DCML Diges Issue 7

[Don Rosa]

From: Walter Lee Fanning
Subject:  Mickey in the Barks/Rosa Universe
>>>>>I'm just curious what y'alls thoughts are on Gottfredson's Mickey
Mouse's place in the Barks/Rosa universe....  And has Rosa ever written any
stories that have mentioned or alluded to Mickey in anyway? 

I can only answer for the place of Mickey Mouse in *my own* stories, and no
one else's.
I featured Mickey Mouse in only ONE story I ever wrote, but not only was it
an "imaginary tale" but it also exists only in storyboard-script form and
was never completed. The story was "The Star-Struck Duck" about Donald and
the Kids attending the opening day at the new Disney-MGM Studio in Orlando
in 1990  -- the story was requested of Gladstone by Disney, but the idea was
later scrapped. Naturally, I regarded it as an amusing notion, but
nonetheless an "imaginary tale" in the Mort Weisinger "Great DC Contest"
spirit since all my stories actually take place in the mid 1950's.  I had
Donald roaming the Theme Park wanting to get the autograph of "the famous
movie star Mickey Mouse"... I was regarding Mickey as a live (not animated)
actor in Donald's Universe... but only as a one-time joke for that
command-performance story -- the Mouse really does not exist in my version
of that Universe. (Similarly, I've always intended to use the "Duck Tales"
TV show in that Universe as an unauthorized live-action TV series satirizing
$crooge's life which he is always trying to sue for slander, but I've never
had a reason to insert that into a script.)
(The same applied to my "From Duckburg to Lillehammer", another special
"command performance imaginary tale" requested by the Norwegian publisher
and taking place apparently 40+ years in the future of my Universe. I'd
hoped to have the story to involve the 1952 Norwegian Winter Olympics, but I
couldn't swing that since they wanted me to depict the modern Lillehammer
ski jump. So... it became another "imaginary tale".)

As I recall, a mention of Mickey was inserted into my "A Little Something
Special" story in a panel where someone in a crowd scene is offering $crooge
a gift of "an autographed photo of Mickey Mouse". But in my original script
it was "an autographed photo of Walt Disney".

Also, I made a rather direct reference to a definite Mickey look-alike in
"The Magnificent Seven (Minus Four) Caballeros!", and Donald was staggered
by the vision, but not because he recognized the image. He only experienced
a shockingly strong attack of deja vu due to all the other less obvious
"hidden Mickeys" that seem to plague his peripheral vision in my Duck
stories. He doesn't know who or what that critter is, but it seems to haunt
him at the least expected moments and places.