LO?12

[bjorn-are.davidsen@s.televerket.tele.no]

Don!

After having read Lo$12 I just have to unlurk myself!
Congratulations on your well done project! Of course 
not everyone will agree with your overall vision of 
Scrooge's life, especially regarding his retirement 
and return to business and adventure. Personally I 
think it really does solve a lot of problems related to 
Barks introduction and later elaborations on Scrooge, 
when he decided to use him in more than one story, 
gradually building up the mythology of his past. 

Barks' use of Scrooge in "Christmas on Bear 
Mountain" was after all not due to a lot of 
consideration of his past or present. That only came 
later and made CoBM somewhat of a problem (is 
analomy the right word?) chronicling Scrooge's past, 
concidering his present in the fifties and sixties. 
However, I  think you managed to solve much of the 
problem!

I also liked your presentation of Citizen Duck! That 
may be lost on the kids (or perhaps American kids 
will understand), but is another example of how you 
give additional value and reading joy to us more 
grey haired readers.

Even if I think Lo$10 is the very best of the series, 
the final chapter had it's great moments! I liked very 
much the beginning, the part where they enter the bin 
for the first time, and the ending looking backward 
and forward at the same time. 

I think I'll have to read it once or twice more to get 
the proper perspective, but I think one difficulty is 
that the reader (if this is not the first Scrooge story 
one read) knows too much in advance. The content in 
Scrooges money bin is no surprise. That is a plot 
problem when you make it one of the climaxes of the 
story. The Beagle Boys was not very cleverly 
disguised (they never are). It was also no surprise 
that Scrooge would beat them, which he even did 
a bit too easily. 

Another thing which disturbs me somewhat is that 
Scrooge is a bit too different from the way Barks 
drew him in CoBM.  I guess that is a problem when 
you try to be consistent to your own (and Barks' 
later) way of drawing Scrooge, but it didn't quite 
seem right (I do not know if I have any clever 
solutions to that problem!).

However, do not misunderstand! The final part of Lo$ 
was well done and overall very satisfying! 

Bjorn Are