DCML Digest Issue 3

[Don Rosa]

> From: "Olaf Solstrand" <olaf at andebyonline.com>
> Subject: Of Don and Daniel and destinies
> But... DID Hortense stay away from her own children Donald and Della since
> their childhood?
> 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?

I can't read the comics that I receive with the "Donny Duck" (so you called
it) stories of Donald living on Grandma Duck's farm, so I don't know what
reasons are given, if any, in the storyline to explain why he's not with his
own parents. Egmont tells me that these stories make it clear that young
Donald *permanently* lives on the farm and that his parents are obviously
(to the readers) dead and gone. Izzat true?
But regardless of where his parents are when he grew up, where have they
been for the past 10-20 years of his adulthood if they are still alive
somewhere? If they live in another town, why haven't we ever seen them visit
their family in Duckburg in even one instance in the past 37,579 Duck
stories published worldwide? Even if they didn't want to associate with
$crooge, why couldn't they have avoided him and visited with others?
These are the questions that I would need to answer in any story in which I
reintroduced Hortense McDuck. I don't know if I want to try anything so
tricky. My idea that she (and Matilda) had been living at Castle McDuck for
many years could have simply not mentioned what happened to their husbands,
and we could assume at least those two are "deceased" in unspoken terms. But
at first Egmont refused to allow me to even use Matilda until I argued for
at least her being there... she doesn't have children in Duckburg. But
Egmont still said that if Hortense was alive, she would have appeared in
comics long before now.
So... well, there's lots of other stories to tell. Just lemmee finish this
interminable Templar story!!!!!!

> 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.

I've never had a reason to ask. But to make any reference to HD&L's parents
even in a flashback would make it necessary to say what on earth happened to
them later. It's unavoidable. Not to do so would be painfully obvious, and
readers would start asking and Egmont doesn't have any reason to get into
all that.

> > 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?

Right. And there haven't really been 37,579 Duck stories published
worldwide. Or... maybe there've been more? I wouldn't be surprised....