Disney-comics digest #608.

[Don Rosa]

PER:
	Try sending the next Digest to both my INTERNET and COMPUSERVE addresses,
and I'll see if I have my programs alligned right to get it off INTERNET; if
not, it'll be here for me on COMPUSERVE. Okay?

ON BEAGLE BOYS:
	Barks' final version of the Beagles' numbers had them all begin with the
"176" prefix. As someone said, that means there can only be 6 Beagles. The most
Barks ever showed in one story was 7, so that's the number I never exceed (I'm
not checking these numbers -- maybe I mean 8, but I think it was 7). But it's
possible to show more than 6 Beagles all in one panel as long as ONE'S number is
unreadable. Simple trick.
	There was one exception to the above law -- in "The Paul Bunyon Machine"
in one panel Barks showed 12 Beagles advancing on $crooge. I think Barks'
intention was that anytime he showed a big crowd of Beagles, there were actually
more, perhaps LOTS more in the group than he was showing in any panel. This is
indicated in a very puzzling panel in the early untitled story that is now
called "Hawaiian Hideaway" or "Menihune Mystery" where $crooge has become the
Beagles' slave and at one point says something like "I just shined the shoes of
37 Beagle Boys" (again, I'm not checking for accuracy).  

BEV:
	Yes, as I implied, I know all those extra facts about Oak Island, but
they are all of the dubious nature of being rather unsubstantiated or too
inexplicable or too trivial. Somebody found some coconut hull fibers. Wow. Or a
piece of gold chain. Or parchment. I can see the con man who was running the
digging projects tossing little bits of mystery down into the sandy pit just so
his disgruntled backers wouldn't pull until he milked them a little longer.  The
most dubious part of the story is that if someone did have a treasure to bury,
why not simply bury it  and be done with it? If no one knows where it is, it's
as safe as if it were at the bottom of some sandy booby-trapped pit. If it WAS
buried at the bottom of that booby-trapped pit, how would the burrier dig it
back up? There are literally hundreds of fabulous lost treasures about which FAR
more is known and are far more interesting to write about than the Oak Island
Treasure Hole. And, as David just said, the story has been done already, so we
don't need to think about it.

WILMER:
	Please, I wasn't reading ARGOSY or TRUE or any of those other "men's
sweaty adventure" magazines with the topless Nazi babes whipping GIs on the
cover, either when I was a kid in the 60s or any other time. The magazines I was
reading were (as I recall) LONG JOHN LATHAM'S TRUE TREASURE and TREASURE WORLD.
They were very amateurish things, sorta like treasure-hunter fanzines. I thought
I'd lost my collections of them for over 15 years, but I just located them in
the bottom of a box a few months ago (a true treasure story in itself) and they
are now here in my library.