Carl Barks's stories about Scrooge McDuck were one of the things I discovered on my own as a kid. Nobody had to tell me they were something special. I just knew it, and they were among my favorite comics. Later on (years later on) I found out that plenty of other people loved Scrooge and had continued reading the comics about him for a lot longer than I had. I never became fanatical about Scrooge, but even now I enjoy reading one of the old comics if I run across it, and I was happy to hear from Rick Robinson about Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, which won the Will Eisner award for "Best Serialized Story" in 1995. (Yes, I'm ten years behind. For me that's about normal.)
Don Rosa has done a lot of Uncle Scrooge stories, but this is a little different. It's a 12-part serial based on the "facts" of Scrooge's life as discovered in Carl Barks' classic stories. Rosa says that every fact about Scrooge's early life, "no matter how minute or obscurely buried the morsel of history might have been" is included in his serial, each chapter of which is followed by Rosa's comments on the story and the facts therein (where they came from, any inconsistencies, and so on). I have to say that I enjoyed this "graphic novel" about as much as any book I've read lately. It made me feel a little like a kid again, waiting at the door for the postman to show up with the latest issue of Walt Disney's Comics & Stories. Check it out.
4 comments:
I was reading some Carl Barks stories late last night and was thinking I should write about them on my blog and my personal relationship with Barks: while I'm not wildly enthusiastic about all things Disney, I consider Barks one of the five best cartoonists in the world, ever.
And may I add that I like Rosa's stuff very much (he's been widely published here in Finland and he's even done a Scrooge McDuck story based on Kalevala; I don't know if those have been published in English at all, but he's almost a national hero here), but there's just not enough depth in his stories. Barks's social comedy is so much larger and warmer.
As of this moment, this listed edition and a later hardback are sadly very much out of print.
The Barks stories, and old copies of DONALD DUCK and especially UNCLE SCROOGE are nearly always worth reading. The Don Rosa stories prove he does a bang-up job on the books, also.
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"Disney comics with the" BEAGLE Boys
(was the answer sought).
A shame it's out of print. I'm currently enjoying the Fantagraphics reprints of Carl Barks' Scrooge and Donald Duck stories.
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