Ghast Gow

H.W.Fluks@telecom.tno.nl H.W.Fluks at telecom.tno.nl
Thu Feb 19 10:36:22 CET 2004


Mads:

> I just finished reading a Geoffrey Blum in the Danish fanzine "Carl
> Barks & Co." #19
> Blum mentions "Ghast Gow" as the first thing he ever saw by Rosa

Don:

> Are you sure you're translating this correctly?
> "Ghast Gow" seems to not be translated back from whatever
> language that fanzine is written in...

Since "Ghast Gow" is a title, it is not translated from or to anything.
Years ago, we have also been wondering what Blum may have meant (though we think the article says "Cow", not "Gow").
The closest we got was "Cash Flow", your second long Scrooge story. In that case, "Ghast Gow" may have originated in wrong deciphering of handwriting.

Is it possible that Blum saw "Son of the Sun" *and* "Cash Flow", and that he misremembered the name of the *first* story he saw?
Then "Ghast Gow" could be the result of misremembering *and* bad handwriting...


Here are pieces of our conversations back then.

-----------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 92 11:32:37 +0200
From: Per Starb{ck

Here are some other things on Rosa from the interview with Geoffrey
Blum in Carl Barks & Co. #19 (translated from the Danish translation):

  "The first two things from Rosa I saw were 'Ghast Cow' and
   'The Money Whirl Pool' or whatever its name was.  Byron rejected
   it, he didn't like it.  He tought it was too much like an older
   story.  Even Byron thought the ending was too sentimental.  Rosa
   also wanted to do a story where Huey, Dewey, and Louie set up to
   look for their real parents, but fortunately Byron rejected that
   one too."

"The Money Whirl Pool" is really "The Money Pit" which Disney accepted
when they asked Rosa for a story, but what on earth is "Ghast Cow"?

-----------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 92 00:05:31 +0200
From: Per Starb{ck

> Which story could that [Ghast Cow] be?

Dunno.  My only guess is that whoever transcribed that interview got it
wrong.  Could it be "Cash Flow"?  Not very sound-a-like, but it's the
closest thing I can think of.

-----------------------------
Date: 04 Dec 93 00:46:02 EST
From: Don Rosa <72260.2635 at CompuServe.COM>

I see the comments about "Ghast Cow" (???) and "The Money
Whirlpool" (???) were credited to Geoff Blum from an interview. I can
only credit this to misquotes or mistranslations. Geoff saw everything I
was doing, as I was doing it. The first two things of mine he saw were
"The Son of the Sun" and that 10-pager where, at the end, Gladstone
Gander starts Gladstone Comics. "Cash Flow" was about the 6th story I
did, and "The Money Pit" I did a year or so after I had to quit working
for Gladstone -- so I can't make head ner tales outta any of those
alleged quotes. I'd be curious to read that interview, now that you
mention it -- is it printed in English anywhere?

-----------------------------
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 93 21:50:48 MET
From: Ole Reichstein Nielsen

The "Ghast Cow" interview in CB&Co. #19 was done by Steffen Kronborg in
May 1990 and "translated" by Thomas Berger. He also referred to classics
as "The Square X", "Fan of notre duck", "Junior Wood Chuck" and "Lost in
the Andies."
BTW: Geoffrey Blum said: "Most of the time we almost only published
letters praising Don Rosa's stories. If there were negative letters they
were not published. Freedom of speech!" I can't tell from this if there
*were* negative letters, and if so, negative to whom or what?

-----------------------------

And that's about all we currently know...

--Harry.

Harry Fluks  --  TNO Telecom  --  Delft  --   Nederland
h.w.fluks at telecom.tno.nl   --   http://dd50.inducks.org
"Wie ben ik? Wat doe ik hier? Waar is mijn Roddelflop?"



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