Disney-comics digest #848.

[Don Rosa]

        I am back home and back adding Avatars to my current story. LOTS of
Digests to read when I checked my computer -- also I see that there will
forever be one extra Digest than is indicated by the "issue" number, since
Per's program labelled a recent Digest as another "#1". But I guess we can
just imagine that one of those other recent Digests which had nothing but
those carelessly misdirected "unsubscribe" messages doesn't count. Let's say
that was the one mislabelled "#1" and ignore it.
        My few responses to the last 20+ Digests certainly doesn't reflect
on the enormous amount of interesting material that flowed through these
windows while I was gone. But I'll start with the most recent Digest...

JYRKI:
        Thank you for reporting on my whereabouts while I was missing and
presumed dead from these regions. But you made two huge errors!
        I signed the Mickey drawing I did with "Don Rosa who does NOT hate
Mickey Mouse"!!! The foreword of that new collector's edition of my stories
there in Finland ended with, so I'm told, the tagline (meant to be funny,
somehow) of "Don Rosa hates Mickey Mouse". The writer told me he intended to
translate the comment from some other interview as "resents Mickey Mouse"
(for his popularity over Donald here in America), but that he either didn't
understand the meaning of "resent" or there's no similar word in Finnish. I
was being asked for an explanation of that in nearly every interview and
press conference I did all week! So I thought that drawing a Mickey for that
huge crowd (and I saw very few "children" in that audience) and signing it
as I did would put that nonsense to rest -- but it seems to have provoked
you to place it before a few more people here in the Digest. See how
missquotings occur? They plan to give those drawings away as prizes in some
future AKU ANKKA contest, so you may see that drawing printed somewhere and
see what I actually wrote.
        Another mistake you made was in assuming that the cover you saw at
GOODFELLOW'S was for sale. They did sell some preliminary sketches that they
bought, but the cover and all that art in their gallery was only on display,
not sale. I'm not allowed to sell published art.
        Also, as to why Sir Francis Drake landed on the west coast of
America to repair his ship after attacking "The Neustro Signora" as it
sailed from Chile -- well, that's exactly what happened in actual fact.
Drake was on a secret mission for Queen Elizabeth to attack Spanish treasure
galleons on the Pacific coast of the Americas, and to claim the western side
of North America for England. This is exactly what he did, but since his
landing site in California could never be refound, history was dramatically
changed from what it might have been, and Spain became owner of most of
North America. In my story "His Majesty McDuck", I show $crooge finding
Drake's lost brass plaque on his Money Bin hill. Anyway, you'd have to tell
me if the Finnish text did not correctly describe all these portions of my
story -- it was all in the original script.

DANIEL-ARTHUR:
        It's rather distressing for me to keep hearing that the Dutch
artists disparage my work in public at Dutch conventions and such. I always
speak so highly of their art -- in fact, I feel ALL other Disney comics
artists' work is more appealing than mine, and I constantly say so
everywhere I go. And I also constantly point out what's wrong with my own
work. It seems very unprofessional to speak as they do of a fellow artist
who is doing the best he knows how -- I wish I had the benefit of their
training and experience! But... perhaps it's me who doesn't understand
"professional" attitudes and how to speak of other cartoonists, since I'm
the outsider. I see Marco Rota giving me shots in a recent interview as
well. It seems to me that I disparage my own ability enough that these
fellow cartoonists might try to "lay off" me, at least in public. It's not
like I seek all the attention I get -- it's all thrust upon me by the
publishers. And they should know better than anyone that all the publicity
and special editions don't make me a penny in royalties. Now I'm equally
worried that all those Italian Disney artists will resent me for all the
attention the Italian press gave me while I was in Italy... and I could
hardly blame them. But we'll see what they consider "professional courtesy",
and perhaps they'll leave the Rosa-bashing to me.

CAREY:
        UNCLE $CROOGE #298 will contain a story that was done immediately
BEFORE I embarked on the "Lo$" project, even before I knew I would be asked
to do the "Lo$". So you can't call it a "follow-up" -- it's just the
opposite. It's a tale that deals with the day $crooge earned his first Dime,
but it's not part of the actual biographical series. "Hearts of the Yukon"
was a true "follw-up" to the "Lo$". 
        I also learned today that my 3 weeks in Europe have made it
impossible for me to do a cover for that issue. That's a shame -- I hate to
fail good friends such as those at Gladstone! It's my fault I didn't find
out more about their schedule before I left home! Drat!

VIDAR:
        You are quite RIGHT about the similarities between "Guardians of the
Lost Library" and "The Lost Charts of Columbus"... (I never even realized
that they both have "Lost" in the titles). For what it's worth, those two
stories were intended to appear 3 years apart or more, not in the same week
as they did in Finland. "TGotLL" was not used in Finland until it was
printed as the focal story in that new volume which actually uses "TGofLL"
as its very title -- I didn't know that they would also delay using "TLCoC"
to be released in the weekly comic that very same week. Those two stories
don't read well together.
        Similarly, as you say,I ALSO felt that "TGotLL" was simply a tale of
Ducks going from place to place and having pretty much the same experience
in each locale -- I didn't especially like the plot myself, but I enjoyed
the underlying story and the ending (and my historical accuracy, for what
that's worth). But then readers began claiming it was the best story of the
year and all that, and I started to think it wasn't as boring as I feared.
Yet it struck you the same way I was afraid it might -- I've long realized
that every single reader has a different view of every story I do. Some will
think it's my worst ever, some will think it's my best ever, and the rest
will fall somewhere in between. I hope my next story strikes you in a better
light.

MELANIE:
        Thanks for all the very kind words, but please don't think that my
art is in any way influenced by "underground" artists. I think my similarity
to Robert Crumb's art is simply that we both grew up reading the same
comics, doing our own private comic books as a hobby, and neither of us took
it seriously enough to try to develop a style that was pleasing to anyone's
eye. I drew like this long before I saw my first Crumb comic sometime in the
early 70s.

MERLIN:
        I don't recall if someone answered this for me -- but I am QUITE
familiar with Jack Chalker's book which was titled AN INFORMAL BIOGRAPHY OF
SCROOGE McDUCK (not THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE McDUCK as you said). I
used his footnotes as a way to review all the "Barksian facts" that I needed
to reread to construct my tale, but my interpretation of the stuff was
almost always somewhat different from Chalkers; neither better nor worse,
just different. 

JACK:
        All this discussion about Ludwig Von Drake being HDL's father, or
that it even IS Von Drake in the "Daisy's Diary" cartoon is all in fun,
right? Ludwig can hardly be HDL's father AND Donald's uncle -- that would
make Donald a cousin to HDL, not their uncle. We know that Disney uses these
figures as "actors" rather than characters. Similarly, those Goofy cartoons
of the fifties can hardly be the same "character" as appeared in the MM
cartoons. He was the "actor" Goofy playing another role. After all, he
usually had no EARS in those later cartoons. Either he's an actor and the
makeup man fixed his ears, or he's a character and his ears were amputated.
I prefer the former notion.

AUGIE:
        Gladstone tells me that their letter columns will ALL return very soon.

MARCO:
        You have me confused about this "Yambo" award I won, particularly
since I didn't understand a single word of that entire ceremony, and only
know what my interpreter/ambasador told me later (who was Fabio Gadducci who
used to visit us here, and a truer friend and nicer guy I've never
known!!!!!). I was NOT told that this was the FIRST "Yambo" award ceremony
ever, as you say it was; is that true??? Also, the award I won is labeled
"Best International Comics Author of the Year" and it was explained to me
that the accepted meaning of "comics author" to Italian comics fans is like
"comics writer and artist". Are you getting all your information out of that
newspaper article? Can it be trusted to be reliable? Now I need to get back
in touch with Fabio and make sure I know WHAT I won an award for before I
make a big fool of myself. (I know I didn't win for Best Letterer!)(Or did I?)

     Well, it's 1 AM and I haven't said a word about these 3 weeks I spent
in Italy/Norway/Finland -- but it was the nicest and busiest 3 weeks of my
life. I can say more about it tomorrow, if anyone's interested or has
specific questions. (I'd rather answer questions rather than immodestly
"file a report".)
        But the one thing I wanna say is that the Leaning Tower of Pisa
REALLY does lean like nobody's bizniz. I laughed out loud!!!! I can't
imagine what's holding it up! I mean, not that it would just tip over, but
it leans SO much that I really don't know what's holding the ancient mortar
between the stones and columns together, even if they are reinforced with
ancient stone or metal pegs. I remember just enough of my civil engineering
to think that the sheer-stress and torque forces on those stones for so MANY
centuries should have made them suffer "catastrophic failure" long ago.
Seeing pictures of the place is one thing, but seeing it in person is a real
hoot. (I really think that they KNEW it would be a tourist attraction when
they built it. After all, after the bottom section tilted when they first
built it, they stopped for about a hundred years, at which time they COULD
have torn that little bit apart and started over, but they chose to continue
building off the tilted foundation. There have been tourists visiting
interesting sights and spending money for thousands of years. I suspect
medieval ancient hanky-panky.)