Thanks for Welcome; Van Horn Index & Oak Island

[DucksEtc.@eworld.com]

To the handful of people (Jorgen, Fredrik and Dave) who wished me  welcome
when I joined the mailing list: Many thanks and I sincerely apologize for not
responding before now. A killer cold, a frantic (and feverish) bout with my
tax returns and other fun things kept me from responding. Sorry. I'll try to
respond a bit faster next time.

FREDRIK:
As to that Van Horn list you mentioned, I'd be happy to look at it. I've
already talked to Bill Van Horn about it and he's willing to go over it as
well. (Actually if he goes over it there's not much need for me to review
it.) I do have the Van Horn Index that I downloaded from the mailing list
archive. I don't know if that's the latest version you have, though. So send
a new one or let me know if this one is good. ( A word of warning: I have to
send things to Bill by snail mail to Canada and I don't know how fast he'll
get back to me once it arrives. So it could take awhile.)

DAVE RAWSON:
 Thanks for the kind words about my pizza story in Donald Duck Adventures
#29. I wrote that story four years ago and originally sold it to Disney
Comics. When Disney Comics hit the skids Egmont purchased the story from
Disney and was nice enough to pay me some extra money for it as well. The
story was originally quite a bit longer--18 or 20 pages, I can't remember
now--and it was supposed to be three-tier. A couple of scenes had to be cut
and the story had to be reformatted so that Van Horn could draw it as a
four-tier to fit Egmont's needs. It was nice to finally have something back
in print in the U.S.

By the way, I enjoyed your tour guide story in the same issue. It was fast,
funny and well constructed. Gee! Should we be paying for each other for these
compliments or should we just keep a running tally? Any more Disney stories
of yours coming up here in the U.S.? (Yes, I've already heard about and
ordered a copy of  your CHIAROSCURO: The Private Lives of Leonardo da Vinci.
But you're welcome to plug it again if you want. (Gee! I think I'm one up on
you on the tally sheet now. How much do I get?) 

I've got a story drawn by Vicar that's coming up in DD #31. (It was actually
written even before the Pizza story. Sigh. It takes so long for these things
to get reprinted over here.) For some reason one of the trade papers is
describing it as a Junior Woodchuck story. It's not. Instead it's another
fued story between Donald and his neighbor Jones. (Or at least that's the way
it was written. Vicar apparently didn't draw Jones to look much like Jones
and so I think Gladstone is calling him something else here.) Other than
that, I don't know of anything else of mine coming up this millenium in the
U.S. If there is Gladstone sure hasn't told me. Hopefully something else will
show up soon. Writing for Egmont is great, but it's sure frustrating not to
see it in print here.

By the way Dave, I noticed quite awhile back that you sent an advance copy of
your tour guide story to Comics Buyer's Guide for review. How did you get a
copy of the art with a lettered script in English? I'd love to do the same
for whenever one of my stories shows up here. Did you get it from Gladstone
or Egmont?

OAK ISLAND TREASURE REVISTED:
I noticed that a few weeks ago people were talking about the Oak Island
treasure and the possibility of doing a story about it. As Don Rosa noted
someone already has done an Uncle Scrooge story about it. I don't think the
author's name was ever mentioned, though. I believe the story that Don is
talking about was written by Huck Aiken. (Sorry, I can't be 100 percent sure
of the spelling of Huck's last name. It might be Aicken.) I believe the story
was originally written as a 48-pager, but Disney Comics wanted it expanded to
62 pages to fill a graphic novel. Van Horn was approached to draw it, but
turned it down. (For the most part, Bill really prefers shorter stories.) I
doubt that finding an artist to draw it was really a factor in it's
nonappearance here. At that time the Jamie Diaz Studio was churning out pages
for Disney. So the story could have always been assigned to Diaz t if no one
else was available to draw the story.

Whatever the merits of the script were--its chances of appearing in America
were pretty much killed I suspect when Disney decided a few months later not
to produce any graphic novels with original material. All graphic novels were
pretty much either adaptions of movies or compilations of previously
published movies. (I was working on a Mickey Mouse graphic novel at the time.
Maybe I'll finish it for Egmont one of these days.)

Anyway, it sounds like Huck's story was sold to Egmont so hopefully it'll see
print one of these days. Or has someone seen it in print already?