Of Don and Daniel and destinies

[Olaf Solstrand]

Monsieur ROSA:
> The story was originally intended to also
> feature Hortense with whom Matilda always seemed to act as a duo, but I
was
> told by Egmont that I could not ever use Hortense in a current-time story
> and that she must be considered "deceased" -- this is because there could
> never be a suitable reason why she would have stayed away from her own
> children Donald and Della since their childhood.

But... DID Hortense stay away from her own children Donald and Della since
their childhood?

When I was a kid, reading the Donald Duck weeklies, I never gave so much
thought to Donald's parents. I may have wondered once in a while about
HD&L's parents, as HD&L had to be raised by their uncle [and this was way
before I read "Donald and the nephews"]... But Donald was no problem at all.
He was already fully raised.Why would he live with his parents? I always
thought that Donald's mother and father lived in happiness in a cottage
outside of Duckburg or something... But there was never any stories needing
them, and even though I would have loved seeing them once in a while...
Well, Donald was a grown-up man. He shouldn't have to live with his parents.

After reading Don Rosa's "The Empire-Builder from Calisota", it even made
MORE sense. Yes, we saw Hortense and Matilda go away for good - but I always
thought that they brought Donald and Della WITH THEM. I may be wrong, but
that is what seemed to me to be the decent thing for a parent to do. And
then, I assumed that Donald moved back to Duckburg some years later, when he
was an adult man - possibly to get to spend some time with his grandparents.

After all, we never get to see stories about Donald in his teens, do we? Or
do we?

Yes, those great new stories by Kari Korhonen and Esteban, "Donny Duck",
show Donald growing up on Grandma's farm - but I always assumed this found
place before Scrooge returned to Calisota, and that the reason Hortense and
Quackmore never are present is that they were working. They had a money bin
to run [for those unfamiliar with the "Donny Duck" stories: They show
stories from Donald's childhood - and they were printed AFTER The Life and
Times of Scrooge McDuck, if anyone wondered why my assumptions are
TLATO$mcD-connected. Well, I wouldn't assume anything like that if I had
read this in the eighties, but I read it in the late nineties].

And then there's "Buon Compleanno, Paperino!" by Marco Rota [in Scandinavian
"My life in an eggshell"] - but in that story Donald was surely not
abandoned. He fell out of the nest! That ALONE should be a suitable reason
that Donald's mother stayed away from her child! He fell out from the nest,
two strangers picked him up, and when she came back her precious egg was
gone.

Have I missed some vital facts here? If not, I'm honestly SURPRISED to see
that Egmont thinks of Hortense as "deceased" - at least for that reason.
Have we EVER seen anything suggesting or stating that Donald grew up away
from his parents?



> For this same reason, I am also told that I can never try to tell the
story
> of what happened to HD&L's parents because (as I've described in past
> messages) there can never be a suitable or happy ending to that tale.

Just curious: Would you be allowed to write a story of HD&L's parents
happening, say, in the late thirties, in the days around HD&L's birth? No,
I'm not asking you to do that. I'm just being nosy.



> But that aspect is only bad for *me*, taking so much extra time and
blowing
> the @#%& outta my flat page-rate so that it comes out to about $2 per
hour.

Literally, or are you just saying a very low number so that we will
understand that it takes a lot of time?



> I say all this in safety since I figure you'll forget it all by the time
you
> read the story in 9 months (Europe) or a year or two (America)(if ever?).

You should really have known us better by now. Trust me, *I* won't! Ever
since I started reading your mail, I thought "I really look forward to this
story"! [almost included a smiley there, but, as this was a paragraph about
actually *remembering* things you have said for a long time, I realize that
is a bad idea.]



> The only thing that keeps me going is that I recall that one other
adventure
> that I was certain was a dreadful mistake from start to finish was "The
> Guardians of the Lost Library", a story which some readers have said was
> their favorite Duck story ever and a few have even said it was their
> favorite comic book story they'd ever read, period (take that with a grain
> of salt -- you know there's NO accounting for tastes!).

I guess I'm one of them. Well, my favourite *duck* story is perhaps "The old
castle's secret" - but the Guardians is at least my favorite *Don Rosa*
story... Make another story like that, and I'll be thrilled.



Monsieur van Eijmeren:
> I don't know if this subject has been brought up before, but I have a
> question about Barks' paid echo's story (WDC 105). It seems to me that
> there's a miscount of the echo's and the total deposit

As I read your mail, I realized that there also is a miscount in the
Norwegian TRANSLATION of this.



> However, in panel 6.2, one nephew says that he watched Donald put
> *5* dimes in their coin box.

And in the Norwegian translation, he said there was THREE 25-øringer in the
box - and five in panel 8.4. In the Norwegian version naturally only four
was needed - the game was 1,00 NOK, and every echo gave them 0,25 NOK. A
confusing translation.

Otherwise, I naturally agree with you - HD&L giving out echoes for free
makes no sense at all. Could there be a time-rate solution? "Put a dime in
the box, and the echo will answer you for the next thirty seconds" or
something? Otherwise, one COULD might as well say that "Moo! Squawk! Grind!
Whonk!" is FOUR different echoes!

But, what dazzled ME when reading this story, was: Where was the REAL echo?



About language etcetera: I know I have been one of the major spammers on the
DCML lately - but I'm trying to cut down on that. Please feel free to help
me, tell me if I say something that does not need to be said or anything.
I'm not necessarily so good on that on my own. But just so that I have said
it: I can understand that being a foreigner is an excuse for using "are"
instead of "is" or adding an s now and then. But I *don't* see that being
foreign should be an "excuse" for e.g. calling HD&L "dipshits".




Best,
Olaf the Blue