Disney-comics digest #849.

[Don Rosa]

AUGIE:
        I don't know what they wrote in the WD GIANT #3 about my first cover
idea for that issue, but your version of it is all wrong. I submitted a
cover sketch based on the famous cover of SUPERMAN #1 -- John Clark at
Gladstone DID "get it", being an old comics fan... but the Disney people
didn't get it since they are NOT comics fans/collectors. Strangely enough,
the Disney people only said to change DD's awkward pose, but approved the
general cover design (and the cover of SUPERMAN #1 is a hideous looking
thing, with all the bad lettering and weird borders). So Disney APPROVED the
cover, as is, when told what it was based on. But John and I later decided
that only old-time comics fans would catch the gag, and WE decided to do an
entirely different cover. I mean, that would have been a GREAT gag cover,
but for anyone who didn't understand the joke it would have made for the
worst cover ever on an American Disney comic book (except, of course, that
3D Disney comic of a few years back). I suggested a DD pose in front of
panels from the original Barks story -- that story was one of my very
favorites as a child, even though I didn't know what a super-hero was at the
time, as my sister didn't buy anything but Dells. Also, that "Super Snooper"
issue from 1949 was the OLDEST comic she left me.
        Also too, you are wrong to say that the DD pose is the same as from
the other Disney Disney comic that used that "Super Snooper Strikes Again".
It originally wasn't even on my mind, but I think I did look back at the
pose to help me get my new pose more "graceful" (which is not one of my
strong suits). (Needless and irritating detail is my only strong suit.)
        Plus also too, this is the 4th time that same story of mine has been
printed in America. Once in the Disney Disney issue, once in their DONALD
AND $CROOGE "Don Rosa" $9 album, once in the hard-to-find 3-issue "Don Rosa"
DONALD AND $CROOGE set sold only at Walmarts, and now once more. But you did
NOT see the "first printing" of the story -- it was a reprint when you first
saw it, remember. All this stuff appears in Europe first.

MIKE:
        Hm. The pendulum swings back, but never stops where it should. "I
don't dislike MM" and "I LIKE MM" are rather different. As I kept telling
reporters in Finland, I'm simply apathetic toward MM. He's okay, but I
personally don't have any interest in him as a comic character.

WILMER:
        I'm afraid that I can't do a story about Pisa! I was being asked
everywhere I went in Italy (and Finland)(and Norway) to do a story set in
whatever spot I was visiting. But the ancient Italian city-state rivalries
still live on -- they would never let me back into Lucca to visit another
comic fair if I did a story about Pisa. I promised to do a story about Lucca
first. Well... if I do a story about Pisa, Lucca will have to be the "hero"
-- that's possible. But then the people in Firenze and Siena and Rapollo
and... wow, this is tricky...