17th of May/June 2005 + Re: Scrooge's silk hat + Re: Deadlines

[Olaf Solstrand]

DEAR EVERYBODY; if you think this "verbal battle" between me and Sigvald
starts to get a little out of hand - please send me a private e-mail about
it, and I will back out _immediately_. I feel that this is discussion that
needs to be taken - but I sometimes get the feeling that Sigvald and I are
the only ones participating in this - and if ANYONE out there thinks this
discussion could be more suitable for private e-mail between Sigvald and me,
LET ME KNOW. I have a terrible feeling of being a bad, bad spammer.




SIGVALD:
> d) UK - the home of the new Norwegian queen
>
> e) Germany - Kaiser Wilhelm II often went to Norway and was thus obviously
> interested in the seriously matter of war or peace in the Scandinavian
> question during the summer of 2005.
>
> f) Russia - Norway's neighbour in the north also had it's interests in the
> area.

...yeah, that is naturally of huge interest for the average German or
Russian reader today. Or what?

(by the way, I can't wait to see the seriously matter of war or peace in the
Scandinavian question during the summer of 2005 :-)



> You are probably right about this - I guess the reason is that thos
> Brazilian comics is not sold in the US so it would be unfamiliar to him.

To quote Don Rosa on this (from a post he wrote on this list June 16th
2001):

"But friends sent me many examples of the Brazilian and Dutch Jose and
Panchito comics for reference before I did that story. These were useful
artistically, but I found that I did *not like* the interpretation of Jose's
personality that I saw in these comics. At least in the examples I had, Jose
was some sort of bum who, yes, hated being a "productive member of society",
swindled people out of free meals and seemed to spend all his
time in other con-man antics (judging by what I could tell not being able to
*read* the comics). As with drawing cartoon horses, I could not enjoy making
a hero out of this Jose in my own stories.... the same way I must change
$crooge from being greedy and nothing but greedy for money if I can tolerate
making a hero out of him. To me, greed and selfishness is the root of all
evil and the Republican party. So, I just figured that I would be basing my
Jose on the one in the movies and interpolate from that point, and I
interpolated in a different direction than did those newspaper comic
writers. I turned him into a mediocre itinerant night-club entertainer. I
was treating him and Panchito like the characters Hope and Crosby played
throughout their "Road" pictures. Yeah, if I spoke in the parlance of a
modern American movie producer, I'd refer to my "Three Caballeros Ride
Again" as "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" meets "the Road to Bali"."

Yes, Don Rosa _knew_ of the Brazilian José, and chose to ignore him.



> And so? AFAIK "Don Donald" is not a work by Barks.

And so? It is still a Donald Duck movie. And whoever gave Donald such an
important thing as his car should be threated with respect, right? So I hope
that you was just kidding here - and not seriously attacking this script
writer's name and reputation?



> I din *not* say that Mognato is not a comic lover in general, only that I
> have been given the imp0ression that she doesn't value Barks/Rosa as much
as
> us in D.U.C.K.hunt. But just as DR are free to ignore Brazilian comics she
> is is off course equally fre to ignore US comics - even thoyg she has
easily
> access to it.

I believe the words you used were "haven't bothered to", "doesn't value" and
"takes things out of thin air". Not exactly flattering. I would say that a
reference to the Klondike days



> Maybe so, but in Lo$ we have not seen him use any silk hat before 1909
(with
> the exeption of the hat he did borrow for a while in 1881 in "The Cowboy
> Captain of the Cutty Sark").

First: I have _read_ this comic book now, and as the phrase used is
"Klondike time". We know from "Back to the Klondike" that Scrooge suffers
from memory loss, so this story COULD simply show that he had forgot to take
one of his pills today and that everything he says should be taken with a
vacilliation of ten-twenty years.. SCROOGE could be wrong here - like
Theodore Roosevelt was wrong in "The Buckaroo of the Badlands" about the
duck-billed dinosaur.

Second: Well, Barks have been contradicting himself here, remember? We once
heard that Scrooge had his hat already when meeting the McViper's!



> Deadlines? I have never seen Don Rosa ever mention working under the
> preassure of deadlines. Is that what other artists do?

As far as I know, publishers have production budgets that involves how many
and what kinds of stories they need to buy from writers, which writers get
which kinds of stories (and how many), and which artists get which kinds of
stories (and how many). Also, as editors _ALWAYS_ seem to be busy (believe
me - there's a lot that needs thorough reading and approval!), deadlines
helps us finish stories for a certain date where the editors actually have
the _time_ to sit down and read our scripts (because that date have been
planned for that exact purpouse in months already).




Olaf the Blue
www.andebyonline.com