Keno in Finland

[Mikko Aittola]

Hi folks!

I met Don thursday here in Finland. He looked fine and was really 
enjoying (I mean, IF human being actually can enjoy giving a BIG number
of autographs to fans) himself, considering the sign-here-situation.

Because of long lines we had a veeery tiny two-minute conversation, but
on the other hand, I already knew quite a bit of him, thanks to this 
mailing-list, so I didn't have much to ask. Anyway it was great to see 
him in pure Flesh&Blood(tm).

Before me there was this guy who had Finnish Donald Duck with Don's
'birthday' story in it, and Don immediately noticed that he didn't have
that issue. (So Mike, did you have a chance to give the issues you
collected to Don?)

Saturday I was attending the convention. The editors of Aku Ankka mainly
asked Don the questions I already knew ansewers of, so there wasn't 
anything 'special' (for ME) there. After the interview it was: signing time!
For me it was home and sleep.

Sunday morning Don demonstrated his drawing style to the audience.
I had already figured (according to this list) that Don's 
drawing style is really weird, but I didn't think it could
be THAT weird. I think it really is true that NOBODY draws comics
the way he does. I was amazedtoshock. After the 'demo' he moved forward 
to start, yep, you guessed it, autographing...

I already had one signed book from thursday so I went to local comic- 
shop's gallery. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the collection 
of original Don Rosa art that was brought to here was a very wide 
collection indeed. Gallery's walls were filled with (about) 50-pages 
(That's 100 half-pages!) of story-art plus 15 covers. For example 
'The King of the Klondike' was entirely there.

I must say that if meeting Don Rosa was a great thing then
seeing his original art was a great great thing. The pages were really 
good-looking. Magnificent stuff. I have always thought that because the 
comic-book pages are always smaller than the original art, that it helps 
to hide some flaws in the original art. But in Don's case the original 
pages are really 'ready' looking. Imagine the amount of detail! (Don't
even try to understand the amount of work needed to draw these pages.)
(For example, I think Carl Barks' art looks better in comic-book sized
format than in bigger album-sized format, due to the lack of tiny details.
And that is perfectly ok, cause Barks created the art for comic-book
size format.) I am very sure that Lo$ does look even better in 'Giant'-
sized format.

And somehow the lack of colours (that's no-colours-at-all in 
English) didn't matter much. Don's art looks fine in plain B&W.

I wish I could buy even one of the pages, but as we all know, 
"The Evil Imperium" takes care that doesn't happen.


   /Mikko


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