FWD: Returned mail: Could not deliver for 16 days

[Mark Semich]

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Date: Thu, 11 May 1995 06:57:36 +0200
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Subject: Returned mail: Could not deliver for 16 days
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Your letter for <kwed at scala.ping.dk>
is being returned to you for the following reason:

    Could not deliver for 16 days

Your letter follows below:

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From: mas at cs.bu.edu (Mark Semich)
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Subject: The Life and Times of $crooge McDuck
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DON:
	OK, I've been debating for a while now whether to write this  
posting.  I don't want to disrupt the spirit of this list with possibly  
controversial material, but there has been something bothering me about  
the Lo$ series that I couldn't quite put my finger on until I read Chapter  
8.  I guess that things have now gotten to the point where it's bothering  
me so much that I feel I must mention it.
	Initially, as an aside, I'd like to say that I've been a big fan  
of your work since I first read "Last Sled to Dawson", one of the best  
comic book stories ever done. (It's long overdue for Gladstone to reprint  
this one - perhaps they could use it along with any other "young Scrooge"  
stories you may do as part of the forthcoming Lo$ compilation.)  I also  
must say that Lo$ is the best comic book story being published, and is a  
truly wonderful piece of work.

	This is mostly about my impressions of Bark's Scrooge vs. the  
Scrooge that we see in Lo$.  I've come to the conclusion that these  
seemingly two similar characters are in fact two very different  
characters.  The facts and details of both Barks' stories and yours may  
show me wrong on this, and perhaps there was no other approach you could  
take that would fit with all of the Barksian minutiae, but, as I said,  
this is about my *impressions* of the character:
	 I've always seen Barks presenting Scrooge as a duck who has made  
his riches by working as hard as he could ever since he was very young,  
and by scrimping and saving every penny that he ever earned, slowly  
building his fortune, slowly becoming rich, slowly turning himself into  
the miser that we see on Bear Mountain.
	Yet in Lo$, rather than that more realistic (and possibly  
admirable) approach, Scrooge is a man who *does* work hard his entire  
life, but is basically poor in *spite* of all that hard work - at the  
begining of Ch. 8 he has not saved anything at all, he's still living hand  
to mouth.  In addition, he goes from being poor to being rich in an  
instant.  Sure, this makes for a more dramatic moment, as if all of his  
hard work "finally paid off," rather than *continuously* and *slowly*  
paying off.  I feel that this presentation is antithetical to Barks' "hard  
work and savings" Scrooge and basically eliminates the most important  
aspect of Scrooge McDuck.
	I also thought that the vengeful "Dark Knight McDuck" presentation  
of Scrooge when he hears of his Mother's death was a bit much for a Disney  
book, and like others overseas, I thought this approach should have been  
reserved for image/Marvel-like books.  You had mentioned that those with  
this criticism were mis-interpeting that bit in your story, but it reads  
to me like they were right.

	Again, most sincere apologies for these criticisms, but I've long  
been a Scrooge McDuck fan, so I had to say them.