Barks's November 31, 1990 letter to Rosa

[Daniel van Eijmeren]

As a reply to a very offensive contribution full of plain fantasies, here 
are the contents of a private Barks letter to Rosa, as it was published in 
Gladstone's 'Isle Of Golden Geese' album 'Uncle $crooge Adventures 42'.

I want to underscore that Barks didn't know about any internet discussions 
like ours when he wrote this letter. This mailing list didn't even exist at 
that very different, almost computer-less time, in 1990.

Hopefully, most (all?) people here will just read and *enjoy* this 
contribution, without thinking of bickering. (Please!)

--- Daniël

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November 31 1990 

Dear Don:
   I have read your sequel story of the "Crown of Genghis Khan" cum 
"Tralla La" ["Return to Xanadu," US 261 and 262] and had to dig out the 
original stories of both tales to see where you had made the hook-ups, 
it being many years since I read either of those opuses. Well, you did 
a *sequel*, there's no doubt about that, and in the process you invented 
so many new situations that the old tales are hardly needed as a 
springboard. Congratulations.
   Best of all, you kept the cast of characters limited to the ducks and 
the original Trallalains without cannibalizing other stories by bringing 
in Glomgold, the Beagle Boys, and other ilk.
   I do have a criticism, however. Your handling of Uncle Scrooge makes 
him come across as a snarling, pushy old looter every bit as bad as the 
Scrooge pictured in the Chilean commie propaganda publication *How to Read 
Donald Duck*. You stressed right out the similarity between him and Kublai 
Khan. I hope that isn't the way you view him personally.
   Anyway, it's good you have a market going with Gutenberghus. They will 
no doubt have excellent translators and colorists, and their checks don't 
bounce. You *earn* those checks with the rich embellishment you lavish on 
your drawings.
   I doubt that they will expect you to specialize indefinitely on sequels 
to my old stories. After all, my plots only took the ducks to the politically 
safe areas of the world. Since the decay of communism there's all of Russia 
and Siberia and China to use for locales.
   Writers can now concoct *new* adventures for the ducks on such as the old 
silk road from Cathay. There can be forays into Siberia to hunt mammoth's 
ivory. Imagine the ducks finding a herd of frozen mammoths whose feeding 
ground had been so rich in minerals their tusks had become more *gold* than 
ivory. Maybe the ducks could take a frozen mammoth home to Duckburg for 
exhibition in a block of clear ice. Uncle Scrooge squabbles with the power 
company over the size of the refrigeration bill, and the mammoth thaws out 
*alive*.
   Southeast Asia is opening up a little, too. Indiana Jones didn't loot 
the *only* temple in that treasure-infested region. My shopworn old menaces 
can be replaced by such as Bengal tigers, rogue elephants, and duck-drowning 
monsoons.
   If any of the above inspires you to start writing, please feel welcome to 
use any of it. It's from such seeds of ideas that I used to build my stories. 
Man! am I grateful that I no longer have to write and draw the darned things! 

Goodluck.
Carl


(c) Carl Barks

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