Disney-comics digest #365.

[Don Rosa]

DONALD DUCK'S 60th FROM GLADSTONE - "The Duck Who Never Was":
	I just bought a copy of DD #286 with my "The Duck Who Never Was"
story, and I was displeased for numerous reasons. First off, as usual,
my art looks awful to me... but it isn't helped by the fact that they
again seem to have gotten ever-so-slightly "muddy" photostats from
Egmont, making it all look too dark; and, once again, the too-dark
coloring doesn't help it a bit. But the letterer made numerous mistakes
which caused me to actually CUSS the poor guy. They were, in reverse
order of irritation-level:
	In my script, no one in the story is supposed to actually say
"It's a wonderful life"... they're supposed to keep dancing around it,
and DD is supposed to START to say it but interrupt himself when he sees
the surprise party. The letterer must not have understood my frequent
use of an ellipsis in my script (for an interruption in mid-sentence),
and was kind enough to complete Donald's sentence for him. @#!
	In one panel there is a totally EMPTY word balloon at the bottom
which the letterer didn't seem to see. He put the intended line into
the balloon above, but left the lower balloon void. #$%!
	In the family-tree that Gus Goose chalks out on the brick wall,
I went to great pains to make it quite accurate, and left room for the
letterer to write in the two names which were needed for that
discussion... $crooge and Gus. But even though the script showed the
proper placement, and even though common sense would tell you that
$crooge is older than Gus, and even though a blind guy woulda' had a
50-50 chance of labelling it correctly, this letterer got it
bass-ackwards. @&%$!!
	Finally, the story is built around a key gag involving DD
writing his date of birth down in a personnel file which somebody then
misreads; and the whole issue is scheduled and built on the fact that
June 9 is DD's birthday. Well, this letterer has DD writing into the
file that he is born on the 6th day of the 9th month. September 6th. And
everyone will figure *I* made that unbelievable bone-head error.
		
		@#$%^&<@%$#&*)(*{!!!!!!!!!!


	Note also that there is a museum case labelled "ancient icons"
with one space empty. In that space was a 1930s Mickey Mouse doll.
However, in the next panel that shows the case (then broken), we see the
MM doll sprawled upon the broken glass (stabbed?); Disney told Gladstone
to remove MM from the one panel, but did not expressly tell them to
remove him from the OTHER panel. So they did exactly what they were
told. By the way, my script called for the case to be labelled "ancient
demon worship", even though I didn't really expect or want the scripters
to use that -- however, in Europe (where Disney doesn't bully the
publishers) they not only left both MMs in, but they used "demon
worship" (or "voodoo dolls"). Heh heh.

	I heard from Gladstone editor John Clark that he had a meeting
with one of the Disney guys who inspects and approves the comics they
print... and he told two interesting stories.
	Recall how I was rather appalled that they took a line in
"GotLL" where I used the term "technicolor yawn" (an admittedly modern
bit of soft-grossness that I really figured the translators would
change) and Disney insisted it be changed to "BARF" -- making ME look
like the first person to use the lovely word "barf" in a Disney comic!
(More @#$#%$@&!) Well, though I'm still astounded Disney would choose
such crass language, I always wondered why they found "barf" nicer than
my phrase. The answer is so obvious! "Technicolor" is a COPYWRITED TERM!
And a company whose MAIN business is making MOVIES had better not screw
around with the misuse of motion picture trademarks of rival production
companies! 
	Also, the Disney guy, without prompting, brought up the matter
of the banning of my "War of the Wendigo", my sequel to "The Laned of
the Pygmy Indians". John had figured he could slip that by Disney when
they weren't looking, but now we know better. It was banned by a Disney
official because ALL THE INDIANS LOOKED ALIKE which the guy considered
to be an insulting stereotype. And yes, this means that Barks' original
Peeweegah story ALSO can never again be used in American comic books.
	Therefore, simply because I feel very anxious for THIS
PARTICULAR story to see print in English, due to the loads of extra work
I put into the Peeweegah's Longfellowian dialogue, I offered to REDRAW
all the Peeweegahs (except the Chief). I'm not sure how to make them all
different... or how to explain to readers why the Peeweegahs don't look
like they're supposed to... but we'll make that offer, and if that was
the problem, we'll get that story into America, if in a censored form.
Censored is better than nothing?