After four years, IDW is bringing back the Disney comics, starting with good old miser, Uncle Scrooge! These comics are part of one of the most influential and superb legacies in all of comics, and IDW and their curating editors dig through the Disney comics across the world to kick this series off with brilliant adventures.
Written by Rodolfo Cimino, Alberto Savini, Romano Scarpa, and Luca Boschi
Illustrated by Romano Scarpa, Giorgio Cavazzano, Andrea Freccero, and Sandro Del Conte
Wak! Disney’s richest epic hero returns! In ‘Uncle Scrooge vs. Gigabeagle: King of the Robot Robbers,’ the McDuck Money Bin meets a monster-sized Beagle Boy mech!
IDW has a plan for their Disney Comics line, and over the next couple months, we’re going to see ongoing series focusing on Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the rest of the Disney gang in the resurgence of “Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories” (in fact, they’re just resuming the numbering for that one at 723). Just look in the back of the book with their scheduled flowchart; I’m super excited to see comics for these characters, especially because it’s been like four years since they last appeared.
“Uncle Scrooge” #1 kicks off the new line with a sort of anthology collection of Duck stories from Italian artists and writers Romano Scarpa, Rodolfo Cimino, Luca Boschi Alberto Savini, and Andrea Fraccero. This is not a book full of new stories (though, admittedly, they may be newly translated), but rather reprints from the Disney Italian comics, curated by Sarah Gaydos and David Gerstein. A few years ago, Boom! also dipped into this pool to bring out the charming “Wizards of Mickey” series. Rodolfo Cimino died in 2012 and Romano Scarpa in 2005, so these stories are already over 15 years old, but they still work, they’re still charming, and they still have plenty of elements for why the Uncle Scrooge books are so appealing.
Perhaps no other characters have as big a presence hovering over them than Uncle Scrooge and the rest of the Duck gang. After all, Carl Barks only created some of the greatest comics of all time and his work on the characters basically defined what they mean for us and how we think about them. Even his successor, Don Rosa, remains firmly caught in his influence (though the stories he turned in have been nearly as epic and entertaining as the Barks originals). His work has inspired some of the greatest movies ever, was instrumental in the invention of manga, and just generally has been one of the most impactful and lasting legacies in all of comicdom. Seriously, if you haven’t read any of the “Uncle Scrooge” or “Donald Duck” books put out by Carl Barks, you need to go find one of the Fantagraphics collections being put out right now.
Instead of trying to truly break away from Barks’s influence, all the creators involved firmly embrace it and try to pay respect to it.
This collection features a longer feature story: ‘Uncle Scrooge vs. Gigabeagle: King of the Robot Robbers’; a one-off joke gag: ‘Pure Viewing Satisfaction’; and a short story: ‘Tinker, Tailor, Scrooge and Sly’. There’s really none of the internal continuity that Don Rosa tried to throw in, instead preferring to stay with the Carl Barks done-in-one adventures. In fact, Scarpa and Cimino (who handle the most pages) keep pretty much in line with the way Barks told these stories, so they all feel like “Uncle Scrooge” comics.
The first story delves deep into the “Uncle Scrooge” and DuckTales (whoo-ooh) mythos to bring back the Robot Robbers, but this time instead of those nefarious Beagle Boys dressing up in mecha suits, they make this giant jaeger thing to attempt to steal Scrooge’s money. The script for this one follows a pretty standard “and then this happened, and then this happens” format, but you don’t really notice it, since the story and dialogue exists mostly so Scarpa can cram in gags with Scrooge on a jetpack or the ducks all getting blown up by Scrooge’s minefield moat. But the visual gags definitely pay off and there are some genuine chuckles in this one.
Continued belowThe second story is just a one-page gag. I don’t know about Freccero’s rendering of the characters, because he draws them all looking like they’re tripping on something. The joke of this is sort of lazy too, the basic “Ho ho ho, Scrooge McDuck is a miser and likes to cheat the system. Ho ho ho.”
This works much better in the final story, which is also probably the best of the three stories in this collection. This one finds Scrooge’s coat getting stolen because it hides a secret treasure map. But, better than that, it also brings in Brigitta MacBridge (who’s actually a Romano Scarpa creation) to the fold, and she plays off Uncle Scrooge delightfully. Also, no joke, her hair is awesome.
Again, Scarpa handles the majority of the art duties, and this is one of those situations where there’s a clear model sheet for the characters and the settings, so there’s not I can elaborate on for the character design. We all know Duckburg from the Barks books and the DuckTales (whoo-ooh) show. We know what to expect from the old school classic Disney cartoon characters. I don’t think the gradient and slightly rendered coloring works too well for this type of book (Donald Duck benefits more from vibrant flats than complicated color schemes), but it remains in that Disney palette. Scarpa paces his stories well enough — though I found the endings in both the major stories to be somewhat anticlimactic — but, most importantly, he does sell the movement of the Ducks. No one is every standing still or just staring at something off-panel. These characters are constantly moving, running, scheming, jumping, and it lends this energy to the reading.
For all these stories, the sense of fun is definitely in place and it’s obvious Scarpa, Cimino, and the rest of the cartoonists have mad respect for the Duck characters and Carl Barks, but the feeling of adventure doesn’t seem to be as present. Both of the longer stories want to feel grand and epic, and they try with their camping trips and secret lairs, hidden maps and dastardly thieves, but eventually Scarpa & company settle for being goofy. Scarpa doesn’t seem to like big set pieces in his stuff, preferring to keep it more focused on the characters and their actions, and I don’t think that helps with selling the scope of things. Still, the more character centric panelling works for the stories in this book.
These are fun stories, though. They are entertaining and imaginative and one of those great all-ages things. Part of me thinks it’s unfair to bring up Barks’s work in comparison, since, you know, Carl Barks’s work ranks among the top 5 comics of all time, easy; however, Scarpa, Cimino, and company want you to know Barks hovers over their work, and they ultimately decide, for the better, it’s much better to play around in his long shadow than try to break out from it.
(Also, as a final note, there are legit fifty pages worth of comics in this book for $3.99, complete with the typical IDW high quality paper and printing. That’s the exact same price as whatever shoddy Marvel magazine is hitting the stands, and those are only 20 pages at most. You’re getting fun stories at a decent price, another small but very appreciated detail.)
Final Verdict: 7.5 — Charming and fun and nice to see back in print, “Uncle Scrooge” #1 keeps up the classic Disney gags and jokes, though it feels like it’s still in the shadow of a bigger legacy.
