DCML Digest Issue 1

[Don Rosa]

> From: <H.W.Fluks at telecom.tno.nl>
> Subject: Philosopher's Stone
> In Rosa's "Letter From Home", the people who touch the stone
> don't turn into gold themselves. How come?

Because, as stated in Barks' story and in all legends of the P. Stone, it
only turns "base metals" to gold... but it was shown in Barks' story that
apparently extensive (greedy) handling of it would start to do strange
things to a person's body. The secret was to handle it sparingly or wear a
glove.
Speaking of which, that's where I do have an error in the story. In "A
Letter from Home", I show a Templar holding the Stone -- he's wearing a
metal gauntlet, but it does *not* turn to gold. I could blame the colorist,
but no, I never remembered to put that coloring note into my script. On the
other hand, I could blame Matilda since *she* is the one imagining the
scene. Actually, I more or less purposely forced her to make another error
in that same panel... the Stone could not have been in Solomon's basement.
It would have been an item that the Templars obtained elsewhere. But I
needed to mention all the pertinence treasures right at that moment, so I
had her erroneously place the Stone in Sol's cellar.
And another discrepancy... in Barks' story, the Stone was wandering the
world since about 1110, which would be 8 years before the Templars were even
formed, so if that was true, they could never have had the Stone as part of
their Treasury as the tales say. But then that fact came not from a
flashback but out of an ancient book in Barks' story, so rather than ignore
a Barksian Fact (which I do when I'm forced to), I can just consider that
ancient report to be in error.
As for the Stone being "yellow"... I just think it looks better as a
contrasting stone-color if it is turning other stuff *into* gold. So I
always instruct the colorists to make it gray.

> Too bad that that is your mission. I agree that I get a lot of
> contents on a page, but I'd rather have more pages with the same
> content, when the pages *look* better. And to me they look better
> when they are less "crammed".

My mission is to cram as much as I can on the pages I am *given* by the
editor. I don't decide on the page count. So I put an average of 10.5-11
panels on each page whereas other writers/artists use an average of 7. I
have 50% more stuff going on per page. If I could tell my 30 page stories in
45 pages, I wouldn't need to cross the borders with balloons, but that's not
how much space I am given, so look forward to more border-crossings