DCML digest #568

[Don Rosa]

From: Krarup Olesen <raptus at stofanet.dk>
>>>The two outer extremes are 1) Everything is "steered" by old Barks
events and 2) Everything is steered by you (the author)

Don't do that to me again so soon. No matter how many Barks references I
use in a story, even if it's one of my direct Barks-sequels, nobody is
doing the "steering" but me. It is an entirely new plot so I am in complete
control of the vehicle at all times. If you need an analogy, you can say
that I am using a Barks-map from the Dell Auto Club and I (I) am steering
past famous landmarks, stopping at each for a scenic overlook and a picnic
lunch.

>>>Your latest story is of "type 2" IMO and that's why I enjoyed reading
it. I even appreciate its inconsistence with "The Coin", where the
Beagles apparantly manage to find the right way through the money bin in
less than ten panels. :-)

As I've said, I have no intention of being forever consistent to those
blueprints when it will someday be easier or more dramatic to draw a room
in the Bin in a different shape than those drawings show. However, there
was nothing inconsistent between the two stories you mention, and let's
make sure that your translator was not lopping out important bits of
dialogue, and that you understood what was going on there: in my original
text the Beagles see the Bin office and vault entrance (this is the room
they attain in "The Coin"), they see it both on the blueprints and through
a ceiling vent, and clearly say "We've been there lotsa times! This is no
help." The blueprints in this story were a "red herring"... a Hitchcockian
McGuffin... they really had nothing to do with the plot! I used the story
as an excuse to create those blueprints which I had originally intended to
draw without a story to frame them. The single element of the blueprints
that the BB's used was the fact that there was an "existing well" on the
Bin site. After that, they did not use the blueprints at all, you'll notice
that they did not even have the blueprints with them when they entered the
Bin. The new twist was that they had an alarmed door to contend with in the
basement, perhaps added after they entered from that same direction in "The
Coin". They then decided on a whole new plan to find their way blind
through the maze of air vents, someplace they had never been before. They
*know* the way straight into the Bin office via the normal route -- they've
all been there hundreds of times in the past 50 years. But that's not where
they wanted to go in this story. So, I have had inconsistencies, accidental
or on purpose, but this isn't one of 'em.

From: "Olaf Solstrand" <harryklein at hotmail.com>
>>>All these are my personal theories. I want to hear what you know.

I can tell you are having fun with my stories and Barks' the way I play
with the Barks stories I grew up with. But I wish you and others would stop
using one bit of information that has never been stated to be a "fact", not
even a comic-book fact. You keep listing birthyears for Donald and HDL and
the other Ducks and saying these are *my* dates. Not really! I once showed
someone a copy of my private notes on the Duck Family Tree where I had
penciled in *approximate* birthyears for future reference or adjustment,
though I knew this is something I would never need to use (or be allowed to
use in print). Don't you notice that *all* of the birthyears you have seem
to strangely be 1920, 1940 or other mysteriously even numbers? That's a
clue that you should read them as "circa 1920", "circa 1940". If you forced
me to specify a birthyear for Donald, I would probably make it more like
1923... but I really don't wish to be so precise about such a thing.
There's even *less* reason to do that than with all the other junk I am so
precise about!