The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Chapter Ten: "The Invader of Fort Duckburg"

Rosa judges this as "perhaps the most enjoyable chapter in the series." It's certainly enjoyable, but also, I can't help feeling, a little insubstantial. How much I will have to say about it is open to question. Let us see. There's a LOT of Barksian stuff here, but I'm certainly not going to make an effort to catalogue it all--that's what Rosa's commentary is for.



...and it's enjoyable in large part because we get to see lots of rarely-seen supporting characters doing their thing. In addition to Scrooge's sisters, we have Daphne, Gladstone's future mother (the story makes note of her surprising luck); Quackmore, Donald's and Della's future father; and Eider, who might or might not be here were he not actually mentioned in Barks' "Farragut the Falcon," but whom the family tree establishes as marrying Lulubelle Loon MEHITABEL MUDHEN and becoming Abner's and Fethry's father. I may have warmed to Fethry a bit in recent months, but you have to admit: it's pretty jarring to imagine him in Rosa-world. At the very least, he would no doubt be very different than any other depiction of the character.

Fun Fact: I had been under the impression that "Elvira Coot" was a name that Rosa just made up, but then I read the commentary for the first time in a while and learned that this is not so, or at least only partially--so I had to investigate the source material. I must warn you that the next image--which is from a terrible non-Barks story in WDC121--features one of those horrible mice from Cinderella. More sensitive audience members may wish to leave the room.



Well, okay, it's almost "Elvira." And she isn't a Coot, of course. But close enough, I reckon. Who knew? I mean, aside from people who were paying attention?



Yes, and naturally, it's love at first sight, sort of, for these two. It's cute, although reducing Donald to the sum of two bad-tempered people is a bit on the reductive side.



Also, Junior Woodchucks, including Gyro's future father. And…yup. The running gag of Scrooge repeatedly using mangled variations on their name is funny.



And bam, Theodore Roosevelt is back--a fun and unexpected recurrence, especially since this time he has more to do than just dispense bromides to Scrooge.



I'm quite certain I belabored the point about Scrooge's character inconsistencies sufficiently last time, but I have to at least briefly note this bit: what about being a Rugged Individualist and Making It Square implies paying your sisters slave wages to do your work for you?



And those sisters…I like them, but there's no denying it: their personalities are very limited. Matilda really doesn't develop much of any individuality 'til much later in "The Old Castle's Other Secret," whereas for Hortense it's basically just "prone to fits of rage." Buuut...well, they are also subject to, for want of a better word, extreme horniness* when confronted with these mythical "cowboys" they're after. Hey, fair enough; it's hard to imagine that they ran into too many eligible young men back in Scotland, given their situation (though come to think of it, I dunno; if they're willing to go for disguised Beagle Boys, they can't be that discriminate…). Also, note that Hortense's infatuation with Quackmore does not seem to inhibit her at all in this regard. It's actually rather easy to see why she wouldn't be playing a part in her son's later life: as much as they might dig each other in a visceral way, it's hard to imagine their marriage working out in the long term, for many reasons, some of which might even be printable in a Disney comic.

*Some might argue that "boy-craziness" would've been a better word, in that it would have kept this entry PG-rated and avoided so strongly conjuring unwanted images of duck/dog-face miscegenation. But I think history will show that "PG-rated" is not how we roll here at Duck Comics Revue LLC. Or at least, I hope it's not. If you think this blog is too PG please let me know, and I'll try to say "fuck" more often.



Oh yeah, there's some kinda big battle, complete with Hortense chasing off the "cow-people" with a broom, a nice echo of "The New Laird of Castle McDuck." She's all grown up now!



Anyway, little bit of this, little bit of that, and ultimately the bin is established. I really like the shot of the barrels at the bottom there (a Barks-inspired thing, natch)--it really demonstrates the magnitude of the money-grubbing to come and presages its general epicness.



Who the heck? Just some random walk-ons, apparently, but it always feels like duck characters this distinct should have substantial roles of some sort. And yeah, I know this dead horse has just about had it, but note that, in spite of the implication that Scrooge is gonna be the force that builds this town and that that's a good thing, it's really not gonna be a very nice place to live, if everyone's pulling in Scrooge-wages.



And that's that. Another quite nice splash panel to end things on. Rosa's good at those, as you may at some point have noticed.

Can you believe it, people? Tomorrow it's "Sharpie of the Culebra Cut," the last of the bonus chapters. Hard to fathom, but this project is very close to completion. Excelsior!

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