actually 
have the art itself altered.

       JORGEN:  So we have a sequel to "Fossil Hunters" this week.  
That gives me a lot to look forward to -- since they ALWAYS print the 
week's Mickey offering in Britain (where Mickey is quite clearly more 
popular, although that doesn't mean much in the country's very child-
oriented Disney market).  At last, another good Mickey story!
       IMHO, the worst thing about these dreadful British weeklies 
is their letter column.  In an issue I saw about two years ago (near 
the start of Fleetway's run) they were answering Disney trivia 
questions quite accurately there.  Now half of the column is loaded 
with poems, written by readers, which simply list the characters they 
like in a rhyming sing-song.  The other half of the column is a huge 
illustration of a prize which kids can get by sending in their poems. 
I'd feel insulted even if I were still a kid.
       There was a Mickey/Goofy one-pager about fishing, done by Noel 
Van Horn, in a recent British weekly.  Did anyone else see this in 
their local Egmont rag?  It was very funny and given the way Mickey 
talked, I'd guess that it -- like "Hocus Pocus Hypnosis" -- was 
probably written by John Lustig.

       Next week we get U$A -- and I haven't even seen DD yet due to 
my Scots comic shop's slowness.  I'm anxious to see how well you drew 
my cover idea, Don!  ;-) ;-)

      David Gerstein
      <9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>