Disney-comics digest #417.

Don Rosa 72260.2635 at compuserve.com
Mon Aug 29 15:14:20 CEST 1994


WILMER: 
	Yes, this has nothing to do with Disney. I should gripe at
myself for causing myself to pay to read this tomorrow -- but it does
tell something about how I write my stories... perhaps?

	I never saw that Columbus comic book, and though I'm sure it's
interesting, it couldn't have contained anything I'm not thoroughly
familiar with, as I have become quite the little amatuer Columbus buff
over the past several years. I think he's easilly one of the most
interesting characters in history, partly because of his obvious
accomplishments, but also because of what a mixture of bold genius and
reckless nutball, and selfless hero and greedy profiteer he was. In
many ways, he reminds me of $crooge.
	In fact, just yesterday I was reading another book about
Cristobal, and came onto yet another interesting fact which wasn't
included in those movies (or in the comic book?). During CC's 4th
voyage to America, after he was taken back to Spain in chains after his
3rd, he discovered Central America and was having a bad time of it
losing many men and several ships; he was finally shipwrecked on
Jamaica for nearly a year. The Spanish governor of Hispaniola knew it
but enjoyed having CC's governorship of the New World and wanted so
much for CC to disappear from history that he wouldn't rescue him. All
this I knew. But what I was reading about yesterday was that when the
Jamaican natives refused to help CC's men from starving to death, CC
got out his almanac, noticed that there was an eclipse due the next
day, and terrified the natives with his magical powers by "causing" the
eclipse. This corny stunt has been in countless books and B-movies, and
Columbus was the first to pull it. This is the reason why I've learned
that basing comics on actual history is FAR more interesting than just
making up stupid super-hero-type crapola.
	I also learned of a mistake in my "tGotLL"; Columbus did NOT die
in poverty as many sources say. He was actually rather wealthy when he
died. But he did die in obscurity. The governments and later explorers
had resented him so much that they managed to have the world-at-large
never be aware that it was CC who discovered and opened the New World
(easy to do in those days before newspapers and TV), and they succeeded
so well that CC was unknown until people in the newly formed United
States, seeking to celebrate the founding of their nation and the 300th
anniversary of the voyagers that started it all, started	
looking at historical documents... and only then did the world find the
truth about the actual discoverer.
	
	Anyway, you were also asking about the age of the Beagle Boys.
It works out very easilly, so I'm surprised you couldn't figger it
(unless you'd forgotten when my "current day" stories take place.
	Blackheart ("Grandpa") Beagle is the only actual problem that I
see. When he makes his last appearance in Barks' "The Money Well", he'd
have to be well over 100 years old!
	The Beagle Boys you see in my Lo$ chapters 2 & 10 are, as you
say, the fathers of the "current" Beagle Boys. They could have been born
about 1855-60 or thereabouts. In my chapter 10 I have Blackheart telling
his bachelor sons that it's time they had families to breed more Beagles
for modern crime -- this was 1902, so let's say these hard-to-wed boys
had kids by 1910. These will be the BBs that Grandpa Beagle introduces
to $crooge in my Lo$ #12 (1947).
	So the modern Beagles would have been born about 1910-1920 (not
all at once, surely) and would therefore range in the ages of 35-45.
Remember that my stories take place sometime in the mid-1950's.




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