Disney-comics digest #647.

[Don Rosa]

>[JORGEN:

        Thanks for all the comments about that Solvent story. I love this
sorta stuff since it might give me an idea of something to change when
Gladstone reprints it, and then use your ideas and take credit for them. Hah!
        The first thing about that story -- someone just pointed out to me
that I failed to hide the "D.U.C.K." in the splash. Oops.
        VERY GOOD with your idea that the solvent should have been a black
hole, then all problems with weight and such would have been eliminated.
This was a new version of a story I had last done in 1978, and in that
version it WAS a mini-black hole!!! The solvent created was an
essence-of-black-hole and it carried the original black hole to the center
of the earth. This meant that all matter was not so much dissolved than
removed from the universe -- no increase in weight. Actually, the hole was
so dense, it had no weight since it was not effected by the earth's gravity.
I would have used that same idea in the Duck version, but I'm allowed SO FEW
pages to work with that my grandiose ideas get greatly cramped and cropped
down to bare bones.
        You're quite wrong about how air would behave in a vertical shaft.
Yes, air in some container at the earth's surface would leak out to the area
of lesser pressure. But why then doesn't the earth's air all escape into
space? Gravity. Air has weight. That's why there's air pressure. The air in
the shaft would flow towards the bottom. Now, that still doesn't mean that
whole idea would work perfectly. The gravity down there would have been so
slight that there might have been problems with breathing. But I naturally
take some licenses and just decide that things will work (otherwise the
Ducks would die and the story would end). The pressure of the air higher in
the shaft weighed down on the air at the bottom, making it dense enough to
be breathable. Yeah, that's the ticket.
        The idea of using the Terries and Fermies was NOT a reason for doing
the story. I knew I'd never do a sequel to that great story since, even
though I loved it, the use of such weird and wacky creatures is not the sort
of thing I like to do. I prefer to try to get plots out of facts closer to
reality and accurate to history. Just my own preference. However, I knew
that some readers would be watching that story and expecting the Terries and
Fermies to pop up at any moment. I thought that little toss-off gag would
satisfy them (at the risk of again offending those who might think I was
toying too frivolously with a classic). I know I can't please everyone, so I
try to please myself and hope for the best.
        I have no control over the coloring. Even as a child I could tell
that the rock characters in that old Dell issue were supposed to all be
colored like ROCKS. It was the Dell colorists that decided it would be drab
for that story to all take place in gray panels of gray rock-people, so they
colored the T's and F's all manner of bright hues. And they did it even
moreso in these Euro editions. I don't really object to it since readers now
EXPECT T's and F's to be bright colors and anything different would puzzle them.
        Well, now I hope Americans will forget all this before they read
this story in a Gladstone in a year or so.

        I am now leaving again for a weekend show in Dayton... see you next
week.