who messed up the "Firebug" 1946 story?

[Lunnan & Hjort]

I got out my Donald Duck 1946 "Terror of the River" comic the 
other day, and looked forward to some delightful minutes reading 
"Donald Duck in the Firebug". I'm a fan of Dan Noonan, whose 
work in e.g. "New Funnies" and "Animal Comics" is of high calibre, 
and I believe "the Firebug" might be Noonan's best duck story ever. 

Imagine then my surprise, frustration and irritation, when I saw 
what I believe are the not entirely successful efforts of a quite different 
artist to "repair" and post-edit Noonan's art and story line. Not only some 
panels here and there, and some alterations of Dan's originally conceived
ingenious plot, but long sections, on many pages, seem to have fallen into 
the hands of this other artist, for reasons incomprehensible to me. In fact 
I believe nearly all of Noonan's original story and artwork have been 
seriously affected by these strange and unmotivated editorial decisions.
Where are the allusions to Freudian-Jungian theories of dreams, that
Dan so masterfully put into his story? Gone with the winds of the editorial
office. Luckily Noonan's delightful ending of his story is at least kept 
untouched and intact, including also some of his uniquely enjoyable prose
("I'll put cone-shaped blisters on your --" etc etc). 

I must also say that in addition to the higher principles involved, 
"though shalt not mess with another author's artwork" etc., and that 
here are so blatantly broken, apparently without this having caused 
the scandals and "sue you in the morning"s that I would have expected,
that some of the efforts of this unknown tinkering-with-others artist
leave me troubled. "A beeyootiful fire! I love fires!" etc etc is not
only disturbing, but orthographically incorrect. Pyromania of the piffledeck? 
School of Quackery? What is this? The intended audience for all of this
is that of school children and readers of tender age and soft tinkerable souls. 
"I must answer the call of the infernos!" Clearly Donald does not have 
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) in mind. Where is the Italian Embassy when
one needs it? And the bit about Doctor Carver Beakoff, Number 249 Groaner 
Building, is simply preposterous and incidentally also harmful to the honourable
medical profession. Note also that the lettering efforts of this other artist are 
of inferior quality to the clear, concise style of Dan Noonan. 

Nils Lid Hjort