DCML digest #860

Don Rosa donrosa at iglou.com
Tue Mar 12 15:13:16 CET 2002


From: Marco Barlotti <marcobar at ds.unifi.it>
>>>>>Is a lucky owner of "Dell Giant" #35 (October 1960) on this list?
He might help us Italians to identify a 22-pages, 3-tiers story that
appeared on issue #261 of "Topolino".
This is a remake of Barks' "Seven cities of Cibola" but begins at HDL's
school. Donald is their theacher and he announces to the class that they
won a sort of "Fullbright scholarship"  ;-)  to visit a faraway island.
We suspect this to be the FIRST story of the comic book (16 pages but
4-tiered) whose title is "HDL Back to school".
However the title just doesn't sound right for the plot. And the whole
story seems to be misplaced among the other, simpler, stories of that issue
35 of "Dell Giant".
So anyone who checks will do us a big favour.

I just trotted down to the "vault" and brought a copy up.
But... I can't tell what it is you want to know. Yes, "Back to School",
being the title of the comic, serves as the title of the otherwise UNtitled
first story. And, yes, that seems to be the story you are describing as
being in your TOPOLINO #261. It's not a remake of "7 Cities of Cibola", but
it contains various elements from that excellent story, jumbled and pasted
together into a new *very stupid* story that is really nothing much like the
original. There's a lost ship and a box canyon and a jar of relics and a
green statue on a pedestal that sets off a booby trap. But you know all
that, right? You have it in your TOPOLINO issue.

Now that you've made me read this story, darn you, I hafta gripe about it!
What a screwy plot this "Back to School" story has! There's a guy who is
spending his life searching for a treasure on an island. The Ducks help him
locate a solid gold staircase that leads high up a mountain and eventually
to a cave where the "golden city" (only 1, not 7) is. They set off the
booby-trap before they even get to the city, and flee. And the man laments
that he will never see the treasure again. And in the same panel he's saying
that, they are going down the solid gold staircase which contains more gold
than is probably stored in Fort Knox or Wall Street combined. Huh?! And
that's only slightly stupider than the rest of the story elements. Whew. I
couldn't help that... reading this plot to help you identify it just makes
me more grateful for Carl Barks' stories, for which I already couldn't be
more grateful. He had more wit and intelligence in one panel than one can
see in all 16 pages of this mess.

Anyway, Marco, I assume I'll see you again when I am a guest at the Torino
Comic Fair in Italy next month, eh? I look forward to being back in
Italia!!!!!!!!!!




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