Back in the seventies, very little was known about the men and occasional women who'd written and drawn "funny animal" comic books for Western Publishing. This was the Dell line of comics and later the Gold Key line. (If you don't know the difference, you need to read this.) Because I was working for Western, I learned some names and some art styles, and historian-types were always writing me to ask who'd drawn this Daisy Duck story or who was the guy who drew Clarabelle Cow with such huge feet. Whenever possible, I would try to help out.
There was a gent who lived in…I want to say Sweden but it may have been some other country. I'm not certain now of his name or location so let's just say he was Olaf from Sweden. He would send me huge packages of Xeroxes from Disney comics and letters demanding (not asking, demanding) that I immediately identify all the artists and ship the packages back to him…at my expense, I might add. I think I'd answered two or three questions for a friend of his and he had taken that as some indication that I would answer hundreds for him.
One of his packages would arrive on Monday and I'd look at it and think, "Jeez, it will take weeks to tell this guy what he wants to know," and I'd set it aside to deal with at some later date. At a later date — three or four days later — I would get another package from him with 300 more Xeroxes and a letter scolding me because he had not yet received the previous package with every i.d. he had requested. The letter would say something like…
The geniuses who created the Disney Comics labored in shameful anonymity like plantation workers flogged at the whim of their masters. Insensitive, uncaring people such as yourself, Mr. Evanier, perpetuate this injustice by withholding their identities and compounding the insult to these great artists.
And that was one of Olaf's nicer ones.
Well, you can imagine how eager I was to sit down and spend the time figuring out for him who'd inked Scamp #9. I didn't even know what he wanted to do with all this information — keep it to himself for all I knew. So I let his packages pile up and then one day when the latest cover letter had compared me to animal droppings — and not favorably, I might add — I tossed them in the trash and wrote Olaf a brief letter that suggested he have Captain Hook give him a reacharound. I don't think I used quite those words but that was the general sentiment.
Olaf wrote me back saying I was urinating on downtrodden, neglected artists and would someday be judged by my maker for my vile treachery. Well, I'd already known the second part since I created the Hallowed Ranks of Marveldom. After I got this note, I figured that was the last I'd hear from Olaf. Not so.
Two or three months later, I was at a San Diego Comic Con, which is what we used to call what we now call the Comic-Con International. A local Disney fan came up to me there and informed me that Olaf was somewhere on the premises, having flown over from Sweden. If indeed he was from Sweden, I forget. Anyway, imagining a nasty and insulting guy, I decided to avoid anyone who looked too blonde and tan…and I managed to do so for most of the con.
The last day, I was talking with a group of people and one was a slim young gent who was so shy and soft-spoken, I had to ask him to repeat everything he said. We were talking maybe ten minutes about Disney Comics when he turned and something that had been blocking his name badge was suddenly not blocking it. That's when I saw his name. It was Olaf: Exactly the opposite of what I'd imagined.
And within moments, I realized what the problem was. He wasn't an outraged, rude Swedish guy. He was a Swedish guy who didn't write English very well.
It was not unlike the Monty Python sketch — which I hadn't seen at the time — in which the Hungarian guy thinks he's saying the English equivalent of "Can you direct me to the station?" is actually saying "Please fondle my bum." Or the tale of the man who'd just learned a little English who went to an art show and said "These paintings are worthless" when what he wanted to say was "These paintings are priceless." Olaf knew the English words but not well enough to apply them in the right way.
After that when I read fanzines, I often suspected that even a lot of folks reared in English simply did not write well enough to accurately convey their feelings. They were coming across in print angrier and harsher than they actually were.
This often seems to be the case on the Internet. I've gotten e-mails from folks who seemed inexplicably furious with me and I've then phoned them or met them at a con and found out that no, they weren't angry at all. There's a skill to conveying an accurate tone in what you write and these people were simply lacking in that skill.
I think it's getting better. When this mode of communication was in its primitive state of computer bulletin boards, you had a lot of folks participating who were unused to writing. When calling by phone replaced communicating by mail, a lot of folks let their writing skills atrophy or never developed many in the first place. Now, e-mail is a near-necessity and people are learning or relearning how to express themselves at a keyboard. Which doesn't mean they all do it well.
I got one more letter from Olaf after the convention thanking me for our conversation and telling me I was a blight on humanity. I'm guessing he meant to say something very flattering but he just couldn't find the words.