DCML digest #118

[Don Rosa]

From: "Arie Fachrisal"
 >>>What is the relation between Mickey
and Jaq&Gus? Cousins? Long cousins? Very long relatives? Very-very long
relatives? Very-very-very long ones? Or not at all?

Not at all. Gus and Jaq are mice, Mickey is a human. Sooner you should
worry about creatures who live their lives in close proximity to one
another, like Goofy and Pluto, or Grandma Duck and the ducks waddling
around in her barnyard. What's that all about?
But what's more amusing to do, and which we've done on here from time to
time, is try to count the number of different types of characters there are
in Disney comics. An incomplete list would include normal animals (the
squirrels in the background trees, the fish in the water), normal animals
that have high intelligence (Pluto), normal animals with super-intelligence
and the ability to think and speak, at least to other animals (Chip n'
Dale, Scamp), animals who wear clothes and live in houses but otherwise act
like normal animals and eat each other (Big Bad Wolf, 3 Pigs), characters
drawn in some ways as animals but which are clearly otherwise completely
human (Donald, Mickey, etc.), Barksian Duckburg people that are totally
human but grudgingly given round black noses on an otherwise completely
human body to satisfy ancient style-book customs, and normal humans with
normal noses. And there are more categories in between all those -- I
recall someone once came up with about 15 or so, perhaps also counting the
animation characters.

From: Rich <xephyr at jps.net>
Subject: WonderCon 2000 & Don Rosa?
>>>Anyone going?  Don, or someone who knows, will you be there all three
days
or only specific hours on a given day?

I will be there on all 3 days.
Let's tell them what we're talking about. WonderCon is a comic-convention
in Oakland, California (near SF) on April 7-9.

From: Juliet Violette
>>>I was wondering... did Carl Barks "invent" Uncle
Scrooge?  and if so, was he working for Disney or
another company?

He did create $crooge while working for the Dell/Western publishing
company. And everything that appears in a Disney licensed comic
automatically is Disney property, not that of the creator or publisher.
That's why Carl Barks is not the wealthiest cartoonist in the history of
the universe. (But he's done okay in the last 20 years with paintings and
lithographs and such, we're happy to know!)

>>> I have
this shrine to him basically in my living room and
I think the only things actually made by Disney
are the bubble gum bank and the clock.

I know the bank and I'm not sure about the clock, but neither were made by
Disney. They don't make stuff, they collect the fees from the companies
that do. Actually, I think the only items actually made BY a company owned
by Disney are some modern-day "collectibles" like the "Walt Disney Classics
Collection" "limited edition" figurines or the beanie @#%&* babies at the
Di$ney $tores... but I really don't pay attention to that type stuff. I'm a
collector of real, honest toys made for normal humans with or without round
black noses... stuff not associated with those
"edition-limited-to-the-maximum-number-we-estimate-we-can-get-people-to-buy
collectibles" rackets. I like the stuff that when they stop making them
because they can't sell any more, they don't say the item is "retired and
the molds broken, soon to be hothothot", they say they stopped making them
because they can't sell anymore. Those were the days.

From: "Fluks, H.W."
> Rosa is hot in Finland ... believe me or not.
>>>But he wasn't elected for president, right? 8-)
Any idea how much votes he got?

I've tried checking on that with no luck. I know I got lots of votes in
their usual crackpot-write-in category where AKU ANKKA (Donald) always does
so well. But they tell me that for the first time the government did not
release the vote-results of the write-in silly-walk candidates. Was that a
coincidence? Or did I get so many votes while being an *actual* human being
that they were embarrassed by it? Or maybe it bothered someone that I was
asked about my being a presidential candidate in all the interviews I did
there in Finland when I visited. Oh, well.... I didn't want to move to
Finland, anyway.... I just planted some asparagus.