"The Duck Who Never Was"

[Don Rosa]

From: Olivier (mouse-ducks at wanadoo.fr)
Subject: Re: The Duck Who Never Was
 >>>>From DD # 586 (Sept '94), p 2 of  the story:
panel 6, Donald fills his birthday on the form-- "month: 09" "day: 06"

This story was plagued by translator errors on its first go-around 10 years
ago, and the situation is only worse now when they are reusing it
improperly!
Naturally, my original script had the form being filled out correctly --
"month: 06" and "day: 09". Also, later in the story, I had Gus Goose
chalking a Duck Family Tree onto a wall with himself and $crooge in the
proper positions, but every single international version of the story had
the names reversed when added by the local translator. In fact, these two
errors were so universal, that it seems the errors must have been at the
main Egmont office when they created the text version of the script from my
storyboard-script. (But still, even if that's the case, and disregarding the
inconsequential position of Gus or $crooge on that chalked Family Tree...
when it's being so thoroughly discussed and covered by Disney's and the
publishers' publicity engines that DD's birthday is *June 9* and *not*
"Sept. 6", how could all of those translators and editors have not realized
that they had an error in their script?!)
It would be so easy to reuse this story properly -- all the editors would
have to do is say "here is Don Rosa's 60th Anniversary Donald Duck story
from 10 years ago" and use the correct script, rather than trying to rewrite
an unchangeable script and ending up a mess like they did in that new
PICSOU. I understand that my wise friends at ZIO PAPERONE did it properly.
They may have done it properly in at least some of the Egmont DD 70th
Birthday hardbacks that came out last month, but I can't read them.
But perhaps this story is cursed to involve errors? I must point out that
the comic you refer to should be DD #286, not #586. And I failed to remember
to put the dedication in the first panel of the art!