Introducing the DCR Holiday Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Marathon

Hey, guess what, kids? Now, it is beginning of a fantastic story! I've written a little about Rosa's Life & Times series before, but honestly--that amounted to little more than a whole lotta uncritical fanboy gushing--not really all that interesting. I've often thought that it deserved more than that--what with being the most ambitious project in Disney comics history* and all. These days, I'm slightly older and slightly wiser, and I think--hope, anyway--that I can bring a critical perspective to the series that I couldn't earlier. I've also been thinking it would be fun to do a li'l something special for this holiday season. Sooooo...
*go on, then--give me your counterproposal. I think it would have to be one of the longer Gottfredson serials, but I think that would be a stretch. I know there are huge Italian series out there, but length isn't everything**--it's certainly not the same as "ambition"--and given the density and maniacal obsessiveness of Rosa's work…well, I'm standing by that statement.

**THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!***

***sorry.

Yes, there are people who can't stand Rosa's methodology. I get it. It's a bit of a stretch for him to claim that he's just trying to imitate Barks--that much is obvious of course, but he brings his own sensibility to duck comics to the extent that his work is really wholly his own, even if it's meant to just be expanding on that of the master. I want to call his work "Barks in high-definition," but I also don't, because that implies a criticism of Barks that I don't intend. But you know what I'm saying, right? You read his work, and you think, yeah, this is Barks. Only…more so. For both better and worse.

Talking about the L&T specifically, there's also the criticism that it sort of sucks the air out of the room--that, in its own way, it's extremely limiting. What else can you possibly do with Scrooge's past when there's this enormous stone monument just sitting there? Which is fair enough, but I really have to come down on Rosa's side here. It's true that his maniacal approach to Barksian "truth" seems somewhat excessive sometimes. But I ask you: if you're going to embark on a project like this, what are you going to do? You need to have some basis for what you're doing--to respect the character's history to a substantial degree. So even though it's true that Barks' work itself would probably have seen substantial cross-pollination had he been aware of European artists while he was working (when he met Romano Scarpa in the seventies, he apparently loved the idea of Brigitta MacBridge), the fact is, it didn't, and I think it's reasonable for Rosa to restrict himself to what Barks actually did, even if I wouldn't personally couch it in quite such puritanical terms. Let's face it: the Life & Times of Scrooge McDuck as written by Scarpa would've been a fucking disaster, albeit a fascinating one. Rosa's vision isn't flawless, but the idea simply needs to be taken very seriously if it's going to succeed at all--and there ain't no one more serious about this stuff than he is.

I'm going to cover each part of the series: the twelve "regular" chapters, and the six later additions*--one a day, starting tomorrow, the eighth, and ending on the twenty-fifth, Christmas Day--with what is essentially a Christmas story, no less! It's perfect! I was debating whether I should do them in chronological order or in order of publication, but ultimately opted for the latter--and not just 'cause the former would've messed up my plan to end with a seasonally-appropriate story. You could definitely make the argument that using publication order would provide a better perspective on Rosa's artistic development, but I think the flailing backwards and forwards that such an approach would entail would just be too jarring. I'll try to take note of anything that may be indicative of a different sensibility in the subsidiary chapters, but I also believe they mesh together pretty well with the main work.

*No, I'm not including "Dream of a Lifetime," even though it's in Gemstone's L&T Companion; it's not really part of the series, and it would feel very anticlimactic.



Before we start, just for fun: here's Rosa's family tree.* I certainly understand why some people get annoyed by Rosa's desire to ruthlessly quantify arbitrarily thrown-off "facts" the way he does. But hell: it's fun, dammit. Here's something you maybe didn't know: Gemstone did two printings of the L&T. The first is red; the second is yellow. In the first one, there's a printing error, so you can only see half of the portraits of Fethry and the mysterious Lulubelle Loon. This was fixed in the second.

*Okay, so I couldn't find a large image online, and scanning it would have been difficult, inasmuch as it takes up two pages in the Gemstone's L&T. But c'mon; I'm pretty sure you know what it looks like.

(I think I've mentioned this before, but if you buy a print of the family tree from Rosa at a convention (which, though basically the same as the published version, is slightly realigned and features re-drawn portraits--for some sort of copyright-related reason?), it'll show Ludwig Von Drake on the far left, married to Matilda. Now, I love the shit out of this pairing, and wish like hell that Rosa had been permitted to depict it in a story (seriously, you editor people can be such jerks sometimes), but the fact that the tree depicts young-Matilda, whereas Ludwig is modern-day-age, makes it look pretty seriously creepy. If he revised it to include Matilda as depicted in "The Old Castle's Other Secret, it would be way better.)

(Also, in that version you can see HDL's father's face (CF), and he will apparently draw your name in the empty box. Um…thanks but no thanks!)

Here's something that irritates me--and I realize that this irritation basically makes me the geekiest person in the world, but I can't help it: there's a Barksian character missing from this chart. For all of Rosa's obsessiveness, he let one get by him. I would make you guess in comments to see if anyone could get it, but no time! I want to air my grievance NOW! It's Mehitabel Mudhen, mentioned in this rarely-reprinted (because of the most horrifying racial depiction ever in a Disney comic) story. Now, this family tree is cool; it's a lot of fun--but Rosa had to make up out of whole cloth a lot of characters in order to get the genealogy to work. Mehitabel would've been a perfect fit as Fethry's and Abner's mother, slightly ameliorating that issue. I know the "loon" bit is to try to genetically explain Fethry's craziness, but mudhens are pretty crazy too (I would've sworn that "mad as a mudhen" was an actual idiom, but a google search reveals that I apparently just made that up. It works though, dammit!). Yes, in that case he should probably have referred to her in the Barks story as "Aunt," but really, now: Rosa fudges details far more substantial than that throughout the saga. There's definitely some leeway here.

I guess all I'm trying to say is this: down with Lulubelle! Up with Mehitabel! Seriously. I just now thought of this, and now the omission bothers me on a deep, molecular level. Hey, I told you I was geeky.

Oh, and one last thing: my favorite charity for holidays is Heifer International. If you like this series, you could do a whole lot worse than to thank me by buying some livestock for people in developing countries who need it.

Chapter Zero->