Dime and Dime Again (Re: Three Caballeros/Some US 321 Observations)

[Daniel van Eijmeren]

DEREK SMITH, 10-09-2003:

> [US 321] And Carlos Mota's art on 'Dime and Dime Again Part 1': Let's 
> just say that the two female office workers at the end wrere drawn 
> rather attractively. It reminded me of how Carl Barks and other 
> artists of that age may have drawn them, so I guess I shouldn't have 
> been surprised when I found out that Barks had something to do with 
> the plot (how much I don't know since Geoffrey Blum wrote it and I 
> don't know the history behind the story). I wonder if Barks' style 
> may have provided any inspiration to Mota or if he usually draws in 
> that manner.

Read my email of 21 June 2003, in which I've mentioned what I know 
about Barks's idea that inspired Geoffrey Blum to write this story:
http://stp.ling.uu.se/pipermail/dcml/2003-June/023412.html

As far as I know, Barks and Blum have never communicated about the 
making of the story. But I might be wrong. If so, please let me know.
Has Blum himself ever commented on this story? Will there be an article 
about it in a Gemstone comic, for example?

There are differences between Barks's idea and Blum's story. And I'm the 
kind of nitpicker who falls over such things. In Barks's idea, Scrooge 
BUYS lottery tickets. In the story this has been replaced by getting 
lottery tickets for free, or something like that. In my opinion, this 
was an inferior replacement for a *very* interesting story-ingredient.

I didn't understand the part where a nephew decides to saw down a tree. 
With a chain-saw, no less. I find this a remarkable move for a nephew, 
even in instances without references to Junior Woodchucks. At least 
according to the Dutch translation, there is absolutely NO reason to saw 
down the tree. The nephew just wants to help Scrooge being a bit faster.
(I can't stand it when trees are sawed down. This is a pet peeve. In the 
city where I live, people chop down trees to have lots of sun in their 
garden, and then they hide under a parasol to have at least *some* shadow...)

Anyway, somehow I expected a lot more from Blum than this story. But maybe 
that's also because I'm too familiar with the idea. Reason is that I've 
tried to script it myself, as a shooting script, before Blum's story was 
published. Just for fun, as a practice. I'm just an amateur writer. In 
that shooting script, Scrooge is so desperate that he even takes advice 
from Gladstone Gander. (As I said, Scrooge is really very desperate.) 
Gladstone is an expert in being lucky, so that's how Scrooge gets the 
silly idea of buying lottery tickets to test his own luck. This was my 
solution to let Scrooge make this strange but interesting out-of-character 
move in a believable way. I was disappointed when I curiously looked for 
Blum's solution for this story-point, only to find out that it just wasn't 
included at all. (Or did I overlook something?)

There was one story-point I've ignored. I couldn't get the story working 
if Scrooge *knows* his dime is stolen by the Beagle Boys. That would raise 
too much questions to get a story going. Maybe Blum thought the same about 
this. In Blum's story, Scrooge doesn't know what exactly happened with the 
dime, neither.

Some other notes:

I like Carlos Mota's art for the story, but I find the staging of the panels 
too slanted. It looks like being on a ship on a stormy sea. Otherwise, I find 
art mostly very good.

Someone told me that Blum uses the godfather/mastermind Grandpa Beagle from 
Don Rosa's stories. (There is no such Grandpa Beagle in Barks's stories.)

I don't know if the story is titled "From Dime to Dime", or "Dime and Dime 
Again", or both.

--- Daniël