DCML digest #475

[Don Rosa]

From: "Fluks, H.W." <H.W.Fluks at kpn.com>
>>>Still, there were some complaints from parents about Don Rosa's Kalevala
(Sampo) story (published in two DD Extras)! I think the complaints were
about showing the world of the dead.

Did the Dutch translators actually call it "the world of the DEAD"? Tuonela
(was that its name?) was the "underworld" of the Kalevala... I was always
very careful to never refer to it in my script as "the land of the dead".
I don't even recall if that was my implied intention -- I don't know if the
Kalevala made it clear *what* was in the Underworld. But I needed Louhi to
be somewhere, so I said she was in Tuonela, the "realm of the sleepers"...
and I showed it to be a place where people are all frozen in blocks of ice.
But did the Dutch call it literally the land of the "dead"?
Even if they didn't, if the Dutch readership is anything like the modern
American readership of anything, somebody would still complain about what
they think might be implied by something meant to maybe mean one thing but
then again it might be something else if you stood on your head and held it
up to a mirror and it's clearly designed to pollute minds and bodies. And
that's the way it goes. But I'm just curious as to whether it actually said
"land of the dead" there in the Netherlands...
... which gives me pause to wonder! Maybe they can't translate my original
script quite right since I called it the Underworld. The NETHERworld. The
Netherlands. And the readers would think that Louhi was in a retirement
home in Amsterdam, and the Ducks cowering at the thought of going to that
spooky, scary, dangerous "Netherlands".
...which gives me another pause to wonder: do the Dutch call their country
"the Netherlands" in their own tongue? Literally, "the underworld"? Or is
that a term used only outside your borders?

From: "Rob Klein" <bi442 at lafn.org>
>>>In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s most of the families of American peole I
knew
had at least SEVERAL US minted gold coins.

Sure, I had a number of them in my lil' coin collection when I was a tad.
But I'm not sure what line of reasoning was being pursued in the discussion
you refer to...

From: Kriton Kyrimis <kyrimis at cti.gr>
>>>>I just got my copy of the "Don Rosa Archives" in the mail today, and
rushed to read the introductions.
>>>A question to the "slightly world famous" author: who is Gary, to whom
these volumes are dedicated?

You puzzled me greatly with this query, and I rushed to get my copies and
see where me or anyone else had written a dedication. I didn't recall doing
so! But it then dawned on me -- you mean that your copies have "TO GARY"
written in them by yours truly??? Ah -- then the Tronsmo Book Store in Oslo
who you ordered them from has *sent you the wrong books*! I signed hundreds
of mail order copies while I was there, and they must have gotten them
jumbled. Somewhere there's a Gary wondering what a "Kriton" is.

From: Mike Pohjola <mikep at iki.fi>
>>>"At lower levels"... That's a good point. Whatever money Scrooge made
during the 1800's would naturally be at the bottom. Then would come his
early 1900's money he made all around the world.

We must assume, if $crooge made his first big break in the Yukon in 1898,
that he had none of the money left that he made in the 1900's, having spent
what little there was as he went along. But some of that money was still in
circulation, so coins of earlier years would still have come into his hands
during the next few years. However, his entire "first billion" (which I
determined was what he made up until 1902 for my own purposes) is all
seperated from the rest of his cash as it is contained (according to Barks)
in several large casks at the bottom of the Bin.

>>>:>I have the impression that the money he has in the Bin is money he's
made
himself with his own two hands. That's not the kind of money he'd
spend. But he's got lots of bank accounts with huge amounts of money, and
that he would spend.

Keep in mind that this is *my* personal idea, and as far as I know, I'm the
 only writer who sees it that way. As I was writing that "Lo$", the idea
that the Bin had *all* of his money just seemed too ... well, inconvenient
to be reasonable. So I thought it might seem like an interesting idea that
the Bin contained, as you say, the money he made *by himself* before his
business ventures became so complex as to require armies of assistants.
That would also enhance the "sentimental" value of the Bin money, as Barks
showed $crooge joyfully diving and playing in it and recalling the story
behind each coin. But, whatever the case, don't annoy the non-Rosaists by
implying that *everyone* agrees with that notion.