UTTER TRASH

UTTER TRASH

by Mike Baron

Uncle Scrooge Rules The World

One of the most important reprint projects in comic book history is going on right now, and has been going on since 1968 in the pages of two Gold Key titles, Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge and Walt Disney ’s Comics and Stories. The reprints feature the adventures of Scrooge McDuck and D. Duck as written and drawn by Carl Barks, the man who brought them to comic book life in the late forties. Other artists have drawn these characters before and after Barks, but none have approached the old master’s strength of story line, sense of humor, or graphic excellence.

Barks is the most cinematic of comic book artists. He drew much of his graphic inspiration directly from slapstick films of the Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy (see “Interview with Donald Duck” by Dave Wagner, Radical America, Vol. 7 No.1) and developed a story pacing to match. In the ten page WCDAS stories he shows a fondness for slapstick jokes that nearly always succeed thanks to his superb sense of# pacing. For example, when Donald and his insufferably lucky cousin Gladstone Gander develop a running (literally) argument over who should retrieve a flying hat oh a windy day, they both slam headfirst into a brick wall at the bottom of the page because they didn’t look where they were going. Ha ha! But Barks doesn’t drop the gag there. In the next panel we see that Gladstone, blessed with his cosmic luck, has run into a single mattress that has been leaning against the wall. Ha ha ha!

Barks is also a master of such techniques as framing his characters in an iris and portraying them in silhouette. As a self-taught artist, he developed his own style; his influence pops up again and again in undergrounds, particularly in the work of R. Crumb, a prominent Barks freak.

Barks, unlike most artists who labored in the Disney bins for Western Publishing, could draw a mean landscape. In a day when large panels were eschewed because they were considered a waste of space, he tried to include at. least one half-page panorama in his longer stories. Unbelievably, Western Publishing would remove his fantastic vistas and replace them with half page ads. Barks got around this by making his panorama scenes in-odd shapes, so that their removal would create a trapezoidal hole - most unsuited for an ad. In Uncle Scrooge No. 106, released this summer, there is a reprint of the fabulous “Tralla La” (no title) story which originally appeared in 1954. This is a brilliant story for many reasons, not the least of which is the breath-taking panorama drawing, which was not excised by anxious editors, of Scrooge’s airplane circling the hidden valley of Tralla La in the Himalayas.

I had no idea who Carl Barks was when I decided to do a term paper about Scrooge. First I wrote to Walt Disney Productions who wrote back, “Undoubtedly the best sourcei of information on Uncle Scrooge would be Mr. Chase Craig who is editor of the Scrooge comics.” In light of my later discoveries, I thought that a most ironic statement. Gold Key, unlike Marvel and National, have never published the names of their writers and illustrators because they don’t consider comic books sufficiently creative to warrant the, posting of individual contributors.

Craig supplied Barks’ address. I wrote Barks a very fannish but extremely well-intentioned and doubtless charming letter in which I appealed to his vanity. Barks, still obscure at the time, responded with enthusiasm, somewhat shocked by the existence of a fan following.

Dear Mr. Baron: Uncle Scrooge is flattered by being the subject of a term paper. I will attempt to answer your questions for him...

The Junior Woodchucks, I believe, were first used in one of my ten page Donald Duck stories in Walt Disney Comics (WDCAS)...

The details of Uncle Scrooge’s birthplace, etc. have never been catalogued. My references to his origins imply that he was born in Scotland long ago, probably in the 1870’s. He was mining in various parts of the world before the Boer War. I first invented him as a feeble old miser, but I soon discovered that the feebleness was a handicap in planning

adventures. The cane he^carries is thp only momento of his early infirm condition.

Other writers and artists in the Dell and Gold Key comics often depicted Uncle Scrooge as a luxury-loving tycoon with mansions, servants, etc. I always treid to keep him in his original character of miser. The big cars, private planes, etc. that I shovyed him using at times were business necessities, needed temporarily to help bring off some business coup.

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I consider the first Uncle Scrooge comic book, “Only a Poor Old Man,” the best of the Uncle Scrooge series. It told much about his life and philosophy. About second best I like No. 3, the story about the long-lost horseradish. (This story was reprinted in Spring, ’71, in Uncle Scrooge No. 105.) It revealed the better side of his nature as, well as his rugged fighting spirit.

That was pretty thrilling. A friend and I decided to form the Society of the First Dime, an august organization devoted to spreading Barks’ gospel. A sort of Baker Street Irregulars for Uncle Scrooge. Barks was tickled pink, and wrote our co-founder, John Bullis.

He (Uncle Scrooge) started as an incidental character in a Christmas story I did of Donald and the kids (“Night on Bear Mountain”). I named him Uncle Scrooge because the name has become associated with a type of miser through all the years of Dickens publications and plays. Naturally he was very rich. His wealth grew as I found more and more reasons to use him in Donald stories. It had become three cubic acres of money by the time the editors asked me to do a “one-shot” long story featuring the old skinflint himself. That story was “Only a Poor Old Man.”

It seems odd to me now that I called him a poor old “man” instead of a poor old duck. I never did get over the notion that Donald and Uncle S. were humans with duck bodies. In that respect, I differed with the office where chickens were chickens and ducks, ducks, regardless of how human their behavior. Only in late years did I start calling them ducks to avoid conflict.

When Barks retired, Western Publishing • attempted to fill the Scrooge gap with original material, but it was tepid — offensively bland — compared to the original Barks stuff. The company wisely opted'to run reprints.

Barks created Scrooge as the Ideal Capitalist,, the man whomever was. He was the honest Horatio Alger who made it to the tbp in the market Economy and played it square all the way. Through the simple puritan virtues of diligence, initiative, and hard work, he became the richest duck in the universe. But unlike the Puritans who sought their true reward in the life beyond, and unlike the standard capitalist who knows money for what it is, a means to an end, Scrooge gets his kicks directly from the. money itself. Accumulated capital is worthless, of course, if it merely sits in a vault and settles. The whole purpose of the market economy is to keep that money in circulation — building. better jobs for a better America. But Scrooge is that unique creature who can enjoy the money for its own sake. He loves to dive in it like a porpoise, burrow through it like a gopher, and toss it up and let it hit him on the head.

The “Tralla La” story involves a priceless satire on the capitalist system and begins when the pressures of wealth drive Scrooge temporarily bananas. Barks was a master of secondary plot devices that somehow resolve the main conflict, and in this case his “McGuffin” is bottled nerve medicine that Scrooge keeps on hand to maintain his sanity. When Scrooge goes to pieces, Barks draws him with millions of squiggly little lines. That’s one tense duck!

On his doctor’s advice, Scrooge seeks a place “where there is no money, and wealth means nothing!” As usual, he takes his four nephews along and it’s a good thing he does, because he’s never yet gotten into a scrape that Huey, Dewey and Louie haven’t bailed him out of, often as not aided by their Junior Woodchucks Guidebook, a mystic tome which apparently contains all the knowledge in the universe.

The ducks arrive in Tralla La and Scrooge, through a return to the soil, attains serenity, sheltered from the hectic considerations of his wealth. The Tralla Lallians don’t know the meaning of wealth. Theirs is a perfect socialist economy. Unfortunately for them — and Scrooge — the old duck inadvertantly initiates the concept of money into their peaceful world by giving away the bottle cap to a bottle of nerve medicine.

The bottle cap soon becomes the most coveted object in Tralla La and when a citizen discovers Scrooge still has five caps left, he is proclaimed the richest man in the valley. Greed takes over the formerly peaceful citizens and Scrooge — once again — falls to pieces.

Barks has created a wildly funny portrait of the rich old duck, as well as a fine satire on the market economy. His Tralla Lallians were perfectly happy without the bottle cap money; and Scrooge was truly happy, as only he could be, when he was minding his great wealth, despite the pressure from the crackpots and the bill collectors.

Tralla La contains typically fine artwork, from the sterling panorama shot of the plane circling the hidden valley to. the many other panoramas and silhouettes. One silhouette of a mob of citizens fighting over a bottle cap on a pier is particularly masterful. The silhouette is done without motion lines, yet the crowd seems to be spiralling in a great nebula of flailing fists and clubs. Barks achieves the effect by having all legs protruding from the crowd pointing the same way; giving the impression of a great ten-legged monster spinning like a tumble-weed.

Barks tackled controversial subjects again and again through the years; in 1954 a children’s comic which attempted to show the futility of a market economy was plenty controversial (although Barks is a solid conservative who certainly supports free enterprise). He dealt with welfare rights, prison reform, reincarnation, gunboat politics. If his viewpoint was consistently conser-i vative, his stories were consistently honest and entertaining — and always based on the grain of truth.

If there is justice in the world, the complete works of Carl Barks will be gathered together between hard volumes on high quality stock and offered, with annotation, to every fan of the graphic story. He is one of the truly great masters of the medium. ^