+Postage Due+Disney-comics digest #68.

Don Rosa 72260.2635 at CompuServe.COM
Fri Aug 6 06:41:16 CEST 1993


For Wilmer Rivers who is wondering about that magazine cover in CBG:
	I thought it pretty stupid that they didn't EXPLAIN that cover
since readers couldn't read what it was! Perhaps R.C. sent in the photo
but forgot to explain it. That was the Sunday magazine for AFTENPOSTEN,
what I'm told is Norway's biggest (by somebody's measure) but most
prestigeous (as opposed to that VG?) newspaper. I drew that cover for
the large interior article about Scrooge and me and that "Life of
$crooge" series -- they told me that it was like doing the cover of TIME
in America, AFTENPOSTEN is that big in Norway. Who noze.
	Anyway, what the cover is showing is sort of an "imaginary
scene" of the young $crooge seeing a copy of that newspaper and dreaming
of moving to Norway... part of the thrust of the article is how popular
the Ducks are in Norway/Scandanavia, and that the characters seem to
"belong" to that part of the world now, more than any other. What the
old $crooge is looking at is the Oslo City Hall, a VERY recognizable
structure to a Norwegeian, done up like a "dual" Money Bin. It's a gag
that would be lost on anyone outside of Oslo.
	The other thing in that issue was that ad placed by Barks' new
"agent", a fellow who seems to be tearing down the many years that
Hamilton spent making Barks look good. I can gripe about what shameless
"collectibles" Hamilton made Barks products into, but at LEAST he made
Barks look CLASSY. This ad by Bill Grandy looked like something a
schoolboy made by typing copy up on an old typewriter then cutting it
out and gluing it haphazardly together with some other ugly border
strips. It really looks like the sort of ad you'd see in a 1968 comic
fanzine, not one in 1993!
	The painting mentioned can only be the one that Barks is doing
for Geppi, and which may NOT be being marketed by Hamilton. It would be
a shame if Barks is snubbing Hamilton now -- Hamilton may have exploited
him but he also made him RICH and, though Barks created all his body of
work, it was HAMILTON that made it popular with others than just poor
Duck fans -- thereby creating about 90% of Barks' American popularity.
The other thing mentioned - the comic story being drawn by Van Horn - is
a disturbing bit also cooked up, I assume, by Grandy, as he is BOTH
Barks' and Van Horn's agent. Barks is simply supplying a story idea and
demanding umpteen thousand $$$ from Egmont for its use -- a project that
is NOT approved of as yet, nor should it be in the form that Grandy
wishes. Besides, the conflict of interests that is self-evident here is
disturbing. We should at least TRY not to make it seem as if the entire
point behind everything we do is unadulterated GREED, but maybe I'm
living in the past.





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