Master McDucato, Chapter II: "The Dungeon Tower"

Chapter II!  We open, at any rate, with a bang:

This image should most definitely remind us all of Carpi's "Sandoduck."  It's pretty nice, indifferent printing quality notwithstanding.  Another wrinkle to the "history" aspect of the story: this seems to be a real incident that happened, but not, presumably, with the involvement of Beagles.  So…how seriously can we/are we meant to take any of this, in that case?

Now…as you can see, this is really more like a brief anecdote than a "story," per se; the Beagles may be present, but in the thing itself that's being told, there's really no conflict: woman decides to warn her fellow citizens; warns her fellow citizens.  That's all there is to it.  That notwithstanding, though, I can't help quite liking this and in its own right, as well as some of the other, similar incidents in the story: in spite of everything, there's a real sense of atmosphere here that I just dig.  Is that enough to justify the whole story? *noncommittal grunt*

Yup, it's the inevitable "they don't know the tower's supposed to be leaning" gag.  Okay, maybe it won't win any prizes for originality, but the background business at least gives you a little value for money.  I like the dog sitting there for no reason.

Excessively dickish behavior from Scroogio; it's Martina, whaddaya expect?  We will certainly see worse!

The question: is Count Ugolino really such a household name in Italy that you can just mention him with no explanation and have everyone know what you mean?  He's just some noble who did treason-related stuff, and found himself in the lowest level of Dante's Hell.  He was apparently dumped in a tower dungeon with his sons to starve to death; per Dante's version, his sons begged him to eat them to stave off hunger, which he did and then died of remorse.  See, kids?  Learning CAN be fun!  Once again, I really like the tower stuff, however brief it may be.  Pretty effectively spooky.

See?  Spooky, darnit!  I'd be a bit freaked out too, I think.

I also liked writing for these guys.  I decided that the boss should be somewhat smarter, but still pretty stupid, spouting banal platitudes to bolster his alleged genius.

So, how ya like my fake Italian?  Pretty darned superficially convincing, wouldn't you say?

Hmm…is this "earning it square?"

…well, is blatantly lying to people "earning it square?"  Note that the story never says that this is the actual tower where Ugolino was killed.  I mean, it could be; it's in the right general area, but Scroogio sure doesn't know that.  Also: one florin?  That's just absurdly overpriced.

One fun thing to do is think about possible metanarratives here: like, this bit makes you wonder if this whole story was in the service of promoting some new book or other.  The weird pumping up of this supposed book certainly gives one pause.  Or maybe the story we're hearing how is the book!  Oooh!

Just one thing after another.  Surely this is the first time the phrase "spoiler alert" has appeared in a duck comic.

Next time is the time when we start to see some of the oddest aspects of the story, so check out Chapter III, "The Phoney Florins" (yes, "phoney" is an acceptable spelling--look it up, dammit) and tune back in tomorrow for some commentary from yours truly.

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