DCML Digest #7

[Don Rosa]

> From: Goofy313g at aol.com
> Subject: about "The Dream of a Lifetime", to Don Rosa
> In the original scripts of "The Dream of a lifetime",
>  what is written on the truck on page 10 panel 5, and
>  what is written on the stores panels on page 17 panel 5 ?
>  What do these names refer to?

Earthshaking questions. Well, okay, if you think anybody else here would
want to know my answers...
That's supposed to be a generic commercial truck on page 10. Knowing that
any writing I put in English on a Duckburg truck would be changed, and since
it didn't matter what sort of truck it was, I simply kinda just squiggled
some random letters on it and obscured it with motion-lines. But I see the
colorist brought out the letters he/she thought were there. In other words,
don't worry about what's written there.
Page 17 is a scene in 1977 Glasgow. The names on the storefronts are actual
businesses on Paisley St. in Glasgow in 1877. As long as I was looking at
photos of same, there was no reason not to copy over the exact names I saw.
And since this was expressly a scene in a specific city in the world
(regardless of where the translators think Duckburg is), I use the language
and words that would appear in such signs in that city... then I tell Byron
not to allow the Egmont art department to white out the lettering (which
they would otherwise automatically do in a rote manner, without seeing if it
had any meaning in the setting). Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't.
I guess it depends on who the rote white-outer is on a given day at the
office. Of course, it doesn't matter a whit that there is a Bolton Hat Store
in that scene, but I think it shows respect to the readers, young or old, if
the signage in Glasgow is not written in Norwegian or Swedish or something
else which would be rather bizarre. I recently did the same for the sign on
the door of the office of the International Money Council in Paris in my
"Crusader Crown" story -- I had a French friend tell me what the name of
that organization would be in French, and instructed that the French words
should be used in my script. I hope they were properly carried over by the
translators, but I have no control over that.