"Back to the Klondike"

You know how the sequel's never quite as good as the original?  Sure, it might still be okay, but there's just not going to be the same spark of originality in…hmm?  Oh, no, I'm not talking about "Back to the Klondike;" it's great.  I refer, of course, to this blog entry.  But, let us give it a go nonetheless.

I had never previously read Barks' Scrooge stories (or any artist's ANYTHING stories) in chronological order.  I really don't think I'm going to want to write about every one of them, but it really is kind of fascinating to see how the character and the narratives surrounding him evolved in the early going.  

On facebook, Thad Komorowski (frequent Gemstone letters-page habitué, among other things) disputed my claim in the previous entry that "you get the really, really palpable sense that Barks was very conscious that he was responsible here for the start of a whole new line," and after reflection, I think he has a point.  "Only a Poor Old Man" is pretty atypical in the context of most of Barks' Scrooge stories.  The plot is relatively sedentary, and there's a lot more overt attention given to character than in most later efforts.  Surely on some level he must have known that he would be called upon to write more about the character: whether or not he'd've been cocky enough to admit it, he can hardly have failed to realize that he was miles above his fellow Disney artists, and given that even subpar material was enough to keep many a line chugging merrily along for years…well.  Still, when you think about it, "Poor Old Man" really does read well as a kind of one-and-done thing.  It's self-contained in a way that doesn't really suggest ways future stories.

On the other hand, when you think about it in these terms, it becomes really, really obvious that "Back to the Klondike" is very much a transitional story.  On the one hand, it feels something like a companion piece to "Poor Old Man:" both are concerned with Scrooge's history and what makes him tick in ways that Barks would only very intermittently explore, and never in any great depth, in stories to come.  

On the other hand, "Klondike" clearly suggests a formula for stories that "Man" didn't do.  In later efforts--by Barks and others--Scrooge's tendency to abruptly dragoon his nephews to go off to far-flung places would become such a standard trope that the joke would be their blasé attitude to this happening yet again--a necessary development, no doubt, so as to justify these sorts of plots.  But here, we see an initial recognition on Barks' part that this whole notion that Scrooge could just do this was kind of weird, and thus the joke is the left-field nature of Scrooge's sudden, apparently arbitrary request.

Another thing this story has in common with "Man" is that Scrooge's mental processes remain in large part opaque.  Sure, there's the whole "he's a swell guy after all!" ending, but exactly how he thinks about Goldie--and how she stacks up in his mental priority list against his money--both remain somewhat at least a little obscure.  As we'll see later on, there's a good reason for his moments of rapaciousness here, but to what extent is he actually making this trip to collect a debt, and to what extent is that just a flimsy excuse?  I certainly think he's convinced himself to a very large extent that it's entirely the latter.  Still, I think the ambiguity is intentional and well-done. 

Now, it has to be admitted: "Back to the Klondike" is substantially less thematically dense than its predecessor.  That's not a bad thing!  It's very difficult for me to imagine how the series could possibly have been sustainable if every story had to be as much of a character study as the debut was.

(Well, I thought it was less dense when I started writing, but now that this entry has turned out to be substantially longer than that last one, I'm not sure.  You be the judge.)

This is amusing: the fact that here Scrooge evidently doesn't even know how much money he has contradicts the "every bit means something" business right out of the gate.  Another thing: ever noticed how, when fetishizing specific bits of money, it's always coins, and never paper money?  "Every coin has a story," Scrooge says in "Poor Old Man."  Which, practically speaking, makes sense: coins have more solidity to them, and if we're being ruthlessly realistic here, we have to recognize that really old bills--especially with a dude swimming in them every day--are going to be reduced to tatters.  If Scrooge's money represents his living to a large degree in the past, the nature of paper money kind of undermines that.  Which could actually be a very interesting symbolic way of representing the different aspects of his character--the way, in spite of living in the past, he is driven to strive onwards--but as far as I know, no one's ever made use of this idea.  If this post inspires you to do so, I want co-author credit, dammit!

I want to make note of something which is obvious to anyone who looks, but which seems to generally go unremarked.  You see things like the above (definitely a funny joke!), and you realize, man--Don Rosa's portrayal of Donald in long adventure stories is completely non-Barksian.  Not that that's any kind of sin--interpretations vary and wouldn't it be boring if they didn't--but given that he was explicitly trying to build on the Barks aesthetic, it's kind of bizarre.  Donald does not come in for any special abuse in Barks' adventure stories--certainly no more than Scrooge himself does.  And as we see, he can be assertive and clash with Scrooge and sometimes even get his way.  I can only think that Rosa conflated the ten-pager Donald--who is subject to a lot more comic mayhem--with the adventure Donald.  So I guess in that sense it's Barksian, but transposing these two versions of the character really creates a completely different dynamic, not always to the stories' benefits.

Of course, how could we talk about this story without making note of the four-ish pages that Western, in their infinite wisdom, cut?  But I have to tell you something: I actually really do not blame them for excising this stuff.  Obviously, it would have been a huge shame if it had been lost, but really now: Western was very clear about the fact that they were publishing comics for children.  If occasionally someone was able to transcend that, bully for them, but they certainly weren't in the business of publishing l'art pour l'art, and it is wholly understandable that this Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down stuff was not going to fly.

Seriously, now: I feel as though it doesn't really strike us as such because it's so familiar, but this shit is kinky.  It is no coincidence that it was the inspiration for Rosa's last story, which in some countries has been retitled "Scrooge Gets Laid," or at least that's a rumor I'm trying to start.  For all that publishers can be really conservative, it's notable the things you can get away with these days that you couldn't back then.  The censorship of "Trick or Treat" was nothing but a petty editorial assertion of power, but this--eh, I'm okay with it, given that the full story is now widely available.  Besides, if the cut hadn't been made, we would not have a dopey but funny short in which Donald tricks Scrooge into converting his money to fish.  And I don't know about you, but I sure don't want to live in that world.

I'm actually a little ambivalent about these depictions of young Scrooge as this violent badass.  On the one hand, they're certainly interesting, as they show him in a light that we really don't see anywhere else in Barks.  And that's undeniably a nice-looking image up there.  On the other hand, it seems pretty clear to me that Barks was still developing the character, deciding which roads to take, when he drew this, and to me, it honestly looks a little bit jarring.  I cannot honestly argue very strongly against anyone who believe that, yes, this background is what informs the character's later exploits, but I dunno…maybe my perception is partially colored by the fact that I've never been a huge fan of the more over-the-top violence that Rosa's Young Scrooge inflicts.  Well, never mind.

One thing I do like is how Barks consistently keeps this romantic tension totally under the surface, to the extent that one isn't entirely sure there's anything there at all.  Of course, this may in part have just been down to concerns about the sort of material he was allowed to include in a story (and whaddaya know, look what happened, even as it stands!), but the lack of sentimentality perfectly fits the character.  I would posit--maybe possibly--that the central problem Scrooge runs into here is that his psyche is attuned in such a way that his relationship with the past is mediated entirely by money--stuff.  Every coin has its own story etc.  But then here we have Goldie, this total anomaly.  He sort of tries to fit her into this schema by forcing her to dig for gold--ie, making her instrumental in the acquisition of money--but, obviously, this does not work, because she's an actual person who doesn't just blankly reflect his history.  She has, like, agency and stuff.  And as we see…well, I'll return to this topic anon.

Why did Barks reduce the going rate for Donald's and HDL's services for just this one story?  It is a mystery!  But he changed it back immediately after, indicating that he really was concerned with consistency.  I don't know whether my previous hypothesis--that he may have gone with that particular thirty-cents-an-hour figure because it was cheap but not too cheap--has any validity, but it so, well, here's a small bit of evidence.  Maybe.

And I must just say--the above is definitely one of the grossest images ever seen in a Barks story.  Yeah.  Perfect mosquito rugs!  Pretty perfect all right.  For sale on Etsy!  That "CRUSH!"  Gah.

It's certainly worth noting that this is unique in the whole of the Barksiverse.  Sure, we see some comedy-infatuations (in "Trick or Treat," eg), and there's Donald's generally reductive, cartoony relationship with Daisy, but attraction that's supposed to actually point to something real--that is what's new.  Did I say "unique?"  I tell a lie, of course; there's also "Old California," though in that story the romance was between one-shot secondary characters.

Of course, the obvious thing this does is emphasize the general maleness (or maybe I should say "boyishness") of Barks' world.  Things like romance are not to be seriously considered, and even finding a decent female character of any sort is difficult.  So, of course, this stands out (like the sadly under-appreciated Ducky Bird in "Mystery of the Ghost Town Railroad").  Probably he felt liberated to do a love story of sorts like this because Scrooge was still a relatively new and undefined character.  This is such an obvious observation that I'm sure I've made it before, and if not no doubt Geoffrey Blum or someone has, but Scrooge is actually positioned as a character with a past, whose mental make-up is the result of actual forces, whereas Donald & Co are timeless; they've always been what they are and there's not even the bare implication that they'll ever be anything else.  Therefore, it wasn't totally infeasible to do something like this.  Similar thing with Panchita and Rolando in that other story.

But, of course, feasible or not, Scrooge sure isn't good at it--and nor, obviously, is Goldie, although I feel that an unavoidable problem here is that we really don't get enough of a grasp on her to really understand where she's coming from.  Look at them there--they look ridiculous, septuagenarians acting like nervous high school kids on their way to their first prom!  But, of course, that's the point.  Or at least, you can argue that it's the point and have more of a case than you could with a lot of cartoony romance things like this.  As I noted earlier: Scrooge doesn't know how to deal with this.  He's starting from square one here.  If he's acting far younger than his age, it's because, for all intents and purposes, he is, when it comes to romance.  He doesn't have anything to build on, because his entire life has revolved around money, so he's reduced to this absurdly awkward, gawky behavior.  It is clearly uncomfortable as hell for him, which is why it's such a relief to just be able to explode in anger, even if, objectively, the justification for that anger is pretty weak.  I like Donald widely grinning in the background there.  As immature as he often is about affaires de coeurs, he's definitely got one over on his uncle in that regard.

I also very much appreciate that Barks' refusal to romanticize extend to Goldie herself.  She's bony--sort of alarmingly so, actually.  She's a person, and she's aged like a person.  I think the Rosa argument--that the reason she's so much more, ah, filled out in his stories is that she's been leading a more comfortable life--is perfectly reasonable as far as it goes, but…well, Rosa is undeniably more conventional in this regard.  I really don't mean this as crassly as it may sound, but he wants his hero to have a hot girlfriend.  This is not a concern that Barks has.

I also appreciate the ending.  Maybe I'd like it even better if the nature of Scrooge's actions weren't spelt out quite so obviously--that final line has always seemed a little awkward and abrupt to me--but I like the fact that after all is said and done, our heroes just…leave.  Of course, the notion of introducing Goldie as a regular would never have flown, and for that we can be grateful, as it would have totally destroyed the characters' dynamic--not that Barks would ever have been comfortable with doing something like that anyway.  Still, as much as I enjoy Rosa's interpretations (I really do, dammit!), I think that, regardless of whether or not it had to be this way, the emotional logic really works.  Scrooge and Goldie may or may not have had a brief thing fifty-odd years ago…and that was fifty-odd years ago.  So he comes back, makes restitution for what he perceives (probably fairly dimly) as wrong that he did to her in the past, and…that's that.  Is the fact that it doesn't go any further than that on some level tragic?  Well, yeah, probably, but only to the extent that there's a tragic element to his character in general.  Maybe if his mindset weren't so totally money-centered, things could be different.  Still, these things happen, you know?  It's not the end of the world, and I think that we can read him as having achieved peace here in the way and to the extent that he can.