DCML digest #818

[Don Rosa]

> I just read "A little something special" from Adventurous Uncle Scrooge
> McDuck #2 (29 pages) and I have one question:
> Page 20 : Blackheart beagle says to $crooge: "A last glass of
sarsaparilla
> from Coot's soda fountain! You know from old times!"
> As we know $crooge prefer nutmeg tea but smurfs ("Schtroumpf" comics by
the
> belgian Peyo) eat sarsaparilla. That's a reference to smurf.

Sorry to disappoint you, but no, it's not. I have never read a Smurf comic
(or seen a cartoon)... I have no idea what they drink or do. But
sarsaparilla is simply what people drank at American soda-fountains and
saloons 100+ years ago.
And did you think that the *only* fluid that $crooge will drink is nutmeg
tea? Of course not. I'm sure he drinks *many* things, especially after his
decades of world travel. In "The Sharpie of the Culebra Cut" I have him
drinking fine brandy with Teddy Roosevelt. And that's good to mention just
on the remote (?!) chance that story is ever printed in America -- that
brandy will surely turn into sarsaparilla in any edition published here.

> That might also be a reference to Lucky Luke,
> At least in some Finnish translations of LL, sarsaparilla is served in
> saloons instead of whiskey in those albums where alcohol is not
"allowed".

Again, no, it is not a reference to "Lucky Luke". I'm pleased people enjoy
trying to find hidden references in my stories, but the simple fact in this
instance is that sarsaparilla is one of the things that people drank in
the days before Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

> I don't know who's the world's largest publisher, but according to
Disney's
> annual report, which arrived today, the company considers publishing as
> "perhaps our longest-running international success story, having begun in
the
> early 1930s. . . . They state that "we are now the world's largest
publisher
> of children's books and magazines, putting out publications that are read
by
> 100 million people in 55 languages in 74 countries." Given the
squishiness of
> corporate statements, this could mean several different things, but there
it
> is.

This is an odious, flat-out lie that I have seen them spout before in such
reports. They are shamelessly taking full credit for 70 years of efforts by
dozens and dozens of *independent* publishers who commission and publish
the work of *freelance* writers and artists, all done without an *iota* of
Disney assistance! They know that the corporate shareholders assume, like
the rest of the public, that anything with the name "Disney" on it is and
always has always been manufactured, created and/or published by Disney, so
they fuel the misconception with such a despicable untruth.
Brrrrrrrrrrrr......