+Postage Due+Disney-comics digest #113.

Don Rosa 72260.2635 at compuserve.com
Thu Sep 30 14:39:23 CET 1993


COMMENTS ON THE LAST UMPTEEN DIGESTS:
	I have returned from Norway where I got so much attention and
publicity that people were actually recognizing me in the streets. What
a world. I am totally ignored in America since I do such totally
unpopular comics, and I'm treated like a national hero in Europe because
I do such universally popular comics! Both extremes make me
uncomfortable. I think I need to visit a cruise ship in Mid-Atlantic
Ocean -- that should be just right.
	I read over all those Digests and made some scratchy notes, not
necessarilly the most important matters discussed, but it's what's on my
note pad.
	This whole matter of censoring this story about Donald shooting
an eagle: times and thinking and reality has changed a lot since some of
those stories were done... and we MUST all know, regardless of who likes
them, Donald Duck comics are mainly for CHILDREN who don't understand
that these stories are reprints from ancient times. As a lover of
animals and member of every wildlife/habitat group I can glom into, I
would be HIGHLY offended to see that old DD story reprinted AT ALL, even
WITH changes. It SHOULD be banned, forevermore, from the popular
editions. This isn't any more "censorship" than is the fact that DD
comics don't show pornography or squashed possums. It's just common
sense. The story should be printed ONLY in more expensive editions, for
collectors, with a disclaimer to make CERTAIN readers know it is a
"classic reprint", and there it should be printed just as it first
appeared. Disney in America won't allow that since, regardless of what
they like to say these days, they are NOT a company that honors art or
artists or writers... they are a company which seeks to profit off the
public thirst for pablum, and do so with NO controversy over matters
which are 100% unimportant to them. (And while in Oslo I found the 1992
Dutch printing of the uncensored "Voodoo Hoodoo" story in a "classics"
album... and even brought one home).

	The Disneyana Show in DisneyLand: Just a last comment to
indicate that nothing changes my lack of respect for the core of that
group -- a friend who attended tells me that over half of those there
were middle-aged women. I'll be extremely arrogant and say that I think
I can guess how deep an intellectual interest lots of middle-aged woman
have in Disney. (How many more of the attendees were their
bored-to-tears husbands?) And a sentimental interest in old DD comics is
STILL an intellectual interest (someone asked me about that)... you had
to READ those comics. Those middle-aged women are only interested in the
visual appeal of cute Mickey Mouse and Bambi figurines for their mantle.

	People were searching for some of my hidden "D.U.C.K."s... but
it looks like they were helping each other fine. Where was the
dedication in that new DDA #23 -- was that the Viking cover? I don't
have the comic or the art or a copy of the art. I dunno. It's POSSIBLE
that I forgot to include it. I have trouble these days in light of
recent developments to get myself to remember to dedicate anything to
Barks; something in me says I've already done it too long. I DID forget
to include it in the cover of the special $crooge issue that was just
published this week (this much hoopla) in Norway. And yes, the
dedication was in the LAST panel of "Nobody's Business" -- in the first
two stories I ever did I put it in the last, rather than first, panel...
and it was left in that story since it looked like the title on a comic
book on the floor. Any other "D.U.C.K."s you can't find, just ask.

	I still want to hear from Fredrik about the art in "War of the
Wendigo" that wasn't so good. I NEED to know this stuff! As for the bad
or odd art in "The Money Pit", it was Disney's very FIRST comic, and
their printing was pretty bad -- it wasn't as bad as their lousy
photocopying, and as a result, the use of it in foreign editions is even
MUDDIER than in DDA#1 due to their fault. If the art looked odd
regardless of the printing, perhaps that because that was the first
story I'd drawn in about a year -- that was the first thing I'd done
since Disney had effectively forced me to quit doing comics for
Gladstone in early '89. And if the faces had more "angst"... perhaps it
was because the theme of that story (concerning the mentality of
"collectibles profiteers") was a rather sour and serious matter with me.
	
	I must say that I know for a fact who the very worst Disney
artist(s) of all time are! It's Ed Murrieta and Ian Akin who did the
cover of Disney's one-shot COMICS IN 3D. I don't like my own art much,
but I was ashamed for Disney fans the world-over when I saw that
monstosity! It even overshadowed the irritation of seeing Disney taking
one of my old stories and twisting it into 3D without needing to get my
permission or pay me a cent... and then giving Ray Zone a copyright on
MY work so that whenever the story is used in 3D somewhere in the world
from now on, Ray Zone gets a royalty but I don't.
	(It's when Disney does that kind of stuff that I want to go to
those Disneyana conventions and kick all the Disney-zombies in their
wide fannies.)

	Oh, to Harry Fluks: I have not received any package of Dutch
comics from you yet. Should they be here by now???

	Somebody wanted to buy my art? As the rest oif you know or
should know, it's a miracle that I get my art BACK... I'm the first
artist to be granted that right in writing. (Even BARKS doesn't have it
in writing -- they just let him do whatever he wants.) But Disney
compels me by illegal contracts NOT to sell or give away my own
property, "or else". So I must keep it. And my heirs must keep it
forever. (And again I want to kick some Disney-zombies where their
brains seem to be.)(Can't kick Disney because they kick back -- and
hard. I just have to live with being the only comic artist in America
who can't sell his own art.)

	That ignores lots of topics of the past week, but I need to get
back to work on the concluding pages of "The Life and Times of $crooge
McDuck".





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