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The Life and Times of $crooge McDuck - Episode 11

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UNCLE $CROOGE ADVENTURES #295: -- "The Life and Times of $crooge McDuck" -"The Empire Builder from Calisota" (1909-1930)

[Cover 295]COVER: This cover is another reprint of a cover I did for theGerman "Don Rosa Album" series. And again, it's "flipped" so

that Bombie won't be covered by the oval portrait dealie (which wasn't anelement of the German covers). But that portrait served to cover up thename of the Titanic which was good since that was supposed to be a surprise(however small) in the story -- no need to give it away on the cover. TheGerman cover also cropped off the fact that $crooge has nowhere to step buton an ice cube. Titanic buffs -- please don't bother to tell me that it wasstarless and moonless the night she sank... if they had counted on being ona comic book cover, they would have picked a more appropriate night. Butthe "dim" look of the coloring on these "self-covered" issues looks rathernice on this moody scene. Susan's coloring on Bombie is downright spooky.Them eyes of his gots me hyp-mo-tized!

* *D.U.C.K. SPOILER*: the dedication is in the water right below

Bombie's outstretched foot -- but remember, the cover art is flipped,so it's bass-ackwards.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------CHAPTER XI: The European title for this chapter is "The Richest Duck in theWorld" by Byron's choice, but I wanted to save that title for the finalchapter. I had great indecision titling this chapter... another idea was"The Robber Baron from Calisota"... and, in fact, I think they used a titlelike that in some countries.

Ever since I laid out my 12-part plan for this series sometime in 1991, Iknew that part XI would be the killer! It would be hard enough to tell theother chapters, some of which covered 5 or more years in $crooge's early

life, in my allotment of 15 pages per episode. But once I'd told the taleof how $crooge finally hit pay dirt on White Agony Creek and how he set uphis home base in Duckburg, there's nothing much to say in particular of thenext 45 years of his life. Those years were spent in successfullycontinuing to build up his empire and fortune, and stories of constantsuccess would be boring and not appropriate for this series. But in orderto bring $crooge's story up to that night on Bear Mountain, I had to dealwith all the intervening years since 1902. Yet... what possible plot threadcould run through all or most of those years to make the story hangtogether and not simply be a collection of boring anecdotes?

The other single biggest problem was also on me at this point: in trying todeal with every fact of $crooge's life which Barks had peppered his

wonderful stories with, there were tiny inconsistencies here and therewhich I easily danced nimbly around. But then there was "Voodoo Hoodoo" inDONALD DUCK / FOUR COLOR #238! This was one of Barks' earliest uses of$crooge, before he had really solidified the character in his own mind,much less realize that the tycoon would someday become regarded as hisgreatest creation. "Voodoo Hoodoo" was fraught with racial stereotypes anduntenable "facts" such as $crooge being a dead ringer for Donald in hisyouth, and that he had been in Africa "making his second billion" as earlyas 1879 ("70 years ago" from 1949)! But worst of all was the idea that inBarks' tale that $crooge may have actually been an unscrupulous "robber

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baron" at one point and stolen land from helpless African natives using agang of thugs. Yow! I originally planned to simply ignore "Voodoo Hoodoo"in my series!

Then it struck me that perhaps these two problems, that of $crooge as avillain and that of my needing a plot to span 30 years, could solve eachother! The idea that in his growing greed and cynicism, $crooge finallycrossed the line and became a Flintheart Glomgold for one moment in hislife... this could be my story. This one misstep could haunt him fordecades and teach him yet another lesson. It still remained to figure outwhy $crooge would look like Donald in those days, but I finally came upwith explanations for everything... except that 1879 date, which is all Ifinally ignored. Of course, I had to draw Bombie and Foola Zoola in the newpolitically-correct style now decreed by Disney, without the big noses andpuffy pink lips as in Barks' original tale, but that's okay since that'sthe only way readers would see them appearing in reprints, and unless theywere a fellow collector who had all the original issues, these readerswould be puzzled if those characters looked differently than what they werefamiliar with. After all, when old Disney comics are redrawn ("censored" ifyou wish, though I don't think that's exactly the appropriate term), thepublishers can't warn the readers that they are getting their art-historyrewritten, so they won't know. However, to make up for this change, I gaveFoola back his old sharp teeth, and I removed the pupil's from Bombie'seyebulbs, which was one of Barks' original intentions for the original

"Voodoo Hoodoo".

The printing in this Gladstone issue is better than in the previous issue,but still rather muddy.

This chapter has more built-in references to old "Barksian facts" thanperhaps most of the other chapters combined. So, now I'll list them asbriefly as possible (?) in their order of appearance:

$crooge's surplus Boer War cannon -- WDC&S #134.

The Goldopolis sequence was described in "Mystery of the GhosttownRailroad" in UNCLE $CROOGE #56. But that story contained another date that

I had to ignore: it tells of $crooge being a traveling tycoon in 1898, ayear when he would actually have been still struggling in the Yukon goldfields. Perhaps his memory failed and he meant to say 1908, ten yearslater? Yeah, that's the ticket! In Barks' original story there had alsobeen a reference to a hole being shot in his top hat (in 1898), thoughanother old story had stated that the hat wasn't bought until 1910. So Isubstituted a fedora.

"...when I sold recordings of 'The Baggage Coach Ahead' at the 1904 World'sFair" -- "The City of Golden Roofs", U$ #20.

I show $crooge's secretary Emily Quackfaster shortly after she was hired.She was perhaps (?) first seen in "The Midas Touch" in U$ #36. Miss

Quackfaster is used frequently in Egmont stories... but here's an oddity:in all Egmont scripts she is renamed Miss Typefast, even though the varioustranslators give her another new name anyway. I never understood thechange, unless it was first done by some editor unfamiliar with the Barksstories.

The Star of the World diamond mine -- "The Money Champ", U$ #27.

The Qwak Qwak tribe truce -- "Bongo on the Congo", U$ #33.

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"I sold lawnmowers in the Sahara" -- "The Mines of King Solomon", U$ #19.

"I had a thriving salt business (in Egypt) in the old days" -- back-upstory in U$ #25.

"When (U$) sold rain hats in Aden" -- "McDuck of Arabia", U$ #55.

"I sold wind to the windmill makers along the Zuyder Zee" -- "The FlyingDutchman", U$ #25; (of course, this is obviously a gag, even if sellinglawnmowers in the Sahara isn't, but I still assume $crooge's life took himto the thriving business centers of the Netherlands at some point.)

"That hat cost me two dollars in 1910" -- "The Lemming with the Locket", U$#9.

"...when I sold concertinas to the Czar's cavalry" -- "The City of GoldenRoofs" again, still U$ #20.

The story of the Candy-Stripe Ruby -- "The Status Seeker", U$ #41.

"When I was salvaging treasure on the Spanish Main" -- "Only a Poor OldMan", U$ #1 / FOUR COLOR #386. I even recreated (okay, okay, traced!) theBarks panel from that issue.

"I fought forty-foot crocs when I was a rubber hunter in Guiana" -- "TheSwamp of No Return", U$ #57. And if I have $crooge in Guiana, how could Iresist having him encounter "The Gilded Man" from DONALD DUCK / FOUR COLOR#422. I also made a reference to $crooge's love of Amazonian nutmeg tea ("ASpicy Tale" in U$ #39) by putting a bag of it on page 18, panel 3 -- butapparently no one included that labeling instruction in the Egmont script,so it's just a nameless sack.

Simply from the timing of his comment of "like that time in Bagdad" in"Only a Poor Old Man" (U$ #1), I freely interpreted that as some memory offooling bandits with his money-diving knack, as he does to the Beagle Boysin that old story. More definite is the comment in that same issue, "I'llfool 'em like I fooled the brigands of Mongolia years ago", after which we

saw $crooge allow the Beagle Boys to unwittingly haul his money to safetyin their dump-trucks under dirt they were digging in an assault on theMoney Bin.

And still from that famous first issue of UNCLE $CROOGE: "I trainedthousands of (cormorants) when I was in the pearl trade in Asia".

"Long ago I was known as the Birdman of Wall Street" -- "How Green Is MyLettuce", U$#51.

And finally, the Maharajah of Howduyustan was in WDC&S #138 in that classicamong classics, the Cornelius Coot statue story!

* INSANE DETAILS TO NOTE:

On page 7, panel 7, Foola is yelling "M'gawa niktimba". This is what JohnnyWeissmuller always used to shout, and it means "elephant herd - come crushnative village except third hut on right where I am tied up" or "Cheetah,stop doing that to Jane" or what-have-you.

I thought it was marvelous that Disney allowed this story to be usedvirtually unchanged in America. One of the only changes they did dictatewas the removal of some angry looking masks hanging in Foola's hut. Don't

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ask me to explain this stuff.

This was one of my stories done with different art for pages 9 and 17,depending on whether a publisher used it as a single story or broke it intothree chapters. So the gags seen on the top half of those pages in theGladstone issue have been seen nowhere else in the world. (Those specialpages should have been used in the Dutch and French editions, but weren'tfor reasons I can't figure out.)

I had them correct it at Gladstone, but in all other printings of thisstory, on page 9, second-to-last panel, I screwed up and drew $crooge'sspectacles both in his hand and on his beak.

I have no doubt that Titanic buffs can find numerous inaccuracies in myaccount, and I'm already aware of most of them. At least I show it as astarless night, unlike my cover. And I show the ship sinking in one piece,which we now know is false. Still, that deck-chair sliding past on page 16,panel 7, IS a Titanic deck chair! Also, in my original script, that guywanting to buy $crooge's Candy Stripe Ruby is John Jacob Astor, but theywouldn't allow that name to be used in the comic; however, they did allowWilliam Randolph Hearst's name on page 2. Like I said, don't ask me toexplain these things. If you looked up the word "inscrutable" in adictionary, you'd find a picture of... well, never mind.

In the panel where $crooge is coming down the steamship gangplank on page21, there seems to be a push-pin laying on the dock. I believe it must havedropped off the globe in the first panel. Sorry.

Movie buffery rears its ugly head again on the last page... Matilda's line,"he has money and all that money can buy" is spoken by Mister Scratch(Walter Huston) in the recently restored 1941 classic (and one of my topfavorites) THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER!

* *D.U.C.K. SPOILER*: the splash page dedication is on a tiny slip ofpaper sticking out of one of Matilda's scrapbooks.

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