DCML Digest Issue 5

[Don Rosa]

> That's a wrong and *very* negative summary of what I said.
> And you know it.

Sorry, then I sure don't understand anything you've said because you seemed
to be clearly saying *precisely* that I had no right to tamper with the
Barks Universe,  you did plainly say, word for word, that I "do not have the
ability to create a universe", and your whole direction seemed to be nothing
if not negative.
But I already knew that I can't understand this rare attitude. If someone
wrote "Don Rosa draws really lousy!", I could easily see that (and usually
agree). If someone said "Rosa's stories bore me silly!", I can easily
understand that as well, they sure seem boring when I'm working on 'em for 4
months! But when that rare individual starts on this idea that anytime I
have $crooge revisit a favorite old Barks adventure or when I tell an
"Untold Tale" for a special issue (which, by the way, is always at the
special request of a publisher in response to readers, never my own idea,
though I have plenty of fun obliging them!), then I am leaning too much on
Barks. This perplexes me and I've really given up trying to understand it,
and since I don't wish to make anyone unhappy, quite the opposite, I just
hope those few will simply skip my stories and move on to reading some story
they enjoy more.
What's puzzling, of course, is the notion that all other writers/artists can
tell stories about a rich Duck who wears a cane and top hat and spats and
has a giant Bin with 3 cubic acres of money and is menaced by a pack of
prison parolees and a sorceress and has local friends who are an inventor, a
lucky goose, a nephew, three grand-nephews, etc., etc., etc. ... in other
words, base stories 100% on Barks' creations and ideas ... and that's just
fine. But if this one certain writer/artist creates a 30 page story of
totally new events and gags and research and all else by basing it on a
single line in an old $crooge story such as "I once was a cowboy in
Montana"... or if he simply takes a (yellow?) Stone that was once in a Barks
story and reuses it as an incidental prop in another totally new 36 page
adventure, then *I* am leaning too heavily on Barks and the individual
doesn't even want to *look* at the story. What's more, in fact, my recent
"Life of $crooge" stories which are specifically objected to actually have
*nothing* to do with any old "Barksian facts" -- I used all those up in the
original 12 chapters, but I continue to create new chapters just because
publishers request them and readers (according to virtually every e-mail
I've ever received)(which is *lots*, I spend about 2-3 hours each day
answering them) don't merely like those stories, they say they adore them
over anything else (though I'm naturally hearing only from the choir). These
new "Lo$" stories don't even use the top hat and spats or any Duckburg
element; as a matter of fact, Egmont at one point worried that they should
not have me do more such stories, *not* because they were too derivative,
but *specifically because* I was being *too* original, using a character
that had no bearing on any copyrighted entity that they were allowed to
handle, and that I had created something *too* unique for their license. (Of
course, they still used the story when I created a "Lo$" at the request of
the French publisher, so they bowed to their readers' preference.)
So, no, I really don't follow those arguments and I have long ago decided
that there's something else going on there, some unknown psychological
agenda, that is beyond my ken. But it doesn't matter, so I lose a reader --
the beauty of it is that I produce only about .001% of the annual contents
of these comics and digests, so there's plenty there for all tastes. As to
how the popularity of my work affects such a person's sensitivities by being
an influence he can't tolerate on the readers all around him, that's not
something I control. I'm sorry for him, but he'll need to learn how to deal
with that by himself.
And therefore that's all I'll say on that subject. Back to Donald Duck
watches.