THE SHOP DETECTIVE

This episode of Donald Duck is yet one more story written and scribbled by Gorm Transgaard who these days prefer the name Tarit. It is a story where Donald for once comes out on top. The original dialogue seldom comes through translation as vivid as in the original scribble text. For instance, the remark in the last panel on page 7 where the cop looks skeptical at a can of tomatoes.

The later years have meant a revival of my oldest Duck work, The Big Sneeze. Thom Roep did not allow it reprinted, which I demanded from him since I was not properly paid from the old black and white Groot Vacantieboek publishing.

Just before his retirement, he did reprint it anyway, and complaining about it I was able to finish and sell two more stories to the Dutch office being my last work with the ducks. The Finnish editorials then asked to reprint The Big Sneeze, and I stated my complaint of the lacking payment in the first place.

We made the agreement, that the Finnish office paid me the last of my overdue payment in the form of perfect scanning of the black and white artwork, which was lacking some fine lines in the Dutch color print version. The intro illustration hereby is taken from one of the Finnish magazines with the story divided into chapters. Later it got published in Germany as well.

Since then the US publishers have printed the story, though they have problems accepting the smoking and drinking references as well as the fact that Donald takes medication…

Another old matter settled is the overdue payment of the first publishing of ‘The Rollerscating Contest’ by Mondadori opening for later reprints in Europe also being unpaid. The Italian supervisor of Disney Europe, however, has acknowledged my claim and long last, the publishing rights for that story is now paid.