Disney-comics digest #612.

[Don Rosa]

WILMER:
        There was a planned Barks painting that was to have been titled
"Uncle Walt's Collectory", but that one was never finished and marketed. The
versions you've seen were preliminaries. If it had been completed, maybe
they would have allowed it to be titled "Uncle Walt's..."; remember how such
decisions are made in corporations. It depends on who makes the decision,
who was out that day, who thought they had the power to do what, etc. Even
if they HAD allowed that title, it can easilly seen to be quite different
from the funnybook title situation -- it would have been for a much
different sort of market than the comic, and the title of the painting is
not evident unless you looked at something like the fine-print on the order
form. It wouldn't be like it was constantly jumping out at the Great
Unwashed Masses from the top of a lowly comic book.

HERO:
        I (as usual) have yet to see that issue with the Duck section. Augie
seemd to not like it so much... other people I've heard from thought it was
kinda nice. One guy told me the first part was written by some "Geppi" guy,
and I scoffed at that, telling him Steve Geppi would have better things to
do these days than that -- but I was wrong. That's an impressive author for
that piece.
        I talked to my interviewer for several hours, and the subject of the
gross inequities of the Disney comic system was a very minor portion of the
discussion. But it's something that American comics can't believe is still
in practice, so it may not be surprising that they made it a bigger part of
the article than it was of the interview. I made it clear to the interviewer
that I and no one else should come across as hateful about the situation as
I am always hopeful that progress can be made, and there's no sense in
making the Beast mad. I'll see what sort of spin he put on it. He seemed
like a nice fella, so I hope he didn't trick me.

DONALD & MICKEY #29:
        Someone was asking me about this on COMPUSERVE (where hardly any
discussion ever goes on in the Gladstone/Disney section)(the previous flurry
was someone looking for a videotape of OLIVER & CO.).
        As I may have mentioned here, my cover on that issue was a complete
surprize to me. I had done that cover (parts of it) for that WD COMICS IN
COLOR album series in 1989, but this was one cover rejected by Disney and
for which I was never paid. Gladstone kept a photostat of it and the new
editor didn't know the story behind it. (How can Disney reject work and
cause someone who has spent several days on a project not to be paid? That's
how the system works.They seem to think everybody is working on salary in
huge studios or something.)
        Anyway, that still isn't my actual cover. $crooge was in the rumble
seat counting a wad of bills that he'd obviously collected from the rube
Mouse, the sign on the car was "MCduck Tours", and the Mickey has been
slightly redrawn to match the Mouse in the stories in the issue rather than
how I'd matched him to the Gottfriedson stories in the old album. I sold
that cover back in the 80s... I wonder who has the original...