DCML Digest Issue 43

[Don Rosa]

> From: "Matthew Williams" <kingofduckburg at apptechnc.net>
> Subject: Duckburg
> I think I've said on the list before that I am VERY jealous of
> the fact that
> Disney comics are more mainstream and appreciated in Europe.  Why
> shouldn't
> the ducks be expatriates like the great American writers of the early
> twentieth century?  Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Stein, and many
> others felt out
> of sync with the rest of the US and left for Europe.

But then when they might have written of something that happened in their
youth, did they suddenly decide that they were born in Oslo or Stuttgart or
Nice?
In *many* interviews I have stated that "Barks created his Ducks for and in
America, but Western stopped creating those stories 30 years ago and America
abandoned the Ducks. They now belong to Europe, to Egmont and Italy and such
publishers and their readers." But they still are American creations.
Europeans have a greater appreciation of Jazz and even Mark Twain than I see
in America, but they don't need to or want to think that Jazz was created in
the bistros in Paris or that Huck Finn lived on the Rhine.

> From: "deanmary" <deanmary at worldnet.att.net>
> Subject: Age of the Nephews
>     I was wondering what list members thoughts were on this question:
> When you read a Disney Duck story how old do you feel  Huey, Dewey,
> and Louie are?

When I read Barks' stories from the period from which I draw my main
inspiration (mid 50's), I felt they were about 12... so that's how I write
them. Physically about 12, mentally about 30.
In Barks' older stories they seem much younger (but still always wiser than
the adults).

> From: <H.W.Fluks at telecom.tno.nl>
> Subject: Make
> I think you *didn't* know that might not be true in other
> languages. Why else would you have written the following?
> "but it seems like "make big money" would work in any language."
> Or was that a different Don Rosa?

You speak and write better English than 99% of the Americans I know. But you
need to check your Dutch-English dictionary for the definition of "seem". It
means "to appear to be so based only on one's mind's eye; to apparently, but
not actually, be so". Then I add that additional word of uncertainty,
"like". And there you have it.
Did you think "seems like" meant "obviously is"?

> From: Cord Wiljes <cord at wiljes.de>
> Subject: AW: Duckburg
> I don't remember the duck's ever speaking about themselves as
> "Americans" in Barks' stories. Especially there does not seem to exist
> anything called "United States of America".

You shouldn't pay attention to this since I'm too lazy to go searching to
find the instances, but Barks' Ducks did occasionally refer to living in
America. And why not? That's the only country in which Barks thought the
stories would ever appear. Why would he avoid it? Donald used to say he
lived in Burbank (California) and I believe they sometimes referred to
leaving or returning to America.

> And if artistic license allows us to have Spartacus talk in English so
> he can be understood by modern moviegoers: Couldn't the same artistic
> license be the reason why Duckburg is located in North-America in
> stories written in the U.S.? And located in Italy in stories written in
> Italy?

Your reasoning evades me, especially when you try to draw a comparison to
Spartacus. Sparty spoke in English, yes, but did the American producer
transpose the setting to taking place in Detroit? Why should he?
And you use a bad example when you bring up Italy. These comics are as
popular in Italy as anywhere in the world... in fact, Italy was creating new
Duck comics, and Duck comics NOT based on Barks' work, before America was
doing so. And yet in Italian stories, Duckburg is in America. Apparently
they like it being in America. Why not?
I'm not *insisting* that all Egmont writers should set their Duckburg
stories in America where they originated, but there's no reason why they
can't -- the stories would be just as good and their readers would still
understand them and enjoy them just as much. Or they could simply avoid the
subject, which is easy enough to write around.
(Besides, I've been told by innumerable Euro fans that they always knew
Duckburg was in America simply by the American-style mail boxes. You'd need
to find yourself a European to explain that -- apparently our horizontal
half-barrell-onna-pole shaped mail depositories are very distinctive. Same
for our fire hydrants. In fact, several European newspapers have requested
photos of me with my *mailbox* or the nearest fire hydrant to visually prove
that I live in America.)
When I did my "Lo$", I had no choice (nor would I have had any reason to
avoid) but to set Duckburg in America as it was meant to be. And surely I
have as much right to do that as another Egmont writer has to set Duckburg
in Denmark or Germany (as it was not originally meant to be). That's all a
story detail that takes place in the writer/reader's mind, just like the
fact that my stories take place in the 1950's. That's a detail not essential
to the story.