...hmm, haven't posted in a while, eh?

...thus, here's a "breaking myself back in"/"getting my hands dirty again" post ... (a new, REAL post will follow soon...)

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I consider myself a huge, lifelong Barks fan ... and a huge, lifelong Rosa fan ... and -- more and more, with each passing day, week, and year! -- a huge, lifelong European Duck comics fan (hello, Branca, Jippes, and Verhagen!) ... but, in regards to each of the above, whether considering them individually or as a whole, I suspect there are those who would consider my being a lifelong DuckTales fan to be a "betrayal" and a "sin"!  :D 

To further incriminate me ... though I can more than see its flaws, I persistently remain fond of DuckTales: The Movie! I was eight years old when it was released, and my father took me to see it on opening day. (Quite generous of him!) The following spring, the VHS of the movie was waiting for me in the Easter basket given to me my by my grandmother. (Quite generous of her, too!) I'm surprised that I never wore out the tape -- it may still just hold the record for being the movie I've seen the most number of times.

Worse yet ... not only do I like that not-very-well-regarded movie ... but Dijon and Merlock have never relinquished hold of (as the cliché goes) "a special place in my heart". Oh, I now recognize that to an extent, they're standard, cutout cartoon villains: evil sorcerer wanting to "take over the world" and bumbling comic relief sidekick ... but I still just like `em!

(...hence the overly-ambitious fanfic sequel I gave a shot at writing when I was 13, which I still think had some "awesome" scenes, despite its, as I consider it, er, "tragic", er, "publication" and "distribution" history ... which was largely due to an abysmal, massive editorial oversight and failure that was never fully owned up to or even so much as apologized for ... [...unless you count an "Oops!"...]) (...well, finally got that one off my chest!)


...anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I used up some idle time by browsing through the eBay search results for "DuckTales", and came across a set of DuckTales: The Movie "German lobby cards". Some of them were stills representing my favorite scenes, moments, and characters ... so I couldn't resist clicking the "Buy It Now" button...

They arrived today. I've taken the liberty of scanning my favorites, so have a look!

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"...YOU DIDN'T STEAL IT??!!!"

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"...marbles!"

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"Collie Baba, you old dog -- I finally found it!"

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"...besides, I don't think he knows about me yet!" (...a line actually said before Scrooge is actually in the room, but I couldn't resist -- it's quite possibly my favorite!)

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"Silence. I wish you would cast him out of my house." (Christopher Lloyd, sending chills down my spine, every time.)*

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... think I should get at least these five framed.  ;)


* Christopher Lloyd is a featured guest at NYCC this year. ...considering that not only did he voice Merlock, but played Dr. Emmett Brown (if not my favorite fictional character of all time, definitely my favorite live-action movie character and performance of all time) ... well, let alone catching up with longtime friends, that's a pretty good reason to go, right there! (Hmm ... and I should really bring along those of these "lobby cards" featuring Merlock, and see if I'll find a chance to ask him if he'd autograph them ... asking him about the experience of voicing Merlock would be surreal!) (Maybe that I found and purchased these on eBay a couple weeks ago was fate ... well, we'll see!)  :)

Less than a week away!

If all goes according to plan, I'll be at New York Comic Con next weekend, doing what Don Rosa's seen doing here, at this year's San Diego Comic Con:

(If this isn't foreign territory to you and aren't sure what exactly he's doing...he's carefully browsing through boxes of old comics, looking for ones that he wants to buy!  This is at one of the many, many dealers on the convention floor.) 

(This picture was taken at last year's San Diego Comic Con.  Someone at DCF linked to where they'd found this picture, but it part of a lonnnnnnnng thread of pictures, and I had wait a long time for the whole page to load, and scroll forever to find this one.  So, I wasn't eager to bookmark the page -- snatched up this picture, and got out of there!  But because of that experience, regretably, I can't give credit for this photo to where it's due.)  (Well, I could, if I really, really felt like sifting through DCF to find the thread where I'd originally followed the afore-mentioned link, and enduring that bloated photo thread again to single out whoever posted this one of Don [amongst hundreds of others...])

It's not likely that Rosa will be at the New York convention.  But I really hope that I get to meet him someday, and show him my very first comic (same copy!), Uncle Scrooge's Adventures #5, which featured "Last Sled to Dawson", one of his earliest stories!