Jack Chalker's book

[H.W. Fluks]

MERLIN asked Don Rosa:
> Did you read the "Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" by Jack Chalker?

Don is not with us this and next week, so I'll answer the question by
quoting Don, since this indeed was asked before.

[begin slightly edited quote Don Rosa in letter from 28 Mar 94 09:38:12 EST]

        I certainly have this lil' booklet.
        The booklet is both a help and a hindrance. Jack did exactly
what I did -- take all the Barksian "facts" and construct a biography.
But what I used his book for were the footnotes. It was invaluable in
telling me in which stories were found all those many, many "facts",
which I then dug out, made notes on, and proceeded to construct my own
history, regardless of Jack's. The HINDRANCE comes from the very
puzzling fact that, even though Chalkers makes it quite clear that he
only uses Barks' stories as a source for his info, this is actually not
true at all! He uses ANY story that appears in U$ #1-71, regardless of
who wrote or drew the tale. I can't figure this out, but that's the
case. So I needed to weed out his many "FALSE facts". He also seemed to
ignore lots of stuff that did NOT happen to appear in U$ comics.
        But I DO always have my Chalkers book near at hand, if only to
use the footnotes.
        The other book that is never more than a foor from my elbow is
Mark Worden's similarly sized complete Barks index. It is SO much
handier than any other because it is simply an index and is
handbook-sized. I've never seen (nor really could there BE) a better
Barks handbook.

[end quote]

--Harry.

Harry Fluks         ()_()                 Dutch Disney comics freak
PTT Telecom          (_)                     fluks at pcssdc.pttnwb.nl
Netherlands                  "Yeah.. I've _heard_ of coral barques"