Curiosità: chi è lo Stefan cui fa riferimento nel post?
Si tratta di Stefan, il proprietario di questa fumetteria:
https://comics-spielzeug.de/Inserisco per completezza il post completo in inglese dalla pagina facebook di Don Rosa:
"Message from Don: "I’m at a Delta SkyClub making my way home from San Francisco back to Louisville. And I have some hours to spare. So, now I’ll finally discuss LUCCA COMICS. (Don’t you just *love* these long, boring posts of mine?!)
As everyone knows (at least the Lucca Comics attendees among you) Panini adopted a free-ticket system for seeing me and other guests. We never had a chance to know about it in advance, it was announced to us just shortly before the fans heard about it. I knew I wouldn’t like it even then, but I’d never experienced it before, so I never realized how many different ways it could go wrong in being fair to DuckFans.
First of all, as you also know, the tickets to see me, all approximately 1,000 tickets (20 2-hour sessions in 5 days, 50 tickets per session) were all given away within the first few minutes that they were first made available over the Internet. This is not fair to begin with.
Many DuckFans kept trying during that whole (short) time, trying to break through the barriers, refreshing constantly trying to grab a ticket, but they had no chance from the start. This is because (so I am told) that the phone system and the Internet connections are vastly better in some areas of Italia than they are in others. So, if the fan did not live in the right area, he never had a ghost of a chance.
Next, those with the FAST Internet connections could unfairly grab MULTIPLE tickets, even one in each of the 20 sessions.
And even if they did not do that, once they got into the autograph area with a ticket to another guest, there was little that Panini could do to prevent ticket-holders for other guests to then get into my queue (or vice versa)… I believe they tried, but there were too many attendees and too few organizers who could never look in all directions at once.
Other unfair problems included the lack of Panini’s ability to enforce their own rules. People with tickets were supposed to buy a product at the Panini pavilion in order to enter the autograph area. Another Panini rule was they could only bring two items from home for me to sign. But I was meeting fans who did not buy a Panini product, or who brought more than two items from home. Now, neither of these rule infractions bothered ME, but even though I knew it was unfair that not everyone followed the rules, it’s not the job of people at MY booth to enforce Panini’s rules. If they want their rules enforced, they need to station a Panini agent right at my elbow to do so.
But after the whole 5 days and my 20 signing sessions were over, I realized what was the worst part of this ticket system. Of course, I met with MANY devout fans of the BarksDucks during the signing sessions! But I had a feeling that I was seeing even more simple autograph collectors… people whose mission at Lucca Comics was simply to get the autographs of as many (supposedly) famous cartoonists as they could, whether to keep or sell, with as little effort as possible. And the ticket system worked directly into their plans. Rather than waiting for many HOURS in a first-come-first-served queue (which they would NEVER do just to get the autograph of a guest whose work they are not even interested in, or even know of), they simply had to grab free tickets, as many as possible, especially if they lived in an area with a fast Internet connection, or maybe also with computer savvy knowledge of how to usurp that ticketing system. And they would then have squeezed out perhaps most of the true fans of each creator.
So, I met a lot of “DuckFans” of whom I was leery. Also, unlike the true fans, they bought very few if any items from Stefan’s display. And as much as I love meeting (true) fans of the BarksDucks, I *must* also have at least a fighting chance to make a few bucks from real fans with our no-purchase-necessary policy (unlike Panini’s “a purchase is *mandatory*” policy, enforced or not). I quit creating new work 15 years ago, and I've been without a job since then. (And you know the no-royalty situation with these comics!) So, all in all, this ticket system is just as unfair to ME (and Stefan) as it is to true fans.
Sure, I can understand why the ticket system is attractive to Panini. It avoids managing long queues and other discomforts. And they don’t care if the people in my ticket queue are really DuckFans as long as they each buy a Panini product. And I don’t blame ‘em! They are a business, not a public charity to DuckFans.
But what’s the alternative? You know! The “First-Come-First-Served” system, as miserable as that can be! And it’s sometimes in its WORST form at Lucca Comics where it rains a LOT in late October / early November! In fact, it rained every day I was signing in Lucca!
But in the First-Come-First-Served system, as uncomfortable as it is, each of the people who wants to see me (or another creator) has worked *hard* for that chance. They've EARNED it. I can *know* that virtually every single person who spends 5, 6 or even 7 hours, often in the worst conditions, in a queue to see me, *must* be a true fan. And for true fans of the Barks characters that I’ve loved all my life I will work nonstop, no breaks, during those 10 hours, as I/we did in Lucca, to meet as many of them as possible. Of course, I’m *sitting down* that whole time while they must stand (unless they bring a lil' portable stool with 'em). But that’s why I always *insist* on a chair for everyone who finally reaches my table, and (as they will each tell you) the FIRST thing I say is “HAVE A SEAT! What can I do for you?!”
I don’t expect to be invited back to Lucca… there needs to be some new edition of my work for the publisher to sell, and since I quit work over 15 years ago, and my work has been reprinted and rerereprinted out the wahzoo, I think there’s nuthin’ else they can do with me.
But if I ever am invited back to Lucca (and it’s such a wonderful show and an even more wonderful town that I hope there’s a chance of that) I won’t operate in that same ticket system next time.""