Wah-OOO-oo?
I am not familiar with the development of Duckburg-lore. I watched Duck Tales and Darkwing Duck as a kid, and that is pretty much my familiarity with what I am sure is a veritable Duckapedia of content. “Uncle Scrooge” as a headliner title ran for at least 400 issues that I know of, so it stands to reason that the writers must have been doing something for thirty years. Even an outsider artist (read: janitor) cannot pen the same thousand words in the same setting about child/angel rebellions nine thousand times and gain posthumous fame. What the hell were these people doing for so long? This mag can be a first step down that dark, dark road.
For being such an old book, it is amazing how well the art has held up. Perhaps it is a function of already being familiar with the characters, but Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, and a certain feathered, three-part gaggle all look like they were pulled right off the reels I am told they used to throw up before the main show. (Which, as an aside, it would be great if Disney would still do that. I have to imagine that the reason they do not is that cartoons and other colored, moving images, are everywhere in The Year of Our Mallard 2011, and some of the exclusivity appeal would be lost. Still, it would be an interesting experiment to say put one of those cartoons between those lame ass extra long commercials we now get treated to and see if audience retention goes up.) The coloring for the most part is well done, but there are a handful of times when blues and reds get outside of the area they supposed to occupy and at times the colors of clothing is inconsistent. While somewhat sloppy, this is nothing when compared to some other titles of the era. Basically, if you like the way classic Disney cartoons look, which you really should because they were the best at this back in my dad’s day, you’ll like this.
In terms of format of the magazine, there is a main story as well as a handful of smaller one page strips that tell a standalone story. This is a humor title, a “funny book” if you will, so you should not expect any high drama or significant details that need to be recalled. The basic gag is that Uncle Scrooge is a miserly, old Scotsduck. Which is a stereotype from yesteryear, or maybe one that people in the UK still hold on to, but today it’s probably fine to like even if you’re regularly offended by that sort of thing. On the other hand, if you find it offensive that fifty years ago everyone in the English speaking world would have used the word “cheap” and not “Scottish” when filling in the following word problem:
“People from Scotland are ___________”,
then you will not be able to enjoy this as Scrooge’s dialogue is written in a way that phonetically reads like a Scottish accent.
If you don’t really ask any questions about the premise of the character, then the story is alright and somewhat amusing. To make a long story short, the Beagle Boys try to get his money. Which, I am going to go out on a limb here, and predict that that is roughly 85% of all Scrooge stories, the rest being dedicated to the acquisition of hidden treasure, and perhaps maybe a few short blurbs about how good an investment United States treasury bonds are (“the real secret to meh riches”). The only knock against it is that there is a fair amount of repetition in one of the gags. The classic way Scrooge enjoys his wealth is put it in a big pile and then “Swim through it like a fish, burrow through it like a gopher, and throw it in the air and let it him on the head.” Which, while this is certainly an amusing set of images that convey the idea, it is repeated no less than three times in the book. (I cannot remember if it is the same exact set of images.) It does not add anything to the character, is not particularly funny the first time, and feels like the publisher was padding out an extra page and a half. Maybe they thought the audience had so long-term memory that they had to remind them that this duck is a crazy umpteenth-centaillioanre who has never heard of interest. Or maybe they thought people would enjoy watching a quaker playing in cash like they usually do in water. It ain’t that humorous. What is humorous is the way Scrooge chases after every moth with a old-timey insecticide spray bottle for fear that that they will eat his hundreds. For me, more so than being cheap, the best running joke is that Scrooge is constantly paranoid that he is going to lose all of his money.
In the end, I can say this about this title: it makes me want to read the next one. Which, for an old-ass comic book, is a complement. In fact, that is a glowing recommendation as most old comic books are utter trash. I don’t know if 10¢ was a premium back then, but I hope it was. Of all the older books I’ve read, the art is about as good as it gets in terms of clarity and conveying the action. Granted, there is nothing particularly creative, no monsters or sci-fi tech, but it does look like the source material. You almost thing that The News is going to come on after you turn the last page.