Disney-comics digest #652.

[DAVID.A.GERSTEIN]

AUGIE:
> Van Horn did a pretty admirable job [on "Horsing Around" etc.]
      I'll say he did.  Some have complained about his work on the 
story, but it seems to me that the complaints were just because 
someone ELSE didn't draw it.  Van Horn is obviously trying hard to 
imitate Barks' style in this story, and he gets it pretty well, 
except for HDL.
      I think that the real charm in Van Horn's stories is his use of 
language, so I can see why they're much more popular in the United 
States than in foreign countries.  If nobody minds me saying so, the 
essential PLOTS of Van Horn's stories (at least those he writes 
himself) are usually very simple, like Barks stories from around 
1946.  1946 was a year when DD and the kids had innumerable fights 
about very minor things, and that seems to be what Van Horn really 
likes to do.

DON:
> I can't imagine what interest there could be in a story about the
> world's richest Duck getting richer. 
      Plenty, if Scrooge has a reasonable obstruction to pass on his 
way to the kitty.  Are you saying you don't like stories like "The 
Status Seeker" and "The Lost Crown of Genghis Khan" because they end 
with Scrooge being richer?  Do you think that's a failing?
      I DO get sick of formulaic, silly "Scrooge finds the treasure" 
stories.  But really GOOD ones I enjoy tremendously, even if Scrooge 
ends the story "on top".
      In my own "Return to Morgan's Island", the Ducks do get the 
treasure, but only after one absolute hell of a struggle.  And it's 
only through a remarkable twist that Scrooge DOES get it.  (That's 
right, Scrooge is in this story.  But I'm not telling you any more 
about it until it's published.)
      And, Don, in your own "Treasure Under Glass", Scrooge basically 
did get the treasure, even if he didn't physically own that ancient 
map of all the burial sites at the story's close.
      I was actually kind of disappointed that Scrooge LOST Genghis' 
crown in "Return to Xanadu," if you don't mind me saying so.  That 
means that if I set a story after yours, I can't show that swell 
crown among Scrooge's riches, now, can I?
>         The coloring of the "destruction" sequence in chapter 8 made you
> think it was like old photos of the event?
      Same for me.  If you wanted a dreamy effect, the colors to use 
are pinks and reds (as in the Van Horn story "Pie in the Sky", US 
243), I think.  You could use yellows as appeared in LO$ 5 (with 
Scrooge's ancestors in the clouds), too.

A FEW PREVIEWS:
      DDA 34 will contain Ron Fernandez and Pat Block's "Secret of 
the Dragon's Den."  This is a 28-page (!) story, and as far as I'm 
convinced, it's a REAL show-stopper.  (I saw it as a work-in-progress 
at the San Diego Con last year.)
      WDC&S 599 contains "The Yawn Patrol" by Van Horn.  This would 
seem to be the 10-pager we list as "promising sleeping" (one which I 
didn't see in its European publication).  The conclusion of "Monarch 
of Medioka" is also here.
      US 294 contains LO$ 10, and presumably something else although 
it isn't mentioned here.  Don, you'd better tell Gladstone if you 
expect to see one of your text pages in this (letter-columnless) 
32-pages-including-covers issue!

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