"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.

I feel like the opening to this story is iconic, but I'm not quite sure why I think so. Maybe I just mean "made an impression on me." Though Donald's tall, cool, gooey ice cream soda has been referenced by a fair few future stories.

Okay okay, this isn't a fair example, since I wrote it myself. How goddamn solipsistic can you get? Oh well.

Anyway, although other Barks stories may have different answers, here Donald's attitude is pretty clearly shown to be the right one throughout the story. He just wants sodas, man. What are you doing? I really enjoy these depictions of Donald as holy fool, though you have to be careful--if you're doing that more overtly, it can come across as VERY heavy-handed.  "I know, but it's the only way I can get sodas" in particular feels like doctoral theses could be written about it.

We do see Scrooge's dime in this story, and...I have to admit, my knowledge isn't perfect here, but is this only the second time we've seen it, after "The Round Money Bin?" I think it is.  It certainly isn't presented as something that Donald would've been expected to know about in advance. Also, in both these stories, it's treated very casually, with none of the massive totemic significance it later accrues. Here the only reason it's present is so it can be tied to Scrooge with string, and on that note, we see a favorite trick of Barks: inserting a seemingly insignificant detail at the beginning of the story that's going to unexpectedly pay off at the end (cf the box of dirt in "The Twenty-Four Carat Moon").

See? I just love Donald's smile here. In a way, this story feels like a return to first principles. They're almost acting like Scrooge is a new character who needs to be introduced, after the manner of "Only a Poor Old Man."

Apologies if this is obvious, but: has Scrooge, in fact, ever enjoyed one of these sodas of legend? I feel like Donald might be right. Sure, I get it, you deprive yourself so you can get rich (and those dumb kids never get anywhere because of their dern avocado toast amirite?), but once you're rich, damn, man--the sodas should flow like, uh, soda. Otherwise, what was it all for? I can guarantee you that "what was it all for?" is a question that Scrooge has asked himself from time to time.

"Obsquatumatillion" may be the best fake amount of money to ever appear in a Disney comic. Also, let's note such great headlines as "Boggin Sale Vot Doguns!" and "Used Caes, Jars, Skars 5986." It's news you can use!

Might as well just note right away how bizarre the string thing is. I get it in a sense; we need something to represent Scrooge's and Glomgold's fortune that's small and portable. But the question remains: why string over anything else? I guess it could just be a backfill from the string attached to the dime.

Also let's note "A rubber tree more or less could stretch your fortune just enough to win!" Very underrated line, I think.

Welp, here's our first glimpse of Glomgold. And the plain people of the internet want to know: what the heck is that book he's reading there? We might just assume, oh, it's some terrible book about money, which may well be the case. BUT! what if I told you that it's actually At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien? You didn't see THAT coming, did you? Really gives you some new and unexpected insights into his character, doesn't it?  Groundbreaking stuff.  God, what a useful paragraph this was.

I enjoy the fact that both Scrooge and Flintheart have arranged things so they never have to hear from anyone ever. "The tightwad doesn't even buy newspapers! Can you beat that?" Okay, that's obvious enough, but do we think there might be hidden psychological depths here? Like, he knows that a lot of what he does is fairly silly, but he can only acknowledge as much when he's able to displace it onto someone else? Of course, there are very few people who are similar enough for him to do that, so Glomgold could be a great foil. Could be.

Of course, I say "could be" because I've never read anyone but Barks do anything interesting with Glomgold. I know I have noted, time and time again, that he's not really a villain in this first appearance, and that flattening him out makes him much less interesting (even though I've mellowed a little bit about that over time). And I still believe that, but fairness compels me to admit that, if he's going to be a regular or semi-regular character, it's going to be VERY hard for Scrooge not to end up more or less defaulting into the hero role. It's hard. I do with people would at least make an effort, though.

Because, if nothing else, it's delightful to hear them hollering nonsense at one another like this. Kinda deflates that whole "Superhero Scrooge" thing that I find more or less obnoxious. Also, I feel like them both calling the other "shortie" is something that should've caught on.

Ah yes, back to the string. I love in particular how HDL points out the rather obvious point that weighing the balls would seem more effective, only to be immediately shut down. The size and weight doesn't count! What are you, STUPID? We have to go by length! We just DO, dammit! It feels like Barks has pre-addressed any criticism I or anyone might have of this. From beyond the grave, he mocks my entire remit here. Spooky! Well, it IS October.

Also, there IS some nice African scenery here, even if their geographical route isn't exactly clear.

Look, Donald, that criticism might seem accurate, but I think we've determined that we HAVE to do it this way. We have to. That's just the way it is. Come on.

Another commonplace to note here is that what saves Scrooge is having family around him, both to help him out physically and to keep him on the straight and narrow. He has his nephews, while Glomgold just has...Africa? Is that symbolism? Is that overthinking things? No and yes? Okay.

I like Scrooge annoying everyone with his premature victory dance. That's funny.

How is "rewinding the string while we slept" meant to work, exactly? You just add it back to the ball so there's more to unroll later? I guess, but if we're not keeping track of where the unspooling began anyway, this seems very unscientific.

So I said that Scrooge and Flintheart are morally indistinguishable in this story, but that's not entirely true. Scrooge's dirty trick, allegedly, was just to make sure Glomgold wouldn't cheat, if you believe that (although I'm going to put my foot down and say that poisoning your rivals is kinda bad regardless of your exact motive), whereas Glomgold's is more straightforward sabotage. Also too, we do have to acknowledge that Flintheart Glomgold's name is "Flintheart Glomgold." Really, now. Sure, Scrooge is named after a famous literary miser, but he, rather famously, reformed, and he just generally lacks the nominative determinism that the other guy has going. He was fated to become a villain, Greek tragedy style.

So this goes on for a while. You know the story. My mind would be boggled if anyone reading this had not also read it. So here's a question: how much do we think this string is actually worth? Well, to be wildly unscientific about it, a look at amazon suggests that a normal, small ball of string will probably run you between five and ten dollars. Okay.  Probably more likely closer to five, but for the sake of argument, let's just say ten. And how many of these do you think would fit in their huge balls? A hundred, let's say?  That's way too many, but we're being as generous as possible.  So a thousand dollars. That's...less than a hundred in 1956 dollars.  Not even enough to be a rounding error. And considering how much wear and tear it takes throughout this story, it would have to be much less, if it ended up surviving at all.

But okay, fine, to say that is to miss the point. Granted. Here's another point, though: this string being worth this much is contingent on them actually being able to unload it somehow. As we know from Scrooge's 1916 dime mishap, he's not happy with owning a theoretically expensive thing that he can never cash in on (yeah, you can find examples showing the opposite, but just go with me here, okay?). And I feel like he (or Glomgold) kind of has that problem from a different direction: if the dime is so valuable he can never sell it, the string is so worthless that he couldn't get its alleged value out of it if he tried. Who's going to want bits of ratty-ass string? No one, that's who! This is all just a fantasy!

(What?!? A fantasy? Well I never!)

Anyway. Credit where due: Glomgold DOES use his superior knowledge of Africa to save the ducks' bacon. He could've let them get stampeded, but he didn't. How about that?

And I suppose I hardly have to point out how rad that stampede looks.

You know...if we're being honest, I feel like both Scrooge's and Glomgold's actions in this story are so all over the place and morally porous that there's little point in trying to decide how "pure" they are. The answer--and this may be the overall point of the story--is NOT VERY! You can't really get any more exact about it than that, and trying to apply some sorta black-and-white Junior Woodchuck ethos to it just isn't gonna work. Maybe the real giant ball of string was the bitter rivals we made along the way.

Man, if that string had actually been worth a meaningful amount of money, they would really have screwed themselves over with this contest, wouldn't they? But since we're more or less pretending it was, they kinda did, didn't they? And here's a wrinkle we hadn't even considered: these balls both consist of random bits of string they found and tied on to the end, yeah? In that case, why are we assuming that all of it has the same monetary value? String can be made out of many different fibers, or even cheese, so there's going to be some variation there. You can't just say "oh, this contest is illogical, what does this possibly prove?"  But I think you CAN say "ah ha! You missed this little, nitpicky, bullshit way your string might be worth marginally more or less!" This rivalry has a promising future!

Anyway, all that said, I still enjoy the ending, where HDL are supporting Glomgold. I don't know; in spite of everything I still do kind of think it would be better if he could be Scrooge's prickly frenemy rather than an out-and-out villain? Regardless of who has very slightly more money, they're the only people in the world in their particular financial situations (yeah, Rockerduck, but, I mean...come on). They should be able to bond over that, while simultaneously scheming to embarrass or destroy the other. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?!?

I also love how the last line brings us back around to Donald's sodas. It's not like it's a complicated structural move or anything, but I feel like your average NWB writer nonetheless wouldn't be able to manage it.