Scrooge's Silk Hat

[Olaf Solstrand]

OLE:
> Without having yet seen Caterina Mognato's story which was
> referred to by Sigvald, it is my guess that her research of the factoid
> about Scrooge's hat has been more thorough  than she is credited for.
> In all likelihood her frame of reference is, instead of the Barks/Rosa
> canon, the equally famous Italian story cycle of the beheaded totem.

I'm embarassed to say that I completely had forgot that the origin of the
hat was mentioned in the beheaded totem-stories... But NATURALLY that should
be a just as good source as Barks. This is about as subjective as it can
get, but Martina is one of the best and most important writers the Disney
universe has seen. Yes, Carl Barks built the foundation - but Martina and
others like e.g. Scarpa has been GREAT developers of the realm Barks started
building.

And, my personal opinion: Have in mind that Barks' reference to St.
Petersburg [probably] was meant to be a GAG. Yes, the intention of what he
said was that the hat was very old - neither more or less. "Oh no! My hat! I
bought it in St. Petersburg in 1910!" Haha. Laugh laugh. That hat must be
really old! That's probably everything there was to it. In the beheaded
totem stories... Well, I don't have the story here to check it up, but I
seem to remember it was quite an important part of the story. So I would put
with no doubt in my heart put Martina above Barks in this case. And I have
absolutely NO problems seeing why an ITALIAN would.

Yes, only Barks was Barks, but that's all he was. Even though Barks was
great there is no reason to forget that we've had GREAT stories both before
and after Carl Barks too. Why neglect them?

Thank you for clearing up that one, Ole. Silly me had completely forgot it -
I won't again.



SIGVALD:
> I have *no* problems accepting your statements and opinions, but you
should
> be aware that other and more pure Barksists in his group may see your
> statement as an offensive act against Barks' name and reputation.

How can it be an offensive act to say that a great Italian story cycle -
perhaps even the greatest - is as good a source of information as Carl Barks
is (Ole didn't even use the word "better") - for an ITALIAN? Should the
Italian writers and publishers ignore the "facts" stated by the Italian
masters?`

Besides: Why don't we let those who HAVE problems accepting Ole's statements
and opinions object to it? If there IS any pure Barksists in this group that
may see that statement as an offensive act aganist Barks' name and
reputation - I'm sure they'd say so. If you don't have a problem with it,
and I don't have a problem with it, and Ole doesn't have a problem with it,
and nobody bothers to open their mouth to say they *have* a problem with
it - why can't we just go on with the discussion?



I also realize that I wrote a long post about this yesterday which I by
accident sent to Sigvald only. I will here repeat the main contents of that
post, which simply was a question to Sigvald:
How can you say that Don Rosa is a better researcher than another writer
when we ALL know that Rosa is very selective in which stories he refers to,
and that may be exactly what Caterina Mognato has been here. Sigvald, you
have _no_ foundation to say that Caterina Mognato is a bad researcher based
on ONE statement in ONE dialogue balloon which it now turns out that may
even be based upon a GREAT story by Guido Martina. Then I have just the same
foundation to say that Don Rosa is a miserable researcher, as he completely
ignored the origion of 313 in "Don Donald" and DECADES of Brazilian José
Carioca. (No, I _won't_ say that, but I might as well could.)




Olaf the Blue