Uncle Scrooge. Just a poor old man

Publisher: AST, 2017

Series: Disney Comics. DuckTales

ISBN: 978-5-17-101749-1

Pages: 248

Who is the richest guy in the world, according to Forbes?

Of course, this is the most famous drake in the world - Scrooge McDuck!!!

Owner of one multiplyzillion nine obsquatumillion six hundred twenty-three dollars and sixty-two cents!

It’s great that the AST publishing house didn’t torment us with waiting for a long time and almost immediately after the release of the first book in the series “Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck” (my review) releases the second book “Uncle Scrooge. Just a poor old man."

The collection includes classic stories from the 1950s.

The foreword to the book was written by George Lucas.

There are 27 stories in the book. As you know, money is the meaning of Scrooge McDuck's life. And it is around them that all the stories about Skruzhd are built. From the second book you can learn how to:

Scrooge McDuck amassed his vast fortune,

about Scrooge’s very first clashes with the Gavs brothers,

Scrooge lost his first love

Scrooge returned a centuries-old family debt, and also visited the bottom of the ocean, the sunken city of Atlantis and many other stories

The collection also includes a large number of small funny episodes from the life of Scrooge and interesting additional materials (comments from specialists in the history of comics, black and white sketches of pages, a biography of Barks).

I liked the stories. Some stories echo the cartoons I watched as a child. And for me, who grew up watching Disney cartoons, this is a return to childhood. And why lie, I bought the book first of all for myself. And I will be very happy if my son also likes the book.

The book is published in hardcover. The cover is partially varnished. Thick - 248 pages (40 pages more than in the first book). Circulation 6000 copies, which is 1000 copies. less than the circulation of the first book. The pages of the book are thick, the illustrations are bright.

In the first volume of “duck” comics “Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck. Son of the Sun,” the name of Carl Barks was mentioned almost more often than the name of Don Rosa, the direct author of those stories. And there is a simple explanation for this: it was Barks who is considered the creator of classic comics about talking and human-like ducks; it was his classic works, created by him in the middle of the last century, that inspired Rosa and other followers. And if, due to cultural differences and other reasons in our country, the name of this artist is not very well known to fans of drawn stories, then the time has come to urgently correct this omission, and this must be done with the help of the book “Uncle Scrooge”, published by the publishing house “AST” in the series “ Disney comics." This collection presents the first “big” stories about the stingy Duxburgh, the richest drake in the world (he measures his fortune in acres, and to describe the exact amount of his fortune you have to come up with sky-high figures like “centrifugillion”), who experiences dangerous adventures over and over again with his nephew Donald and the trio of Young Woodchucks, Willie, Billy and Dilly.

Money is the meaning of Scrooge McDuck’s entire life, and the plots of both fairly large stories and many one-page strips are built around it. The premise of most stories is simple: a rich man wants to protect his savings from insidious criminals like the Gavs brothers. How to do this if the action takes place in an era when there were no bank cards that could easily fit a fortune into your pocket (and McDuck, a big fan of swimming in a sea of coins and bills, wouldn’t get involved with this piece of plastic), but the storage seems so unreliable? Scrooge constantly comes up with ways to protect money from robbery, which is why he regularly becomes “just a poor old man,” and in order to correct this situation, he has to put in a lot of effort, cunning, deceiving and resorting to his rich experience, finding yourself on the brink of death on land, in the air and even under water. Stories such as “Just a Poor Old Man” and “The Mystery of the Menehunes” tell the story. Attempts to get even more rich, however, also do not bring peace to the uncle: as soon as you start chasing a rare coin, you find yourself captured by the real Atlanteans.

These naive but exciting adventures seem to reflect the fashion for pulp fiction, Golden Age comics and the novels of such classics as Jules Verne and Edgar Burroughs. Visits from old creditors also provide a flood of problems and force them to comb the seabed in search of century-old cargo (“Precious horseradish,” here, by the way, appears the colorful “bad guy” Khapuga Maksud, who, alas, never made it into the pantheon of the series’ regular antagonists). And an attempt to collect on old debts will make the drake remember the days of his youth spent in the Klondike (Don Rosa, as we remember, later also addressed this topic and slightly reworked it, retaining, however, the spirit of the Gold Rush), and about what or who did he leave there?

It is “Return to the Klondike” that shows readers Scrooge from an unusual side, and the ending of this story allows us to see in him not only an arrogant miser, ready to put his life on the line, just not to pay an extra cent, but a completely positive hero, which he remains, despite all its quirks, and to this day, personifying the victory of the “Great American Dream,” the ghost of which ironically winks at us in the story “Catch a Big Fish,” which tells the story that you can make money on anything, if only you had the desire. Sometimes, however, he gets carried away and he begins to dig a hole even for his close people... I mean, ducks (the story “Do not Dig”), forgetting that it is easy to end up in a hole yourself if you forget about morality. So comics about rich people can be quite instructive. And very witty: in fact, all the short stories tell about how the main character strives to save on everything he can, and he has to spin like a top (having learned a couple of ballet steps), looking for discounts, promotions, opportunities not to pay bills, in general, to spin around in every possible way, doing what is now called a “life hack”.

Barks' comics are one of the few things you can point to and say, “Whether you like it or not, this is America!” And for this reason alone they are an invaluable literary heritage.

George Lucas

This is exactly how director and screenwriter George Lucas speaks about Carl Barks' Duck Tales, and I am ready to subscribe to every word and even add a little of my own.

Like many of my peers, I grew up watching cartoons and animated series from the 80s and 90s. One of the most beloved animated series has always been “DuckTales”. The cartoon immediately became so iconic that I don’t think it’s necessary to write well-worn paragraphs about it. Instead, I’d rather talk about the first Russian edition of the early adventures of Scrooge McDuck, written and drawn by the pen (cough, cough) of the creator of the tight-fisted drake, Carl Barks.

The first thing worth mentioning is the series of publications itself. The original editions are published in the USA under the auspices of Fantagraphics - one of the best comic book publishers in the USA (and in the world, in general) in terms of printing and licensing. In the original editions, the order of the stories is not entirely chronological*; Currently, 9 volumes of the adventures of Donald Duck and 2 volumes about Uncle Scrooge have been published (the 3rd will be released in May 2017).

In total, about 30 volumes are planned in the series. In Russia, AST began producing “duck” products, starting the Carl Barks Library series with the earliest adventures of Scrooge and his nephews. To be honest, as a conscious adult, I definitely hadn’t read Barks before, or Disney comics in general in the original, but this choice seems reasonable to me. We can only guess (or PM me announcements that I might have missed) whether AST will publish Donald’s adventures in the future.

*Barks initially worked to bring the cartoon Donald to the comic book page in a different form, later inventing Scrooge and creating a broad mythology for the characters.

The collection itself is absolutely self-sufficient. The first book included about 27 multi-page (10-25 pages) and one-page stories.

One-page stories were primarily created to fill space in the magazines where comics were originally published. Their peculiarity lies in the classic structure of gay* comics. Since there is little room for a story on one page, these comics aim to tell a short and often ironic visual anecdote. In the case of Uncle Scrooge, the themes of these comics are money and stinginess.

*gag (gag) is a comedy technique based on obvious absurdity.

If the small stories represent Scrooge's routine everyday life saving pennies and quarters, then the large stories present the reader with ornate and often fantastic stories about saving the feathered old man's fortune and making new money.

All stories have their own morals, messages and even social implications. With a completely innocent recommended reading age level of 6+, Barks’ stories have a completely different, often very adult, character than the aforementioned cartoon, many of whose series were based on Barks’ stories (including those from this book). At the same time, censorship also took place here before! For example, in the story “Return to the Klondike,” also partially filmed in a cartoon, there is a scene in which Scrooge personally beats a couple of dozen cunning guys defending a nugget stolen from McDuck. This scene was initially cut by the editors and was published in full much later in re-releases. This may seem like nonsense to you and me, but don’t forget that these comics were published for a completely different audience in the early 50s of the last century, i.e. about 67 years ago!

The age of the stories, by the way, is the most mind-blowing aspect of the comic. I have read and am reading quite a lot of strips of that time and I know that there were always enough serious things even then, if you know where to look, but Barks still amazes me with his presentation of important and, most importantly, instructive stories with a clear morality, dressed in seemingly childish stories about a greedy drake and his family.

The most striking example of both the multi-layered nature and immortality of these stories is the story “Precious Horseradish,” in which the nosy Grabber Maksud tries to take Scrooge’s fortune through legal means, unraveling the mistakes of McDuck’s ancestor. Not only does the antagonist of the story at some point throw his comrade overboard the boat as a witness to a crime (don’t be afraid, Scrooge’s team saved the poor fellow), which looks quite creepy compared to other stories, but there is also the author’s personal subtext reflecting dislike Barks to lawyers, at that time explained by the difficult divorce proceedings with his second wife. The contrast between the actions of Scrooge and his opponent clearly shows why Scrooge is still a positive, although not sinless, character.

By the way, the biography of Carl Barks, in view of his complex life and career, is generally extremely interesting, and you can find tangible fragments of it in the additional materials of the book. Philologists, historians and other professionals from various fields tell their vision of Barks's stories, and also provide a lot of historical information, which is a pleasure to read.

The characters themselves in the comic are alive and as close as possible to the American spirit and mentality. Even appearing in one short story, Barks’s antagonists are remembered by the reader for a long time, let alone the noble ducks and ducklings we know from childhood!

Finally, it’s worth saying a few words about localization. Regular readers of my site know that I very rarely review Russian publications. I chose this book for review precisely because of its borderline impeccable editing and the same quality of translation. It would be superfluous to say anything else here, since this is exactly the level that suits me and which I personally have no desire to find fault with (because there is nothing to find fault with).

“Uncle Scrooge: Just a Poor Old Man” is a book that should be on the shelf of any fan of good cartoon stories. An absolute must-have.

Publisher: AST, 2017

Series: Disney Comics. DuckTales

ISBN: 978-5-17-101749-1

Who is the richest guy in the world, according to Forbes?

Of course, this is the most famous drake in the world - Scrooge McDuck!!!

Owner of one multiplyzillion nine obsquatumillion six hundred twenty-three dollars and sixty-two cents!

The collection includes classic stories from the 1950s.

The foreword to the book was written by George Lucas.

Scrooge McDuck amassed his vast fortune,

about Scrooge’s very first clashes with the Gavs brothers,

Scrooge lost his first love

Scrooge returned a centuries-old family debt, and also visited the bottom of the ocean, the sunken city of Atlantis and many other stories

To my shame, I only learned that the animated series DuckTales was based on the comic books of Carl Barks and Don Rossa a couple of years ago. Before this, I thought that the Scrooge McDuck comics were just an addition to the series. And only this year I was lucky enough to read the very first comic book about Uncle Scrooge, “Just a Poor Old Man.”

A few words for those who are not at all in the subject. Scrooge McDuck, the richest drake in the world, lives in America in the fifties in the city of Duxburg. Living next door to him are his nephew Donald Duck and three great-nephews Billy, Willie and Dilly (In the original, Huey, Louie and Dewey, but no one cares). Various dark personalities are constantly encroaching on Scrooge’s money (the Gavs brothers are especially zealous), but thanks to the help of relatives and his own ingenuity, Scrooge always manages to keep his treasures.

The book, published here in Russia, is a collection of short stories and one-page strips about Scrooge McDuck. All these stories were written in the 50s of the twentieth century, which is quite clearly evident both in the surroundings and in the style of drawing and painting. At first, the drawing seems rustic, but Barks is not without reason considered a master: the arrangement of panels, the composition of frames, and the dynamics are all at the highest level. Laconic and nothing superfluous. The painting is quite specific - large areas are filled with fairly bright colors, without halftones or tints, but this color scheme, in my opinion, creates a unique retro atmosphere in the comic, and is generally pleasing to the eye.

In addition to drawing, Barks is also a good storyteller. This book contains stories in which Scrooge, Donald and his nephews will visit tropical islands, travel to Alaska (where Scrooge became rich), Tibet and even to the bottom of the ocean.

For me, who grew up watching DuckTales, it was immediately apparent that Barks' Scrooge was different from the character in the series. He is a rather greedy and mischievous old man, although he sometimes does good deeds unselfishly. Uncle Scrooge, according to Barks, is an ideal capitalist, one might say self made man.. oh, sorry duck - he earned all his wealth himself, thanks to hard work, resourcefulness and a bit of luck. I note that the author does not encourage the negative qualities of the hero - because of them, he often finds himself in ridiculous and unpleasant situations, but for good deeds he is usually rewarded. At the same time, Barks does not read morals, but simply tells fascinating stories. Most of all, he is concerned about preserving his wealth, which the Gavs brothers are constantly encroaching on. By the way, the image of the brothers is different from the serial one. In DuckTales, they were stupid, cross-eyed klutzes who lost all the time. With Barks, they are truly dangerous: they are ready to commit any crime in order to take possession of the money - they will begin fraud with real estate, then they will declare a local war on Scrooge with shootouts and bombing, or they will hijack a steamship and Scrooge himself will be taken prisoner. And defeating them is much more difficult than in the cartoon.

Scrooge, by the way, is really an old man (according to the official chronology, he is about 80 years old) - either he begins to have convulsions and tremors, or because of sclerosis he forgets the faces of his own nephews. All this serves as a reason for numerous jokes and comical situations.

I also really liked that the animal characters in the comics are just types. They talk about each other as if they were people. At the same time, in Barks's world there are also dogs, ducks and cats (simple animals).

Some of the short strips included in the collection are even better than the big stories, although they show rather absurd and anecdotal situations.

Of the minuses - some may find the drawing too laconic, others may pay attention to the too bright and contrasting coloring, but what upset me most was the lettering, or rather the lack of it. All inscriptions, be it store opening hours, book titles, or signatures on the Gavs brothers' sweatshirts, are made in a simple standard font and are not even always placed in the required area. This is very annoying, because there are not many inscriptions in the comic and it would have been quite possible to redraw them beautifully by hand, but this creates the impression of some kind of samizdat.

The book is published in hardcover, on good, albeit loose, matte paper. At the end there are extensive notes and additional materials revealing the history of the creation of the characters and each individual story in the collection.

To summarize, I want to say that I really liked the comic. The stories are very simple, but without being too childish or moralizing, and the characters are very charming. Perhaps nostalgic feelings played a role here and “Uncle Scrooge” will not be interesting to modern youth. But people of my generation should certainly familiarize themselves with Barks’s works, if only to understand what lies at the heart of their favorite animated series. 9/10