Harry's off-topic questions

Don Rosa donrosa at iglou.com
Thu Apr 19 14:36:39 CEST 2001


I have done some "research" on Harry's questions about the strange 2/3
pages published in the new "Pertwillaby Papers" hardback...

From: "Fluks, H.W." <H.W.Fluks at kpn.com>
>>>Two pages, which were only 2/3 filled in the original, were taken
together
as one page in the DRCS reprint. With one panel of new art, or so it seems.
("Ah, there's prof. Cistims now...". Question 2: is that really new art?
And
why were the original pages only 2/3?)

>>>>And then there's another page, which was composed from 2 original
pages.
Again with one panel of new (?) art. ("Vell, gett it OUT, here is our first
stop.". Question 3: why did that happen?)

What a shame someone did not spot this error before the printing presses
rolled... it's a minor flaw in an otherwise splendid edition. I can't
explain exactly where the goof occurred, but it occurred, and it's too late
now. But here's what seemed to happen.
As I was saying, when Fantagraphics published DRC&S reprinting these
stories from RBCC, I had to delete two pages from this story and squeeze it
together. I did not want to slice up my original pages of art, so I
indicated to the editor what should be deleted by writing light blue
(non-printable) instructions on the original art such as "omit" with
brackets around certain tiers of panels on a few pages. Then I drew a few
bridging panels and sent all the art to Fantagraphics.
Okay, 20 years later, Nils is gonna do this new hardback, but we don't want
me to send these hundreds of pages of "precious" (well, to *me*, anyway)
original art all the way to Norway. This is the computer age, so I took all
of the art to a local computer graphics company and, at no small expense,
they did high-rez scans of all the pages and gave me the art back along
with a batch of CD's they said they had burned. However, the CDs looked
like they were in perfectly good shape, not a scorch mark on them, so I
went ahead and sent them to Nils anyway. What I mean is that I obviously
don't know nuthin' about this process, so I didn't try to check all the
work on these CDs, I knew Nils' people would know better than me whether
the work had been done to their satisfaction.
But (I guess you're way ahead of me, eh?) apparently the computer-scanner
guy at the local graphics company saw the "omit" notes which I had long ago
forgotten were on a few of the pages.... and, by George, he OMITTED!
But... there were about six different "omit" notes on the art, yet the guy
only obeyed the directions on those two pages. Maybe he let an assistant
scan a few while he was on his coke break? Maybe he realized his error when
he got to the later "omit" notes, but never went back and rescanned the
earlier pages where he had followed the "omit" directions?
So, Harry, you *still* don't have an absolutely complete "Pertwillaby
Papers" collection because you're missing these two tiers of panels. But
trust me -- the material in those panels was totally irrelevant to the
stories, the gags were exceedingly lame, and the art in them was just as
bad as in the rest of the story... so you're not missing anything. Except
those panels.




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