"The Old Castle's Secret"

 Bwee hee hee!  Hello boils and ghouls!  Today we have a scaaaary story that's sure to tingle your spine!  I mean, maybe.  As I've said before: the reason I hadn't written about this is because I don't know how much I have to SAY about it.  It's just a whole bunch of frenetic action, which is fun but maybe doesn't make for the best analysis.  I'm afraid this is going to be shorter than I feel like a story of this significance deserves.  OH WELL.

Oh, but before I begin, I should congratulate my Brazilian readers for rejecting Fascist jr. in your presidential race.  Nothin' spooky about that, and I hope it heralds good things in the US next week.

Well, as you know, here we have Scrooge's second appearance.  He could well have been relegated to the role of one-time oddity, but clearly Barks saw something in him (I mean, Barks is great, but that probably wasn't a hard call--"rich uncle" raises all kinds of story possibilities), so here we are.Read more »

"So Far and No Safari"

 The last installment in the epic trilogy!

...is definitely the wrong way to look at this story.  "The Second-Richest Duck"/"The Money Champ" are a rare example of Barksian continuity; this and them really isn't, unless you consider the bare presence of Glomgold (bearing little resemblance to his past incarnations) to be all you need.  For most intents and purposes, Flinty as he appears here could just be a random pigface villain for all the difference it would make.

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"The Money Champ"

So threeish years after "The Second-Richest Duck," it's time for "The Money Champ."  Please look forward to it.

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"The Second-Richest Duck"

 Ha!  You weren't expecting THIS!  Just admit it!  You're not fooling anyone!

Last week in comments, somebody asked me to write about Rosa's "Son of the Sun," so I decided to revisit it to see if I wanted to. And before I did that, I figured I should reread Barks' Glomgold stories (all of which plus Rosa's debut were reprinted by Gladstone in one handy comics album.  What a fun read).  And--you guessed it--I realized, man. Before anything else, I need to write about the Barks stories. I'll tell you why I hadn't: because I felt like I'd already said my piece about Glomgold, and saying anything else about his stories felt kinda beginner-level. So many observations that I could make feel like very basic stuff that I've said many times before in other contexts. But it may be mistaken to just assume that everyone is avidly following my every word, and besides, my feelings about Glomgold may (or may not!) have changed, and there's a lot to say that I haven't said about the stories themselves. So I guess it's FG Month at Duck Comics Revue. Or maybe I'll take a break at some point for something spooky. We'll see. But either way, please look forward to it.

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"The People Collector"

This appeared in in the next issue of WDC after the one with "Something to Quack About."  It's another Strobl/Gregory thing.  Take that for what you will.

This premise at least is actually pretty interesting.  So...how big do we think Duckburg IS, anyway?  I think we probably think it's pretty big.  I can think of a number of Italian stories where its hugeness is emphasized, and Barks generally portrayed it as something of a metropolis, though I don't think there's anything in his oeuvre that gives it a concrete population or anything.  Am I wrong about that?  Let me know in comments.Read more »