BLAST FROM THE PAST: I’m not a comics geek at all, but to bring an Amazon order up to the “free shipping” level I added these Uncle Scrooge comics, which I remember from when I was a kid. (For some reason, they, along with Mad magazine, were easy to come by when we lived in Germany, while most others were not). There are probably interesting sociological points to be made regarding Scrooge’s portrayal, but I’ll have to make them another time, as the Insta-Daughter (who is normally indifferent to comics) grabbed them immediately.
UPDATE: Reader Robert McNair emails:
Hosanna!! Another Uncle Scrooge fan. The finest character in the history of comics. My mind still reels at the genius of the diving board over the pool filled with money. If only.
Yes, the “money bin” was always amusing.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Rand Simberg emails a link to this essay explaining why Scrooge McDuck offers valuable lessons in capitalism to America’s youth. Perhaps it’s time for a revival.
MORE: Dave Kopel emails:
The reason that Uncle Scrooge comics were so easy to get in Germany in your childhood is that Scrooge benefits as an auxilliary of Donald Duck. DD comics were, and are, very big in Germany. I read them to brush up on the small amount of German I know. When I was in Germany last September, I could buy Donald Duck anthologies, in German, at a gas station.
There’s a famous book by a Chilean author which explains Donald Duck’s popularity in Latin America as an example of imperialism, with all sorts of embedded capitalist messsages.
If you were unfortunate enough to be a Cultural Studies professor, you would almost certainly have read the book.
Let’s toast my good fortune, I guess. After all, all sorts of other academics are jealous of law professors and our perquisites.
And from the article that Kopel links, this bit: “Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck have morphed into Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel.” And which Disney character would have best fit Dan Rather, I wonder . . .?
STILL MORE: I guess I’ve got better taste than I realized. Reader Garnet Fraser emails:
I’m just a regular reader and comics fan, but you may want to know that the Scrooge comics (created by Carl Barks) are among the best-regarded stuff in the whole history of the medium. If your French is up to it, check out this comics exposition devoted to them this month at Angouleme, amid Europe’s biggest art-comics convention:
My French isn’t good (I never studied it except briefly in preparation for visiting, and at best it’s on a par with the Google translation) but it’s nice to see that the richest duck in the world is getting attention. And the French need him, I think.
MORE STILL: Wyatt’s Torch: “I grew up on Scrooge Mcduck—in his later incantation as the afterschool show Ducktales. I have trouble finding words to describe the influence this show had on me growing up.”