door Ei » vr maart 02, 2007 2:02 pm
Don Rosa op DCML, 18 November 1993, over Life of $crooge en een grafsteen:
I wouldn't be surprized that a non-Duck-fan or non-$crooge-expert might come away from the Lo$ thinking it was only mildly amuzing. It's all designed to only make complete sense or full humor (such as it is) to those already thoroughly familiar with the characters and their history -- which is the series biggest flaw. But I always knew this weakness... a large part of the enjoyment of the stories I expect (and design) to come from Duck fans who I expect to get a kick out of how I've fit all the Barks-facts into one loooong story. There are so many elements of the stories, so many sequences or extraneous facts that are stuck in here and there JUST to get them mentioned, and a casual reader would either get nothing from their inclusion or would actually be puzzled by the seeming pointlessness of lots of it. But this can't be an excuse -- if the stories fail to completely entertain ALL readers, that can never be good.
Anyway, the date on $crooge's Ma's tombstone was greatly reduced and slightly blurred by the fact that these comics, I THINK, are reproduced from computer generated images of my art... but the dates are 1840-1897. I had to check my large copies myself when I saw the tombstone in print, because the 1897 looked like a "1697" to ME, too. But that made me think about the date and it seemed wrong still, so I checked my original notes and I see that I made a mistake... or a diversion from my original plans. I don't know what happened at the time, but I thought I'd intended to put "1830" instead of "1840"... I pictured Ma as being a bit older than 57 when she dies. It's a tiny error, but I try to be sooooo thorough that even itty-bitty goofs irritate me. Then there are the kind of goofs like in part 3 where I had Prof. Rhutt Betler alive nearly 20 years after he died. That was a BIGGER goof. Anyway, these kinda goofs will be corrected in Gladstone's versions.
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Don Rosa op DCML, 11 Januari 1994, over fouten en geboorte- en sterfdata:
The changes that I am today mailing out to Gladstone for "The Guardians of the Lost Library" would be either pointless or impossible for Stefan to include in the Swedish edition. There were a number of changes in the dialogue, but nothing major as I recall. The rest of it was changes in dialogue and art needed to add the major bit about the Woodchuck emblem which, as you know, was always to be lost to any but the American audience (small as it is) due to there not BEING a Woodchuck emblem outside the U.S. -- or if there is, not the "J.W.W." emblem which my story involved.
The other new art involved correcting the Marco Polo error he pointed out, bless his peapickin' lil' heart. What this involved was some changes in dialogue and omitting of two panels on page 13, shifting all the panel tiers up one on 13-15, then two new panels for page 15 where I simply moved the Marco Polo reference. Now I COULD send Stefan a copy of the new panels which would make it possible for Sweden to correct their version. However, it would involve clipping photostats, moving panels, new dialogue, and coloring... and I think Stefan will corroborate me on this: the Swedish publisher won't want to lift a finger to go to the trouble of correcting any error no matter how hideaous it is. They just don't get paid to do that. Their job is to simply crank the stuff out and be done with it. Ask Stefan if he thinks they'd go to any trouble to tamper with the story and I'll send him the new art panels in a wink. (Norway and America are the only countries that I think act like they are really concerned with doing the best work they can... and if Norwegian readers don't agree, it's only because Norway is bucking a system set up against that sort of attitude.
Now, I see my own message and I reminded myself to try to list the birth/death dates from my notes. I see that I did not mess around with the fringes of the tree yet -- therefore, I never made any notes concerning Fanny or Gus; there wasn't much going on in that branch, so the dates didn't matter much as long as I knew which generation they each belonged in. Of these other characters, the dates are sometimes partially given in "The Old Castle's Secret" as regarding the McDuck ancestors. Other dates are exact when there was a need to be, otherwise I didn't get fancy and I just used 5 year increments, 1920, 1925, 1930 and so on. (I wouldn't say 1921 if there was no specific reason to since I knew I might still change a date here or there someday for some reason. If a date ends in a blank, that means I figure the character lived well past 1967. If a date ends in a "19??", that means I don't know when the critter died, but they must surely be as cold as a carp by 1970!
DONALD DUCK 1920-
HUEY, DEWEY & LOUIE 1940-
$CROOGE McDUCK 1867-1967
HORTENSE McDUCK 1876-19??
MATILDA McDUCK 1871-19??
DELLA DUCK 1920- (?)
QUACKMORE DUCK 1875-19??
ELVIRA "GRANDMA" DUCK 1855-19??
CASEY COOT 1860-19??
CLINTON COOT 1830-1910
CORNELIUS COOT 1790-1880
PINTAIL DUCK 1530-1564
FERGUS McDUCK 1830-1902
DOWNY McDUCK 1830-1897 (yes, I made a goof on her tombstone).
POTHOLE McDUCK 1829-19??
JAKE McDUCK 1832-19??
SEAFOAM McDUCK 1710-1776 (died in the war?)
MALCOLM McDUCK 1530-1564
SWAMPHOLE " 1190-1260
ROAST " 1159-1205
STUFT " 1110-1175
QUACKLY " 1010-1057
EIDER " 880-946
DAISY DUCK 1920-
That's all that's in my notes.
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