Reprints/Story Styles

[L. Schulte]

I agree with the sentiment that America needs a Don Rosa Library in large 
format on non-acid paper: something for posterity!

If you gave 10 composers a theme, and told them to come back in a month 
with a composition based on that theme, you would have 10 very different 
works.  Some might compose a piano sonata, or a string quartet, or a 
trumpet concerto, or a symphony even!  The original theme that you gave 
theme would be transformed immensely.  The same is true of the Duck 
Stories: Scrooge and Donald and the "Duckburg Universe" are a compositional 
theme being used by various artists in various ways.  Like with our 
composers, who will be taking that original theme and varying it, changing 
its key, breaking it into pieces and reassembling it in different ways (cf. 
Rachmaninov's famous "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini"!), the Duck artists 
are doing the same thing, but perhaps with less freedom (i.e. you would not 
eliminate Duckburg and put Uncxle Scrooge and company in Los Angeles, or 
change Scrooge and Donald into human beings...unless you were Magica da 
Spell!) than the composers would have.

Whether or not you like the final result depends on you: I will admit that 
I do not really like any of the European stories, and that in the '80's I 
was a Barks purist and did not even appreciate Don Rosa or William Van 
Horn.  Eventually I changed my mind, and am most enthusiastic about their 
stories now, and also like things by Pat Block.  I am still giving the 
European artists a chance, but have not yet had an epiphany in their favor!