New Don Rosa's?

olaf.solstrand at andebyonline.com olaf.solstrand at andebyonline.com
Wed Feb 11 16:32:56 CET 2009


Greetings,

I hate being the grumpy guy, but I feel the need to address a couple of
things in Leo's last mail.

> why has Gemstone not been looking for successors to
> Rosa and Barks?

First: Why Gemstone? Gemstone clearly has not had a budget for developing
new stories, which is why they've based most of their publications on
reprints and European material. Why should Gemstone be responsible for
finding a successor to Don Rosa when Don Rosa never worked for Gemstone?



> There must be some budding young artist doodling away
> somewhere who could assume the throne!

But... There ARE many great artists and writers currently making Disney
comics. Vicar. Marco Rota. Bill Van Horn. Kari Korhonen. Giorgio
Cavazzano. Rodriques. Maximino. And that's just the artists, don't forget
John Lustig, Janet Gilbert and a ton of other great writers. All of them
and more make comics in the tradition of Barks, what's wrong with them?


> Why has the development of a new generation of artists for Uncle Scrooge
> and company not happened?

It has happened, and it's still happening. It's just not happening in the
United States.


> Answer: bad, short-sighted management!

Rubbish. There clearly are great artists and writers out there. Gemstone
aren't producing and finding them, but Gemstone never did. And I
understand that very well, considering sales numbers and all that.
Gemstone's sales numbers are in no way large enough to support tracking
down and finding the new Disney cult icon. And there's no reason to
critisize Gemstone for not being as big as they probably wish they could
be, as I'm sure they're not exactly rolling in money over there. On the
contrary, as Disney fans we should praise Gemstone for managing to do the
things they've done -- considering the market for Disney comics, I'm
impressed they've managed to publish Disney comics in North America for
more than five years, and from a businessman point of view, that's a
daredevil project that I can only assume is run by TRUE Disney fans.



> Let us hope this is not the end of the Barks/Rosa Universe!

What? There is no "Barks/Rosa Universe". Barks and Rosa are two of the
most different storytellers in Disney history. Obviously the "Rosa
Universe" ends with Rosa, but the "Disney comics in Barks' tradition
universe" is gigantic, and it includes everybody making Disney comics for
Egmont (and, I assume, everybody making comics for the Dutch and Italian
publishing houses as well).


--
Olaf Moriarty Solstrand




More information about the DCML mailing list