Disney-comics digest #306.

[Don Rosa]

JON L.:
	Thank you for your comments on Lo$ #11. Actually, I had been
asking Americans for comments on #2, but I can't recall getting much
feedback. Hm.
	Do  I need a "spoiler warning" here? I don't think I'll say much
that isn't more than tantalizing, and American readers will forget it
all in the near 2 years they'll await to read this chapter anyway.
	 Yes, when I laid out the ground to be covered in each Lo$
chapter, I KNEW #11 was gonna be murder! I had set $crooge up in
business as a tycoon, but there wasn't much of anything that needed to
be said about his life between 1902 and 1947 ("Bear Mountain"). There
were lots of Barks references that would be included in those 45 years,
but how to tie everything into a PLOT to last that long and in so FEW
pages!?!? I originally figured I had no choice but to SKIP the whole
Bombie bit, partly because of Disney's ultra-politically-correct
attitudes, and partly because that ancient Barks story had too many
inconsistancies with his own later version of that character, both in
his physical appearance and in his villainous ways. Then I decided that
THAT was the only interesting thing to try to hang a slim plot on,
since I never want to introduce anything altogether NEW to the whole
legend. It was STILL maddening to make sense of the physical appearance
that $crooge had in "Voodoo Hoodoo"'s flashback, and how to string some
idea through most of 45 years. It was really a catch-all chapter which
had to
be done if I was to complete the project of including EVERY Barks
reference into the series without leaving out a single one... and I
finally did so.
	 Anyway, given as difficult a job as I expected it to be, and
accepting the fact that what I came up with may not be, in and of
itself a very interesting story, I think I did a MASTERFUL job of tying
all those Barks bits together in a logical fashion. And the ending is
rather unusual for a Disney comic book... but then, so was the ending
to chapter 9 and the world didn't end.
	Why did Foola Zoola (the witchdoctor) sign with an "X"? How else
should I have done it? There's nothing there that says he could READ the
contract... but he had no choice but to sign it, and there's nothing
worse that the contract could have said than what he was TOLD it said
(what else did he have to lose than the tribal land?) Again, the TRICK
here that stumped me for days before I figured out the complex set of
circumstances that would get it to work even in my contrived way, was
WHY would Foola Zoola know who $crooge McDuck was and what he'd done,
but think that $crooge looked like a completely different Duck (as it
turns out, like Donald would years later). That was a brain teaser.
	I have a question for YOU or another Norwegian reader: there
seems to be some sorta contest in the last several weeklies, perhaps a
tie-in to #2000? It seems to involve a story (in issue #10) where
readers are to place stickers into panels that are being included in
subsequent issues. The story involves $crooge telling his life story to
HD&L... and to DAISY? Where's Donald??? And I just noticed that the plot
of the story seems to involve Magica stealing his #1 Dime, but then
something is said to render this as not a serious problem for some
reason, and the whole story hinges on $crooge, in the last panel,
showing pictures (from my L0$ #1) of himself earning that Dime. Just
what's going on here??? 
	
JAMES W.:
	My DUCKTALES magazine story? It was a shortie about Magica
sending $crooge's MANSION (?!?!) with herself back into the Jurassic (I
guess) era until he tosses his Dime out to her. I'm even pretty vague on
the details now, but I think he tosses it over to a certain spot so that
when she grabs it and returns the mansion and grounds to the present,
she's standing where the POOL (!?!?) is and falls in and they grab her,
ta da. I recall how they screwed it up proper in several ways... one of
which is a throw-away gag in the first panel where $crooge says "What's
that TREMOR running through the house?" and some dull-witted character
pointing to a tiny mouse saying "That's a MOUSE!" No big yuk, but the
gag was rewritten into "The whole house is shaking!" "That mouse is
shaking it!" These tiny imbecilities by editors are what drives people
like me nuts!
	WHY did I "stoop" to do this job? I had just lost my job with
Gladstone when Disney told them not to return my artwork (reducing my
income to about $10,000 per year which I couldn't get by on). I needed
WORK. And when they called, I still originally refused the idea of doing
a DUCKTALES story OR writing something that someone else would draw. But
they were paying a LOT for that simple-mined drek, so I did a story. I
figured on doing a few more, but I had trouble getting them to PAY; so
after I complained a few times, they paid me, and then went to someone
else for the next script. I was spared further debasement!

	I now leave for a 4 day funnybook convention in Oakland, CA. I
won't be back until Monday if people ask me any questions and I don't
reply.