"Shellfish Motives"

“Shellfish Motives!” An historical moment, as Scarpa's first turn in the driver's seat, from 1956, (original title: "Donald Duck and Shrimp Stew”—not too euphonious) is finally to be seen on US shores. I had previously read and enjoyed this story in French, but boy, having it in Jonathan Gray's sparkling English translation was a real joy.

First we'll talk about the character of Gideon McDuck, and then we'll talk about the story as a whole. Got it? Good.

Pretty gutsy of Scarpa to just straight-up give Scrooge a brother like it weren't no thang, right there in his first story. He conveys this giddy (whoa ho!), hyperactive atmosphere quite well.

Now we get to the crux of the biscuit. It should first be noted that whenever you see him refer to himself as a a McDuck, or talk about characteristics of McDucks or whatnot—that is all courtesy of that English script; it's nowhere in the original (okay, I guess I can technically only say it's nowhere in the French version, but I think that's a pretty straight translation). And it goes even farther than that: it may surprise you to know that in the original (I'm just going to say that, okay?), he doesn't even refer to Scrooge by name in the second panel; he just generically says that the siren is “an alarm to all the riffraff who infest the world.”

All of this really helps the story immeasurably; in the original Gideon really just comes off as Some Guy, and if someone told you he was related to Scrooge, you would probably just shrug and say, okay, if you say so—but so what? The two of them being brothers is more like a novelty than anything else; it's not something you really feel. Whereas this translation takes pains to draw attention to Gideon's McDuckness and parallels between the two characters while making their rivalry explicit.

This all is not wholly unproblematic, though: if Gideon is honest because he's a McDuck, and Scrooge is also honest because he's a McDuck, and yet the two are opposed to one another...well, you see the problem. For them to be at odds in any meaningful way, they have to be different to a substantial extent. Not that you couldn't square this circle with some deft character work, but...well, we will get to the story's vague, semi-effort to to just that a bit later, but suffice it to say, I do not find it even a tiny bit convincing.

Even though this story itself doesn't go very far with the concept, Gideon in theory actually makes a great rival for Scrooge. Unlike the usual suspects who go up against him, he's a good guy. Usually, when Scrooge needs some to serve as his conscience, there are his nephews, but Gideon could play that role in a more antagonistic way. The only problem here—which I have to imagine is the reason that he hasn't caught on as a character—is that it requires Scrooge to be portrayed as more evil than most readers, writers, or editors are likely comfortable with.

...it must be said, though, as much as I generally like the additions to the script, that “just like Scrooge” business is negated by the end of the very sentence. Because it's not true that his readership is equivalent to Scrooge's money, is it? It says it right there: “I've failed them.” He doesn't just want readers for their own sake, as Scrooge does money; if that were the case, he could just pander to them with sensationalistic, gutter-journalism stuff (as Donald accuses him of at the beginning; this may just be Donald being Donald, but it surely points to an alternate way that Gideon could have gone). He wants to inform readers. Sure, you can make parallels between him and Scrooge: they're both stubborn, obsessive, monomaniacal, &c—but this direct comparison just isn't gonna hold water, I'm afraid.

In any event, I would certainly be super-keen to see more of Gideon; flesh out his relationship with Scrooge a bit. Unfortunately, I am somewhat skeptical of the odds of that happening. Yes, he is, technically, a recurring character, but not recurring in the sense of Brigitta or Trudy, who have both appeared in hundreds of stories. Gideon has appeared in a total of fifteen, making him more akin to Atomo Bleep Bleep, and of these fifteen, only one other is actually written by Scarpa. The others are by people you likely haven't heard of (I hadn't), and while there's technically no reason, I guess, why they could not nonetheless have crafted some solid stories, well, there's probably some reason why they're not better-known. Don't hold your breath 'til you're blue in the face, is all I'm saying. My feeling is that Gideon's potential remains mostly potential.

Right, so let's move on to the story itself, for now. I must say...I guess I didn't remember it all that well, or maybe reading it in French impeded me from fully grasping it, but after absorbing the English version, I have to say: my goodness this story is a mess. Doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it, more or less—it has a lot of energy, and it's not (with notable exceptions) offensively stupid the way "The Last Balaboo" is—but boy, does it have issues. I suppose it just wouldn't have been appropriate if Scarpa's debut didn't feature some of his trademark nonsense, but man. He could definitely have done better, is all I'm saying.

So, the story: there's this mysterious foreign scientist guy whom Donald is supposed to tail, who ends up getting kidnapped by sinister forces. So far so good. It's kind of interesting because this sort of mystery plot would typically revolve around Mickey and friends.

(Sidenote: HOLY CRAP do I love the oblique reference to "Editor-in-Grief.")

So...look at the mastermind behind this kidnapping scheme. LOOK AT HIM. JUST DRINK HIM IN. Obviously, if you've read the story, you know perfectly well where I'm going with this, but it MERITS being gone there, dammit!

As far as this sequence where Donald falls asleep on the plane and ends up going back to Duckburg, I don't actually have a problem with the fact that planes in this world are like carnival rides, where you can get an extra one for free if you can somehow evade the minimum-wage employee's notice. That's easy enough to roll with. But as for the fact that, phew, crisis averted! It turns out the scientist was on the plane going back to Duckburg!...well, I guess it's not a plot hole so much as it is just an belief-beggaring coincidence, but it certainly doesn't help anything. If you're going to get super-ridiculous, you should probably at least have the things that could easily make sense make sense. I think I've made that point elsewhere. But hey—Scarpa's gonna Scarpa!

Not to belabor the point, but notice the way one of these goons brains him with his gun and renders him unconscious. NOTICE IT!

There's also a lot of this stuff with Donald going to see other scientist to see whether they have anything to do with these here doings what are afoot. None of it leads anywhere. This really isn't surprising, and hell, possibly my favorite Scarpa story, “Mickey Mouse in the Delta Dimension,” features a lot of goofing off of this nature. It comes from Scarpa's love of Gottfredson serials, where there would be punchlines strewn all over because that's just how the daily strip worked. But here, it really feels inconsequential.

The actual investigation is carried out by the kids. Which is fine as far as it goes, but this part just drives me nuts: the essential, dispositive clue that they unearth is that when the dude was kidnapped, he was in a candy story, only he already had some of the candy he was buying, and therefore didn't “need” any more.

ARGH SHUT UP. Seriously, what are you, his mother? Who are YOU to say how much he “needed?” Much less present this as decisive, damning evidence of something or other?

To give Scarpa credit, if you look at the scene back in the first part of the guy being driven away, you can sorta kinda make out that he seems to be smiling. To not give him credit, why the heck is this supposed to be such a difficult thing for HDL to figure out? Seems like it would be pretty obvious, really. Also, I can make neither heads nor tails of “Mr. Mike's” line there. It's similarly inscrutable in the French version.

So why does Scrooge kill the lights and hightail it out when it's revealed that, DAH DAH DAH, he was involved with this whole scheme? Your guess is as good as mine. Seems melodramatic for its own sake.

...but yeah, then there's this. OH HO IT WAS ALL THE PLAN ALL ALONG. As a reminder, here's how those good ol' U.S. Federal Agents treated him during the kidnapping:

And here's the kindly, benevolent mastermind behind the whole scheme:

Yes. The guy cackling megalomaniacally to himself was actually on the professor's side the whole time! Who could've predicted it? NO ONE, because Scarpa DOES NOT PLAY FAIR, which to me is the worst thing. You can have plot twists as cockamamie as they come, and they can often be to some extent forgiveable, but when your “mystery” relies on LYING to readers in order to work, that's when I have to call bullshit. And perhaps the most galling thing is that the opening panel to the second part of the story features Mysterious Guy being mysterious. If he were just in the FIRST part, then you could at least give Scarpa the excuse that, oh, probably he just didn't KNOW what he was going to do in the second—but that's clearly not the case! He continues to BEG you to think that Unseen Dude is mysterious and sinister! Bugger this for a game of soldiers, is what I say. Would it have been possible to write the initial Mystery Man scene in such a way that it looks like they're unambiguously bad guys, but when you look back, you see that, knowing what you know now, there was reason to doubt? Sure, why not? But Scarpa did not go that route, to the story's detriment.

After that, I feel like complaining about small things on the outside may be gilding the lilly, but I can't help noting that this part confuses me as well. My impression was that the government agents left the ransom demand and then refused to accept it to throw the Gourmandian government off the scent. But now...I guess HDL are implying that it was actually some sort of ploy to get more stuff for the guy to experiment with? I have no idea what's going on.

Well, at any rate, we end on a happy note, with the brothers having reconciled over Scrooge turning out to be such a great guy. BUT WAIT: sure, in this one instance he turned out to be on the side of the angels, but are we supposed to have just forgotten that he's still trying to destroy independent journalism in Duckburg, and has been for years?

I'm not sure—because Scarpa, pretty clearly not having thought through these issues himself, is extremely vague—but I think the above might be the supposed solution to this mess. That is—I think it's saying something like “HA, Gideon just didn't realize that Scrooge was on his side the whole time, and if he'd just let his big bro help him out by buying his paper, he'd be able to continue to do all the hard-hitting investigative journalism he wants with no conflicts of interest—win-win situation!” In this interpretation, we're apparently genuinely meant to believe that Scrooge and all his holdings are always and forever above suspicion, such that Gideon would never have any legitimate need to investigate and get in his brother's way, an idea that does not pass the laugh test.

Well, you can imagine what I think of all that, and the answer is: “[unprintable].” And if you've read this blog for any length of time, you know that I have a pretty high threshold for what I consider printable. And even beyond the unfortunate political message there, it sure does take away all of the friction and therefore interest of the two characters' relationship. As I say, I'm just extrapolating; it's possible I'm just raging against something I made up, and looking mighty goofy doing it. And, as I said, even if I'm not, it's likely more the result of Scarpa not thinking things through than any conscious intent. Still—BAH.

(It's also, I should note, possible that the English script—as much as I like it!—is adding to the confusion a bit by emphasizing the rivalry in a way that the original didn't.  Making the story more interesting may have had the result of rendering it less coherent, not that I think it was very much so in any case.)

Man, I started by praising this story, and then I ended up kinda tearing it a new one, which I feel bad about. I certainly don't want to discourage IDW from printing significant material like this (I'm happy to see any and all Scarpa material, no matter how problematic), and I remain very glad that they did in this case, in spite of everything. Actually, there's kind of a divide in how I feel about it: the actual story—pretty badly flawed. But the character of Gideon, and the possible story paths he could open up—that just sets my mind on fire. His presence goes a good way towards pushing the story as a whole from a “no” to a “yes” for me. But goddamn, Scarpa sure does his utmost to undermine that good will. The man has been responsible for a whole lot of irritation and exasperation over the years, but I've gotta admit: Disney comics would be much less interesting without him. That's by no means a bad legacy to leave.