--------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Life and Times of $crooge McDuck - Episode 2 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- UNCLE $CROOGE #286 -- "The Life and Times of $crooge McDuck -- The Master of the Mississippi" (1880-1882). [Cover 286] COVER: The problem here was that the story featured a $crooge McDuck still too young to be recognized by readers if he appeared on the cover. Hopefully, giving $crooge's bearded Uncle Pothole the prominent spot in the scene would sorta fool folks into thinking he was $crooge, thereby catching the eye of $crooge fans. Still, I cheated a bit by putting the Beagle Boys (parents) in their prison outfits rather than the civies they were wearing in the scene in the story, again for purposes of recognition. * *D.U.C.K. SPOILER* The dedication is hidden in the pattern on the corncob pipe. This cover is NOT the same as the similar cover I did for a German printing of this story. In that cover the dedication is hidden in the soot on a smokestack. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER II -- This was one of the three long chapters in the series, along with chapters VIII and XI. The other chapters were 15 pages... very short for adventure stories and for the amount of material I had to cover in each tale. I can't recall now why I was limited to this length, but I do recall asking to make chapters VIII & XI extra long due to the special quality of the stories. As to why chapter II was made long, this escapes my memory as well. I suspect that after chapter I was completed, someone realized this series was a pretty special idea for a Disney comic, and wanted to create a special 48 page issue to be published in select Egmont countries. This created a problem that I still haven't quite figured out in that several countries which don't publish long stories such as Sweden and Finland never printed the first two chapters of the series and simply began with chapter III. I suspect that those editors were fooled somehow by the manner in which the first two chapters were presented to them in a 43 page unit, and they never realized that it wasn't imperative that the first two chapters be printed together, or that I would have broken chapter II apart into 3 segments if they'd asked. So, in some countries this was a 10 part series with a very puzzling opening chapter. $crooge's days on the Mississippi River were referred to in three different stories by Barks, so I knew the Mississippi would be the background for his first American adventure. "The Great Steamboat Race" in UNCLE $CROOGE #11 told of $crooge's and Horseshoe Hogg's modern day completion of a riverboat race begun in 1870 by their respective uncles, Pothole McDuck and Porker Hogg. My story opens 10 years after that first ill-fated race as young $crooge, fresh from Scotland, arrives in Louisville to find his father's brother Angus (I decided "Pothole" didn't sound very Scottish and was obviously a nickname for a riverboater... a pothole being a round depression dug in the riverbed mud by the water currents.) Why Louisville? Well, sure, that's where I live, so why not?! Besides, in 1880 it would have been one of the main ports in the Mississippi River system. And the reason for that was that all river traffic had always been forced to stop at Louisville due to the Falls of the Ohio which are located here (or I should say, Louisville is located at the Falls). Those waterfalls, the only such feature in the Mississippi system, would add an authentic bit of danger to the story. Of course, the "Falls" are actually just a series of rapids, not a single DROP as I show in the story. The other major source for this adventure was Barks' own one-and-only full tale of $crooge's early life, the untitled story which appears in Dell's 1957 special UNCLE $CROOGE GOES TO DISNEYLAND. That tale told of $crooge's old riverboat days on the Dilly Dollar with his first mate Ratchet Gearloose (Gyro's grandfather). The villains in that adventure seemed to already be old enemies of $crooge -- Blackheart Beagle and his three brawling sons... apparently the grandfather and fathers of the current Beagle Boys. This means that our Beagle Boys are a group of brothers and cousins... as to which are brothers and which are cousins, you can easily tell by family resemblances. (?) Anyway, my story tells how $crooge met his Uncle Pothole, how they came by the Dilly Dollar and first mate Ratchet, and their first encounter with Blackheart and Sons. That UNCLE $CROOGE GOES TO DISNEYLAND adventure dealt with $crooge beating out Blackheart in getting the job of transporting a shipment of gold to New Orleans. My tale takes a two-year leap ahead at one point, landing in the time-river immediately after Barks' story when $crooge is on his way to New Orleans with that very gold bullion. The third Barks riverboat reference that I use is "The Hall of the Mermaid Queen" in UNCLE $CROOGE #68 where $crooge recalls having earned a certain silver dollar during a riverboat race in 1880. My story shows that moment. And this tale concludes with $crooge going to work on the "Wabash Cannonball" railroad, a fact mentioned in Barks' "The Cattle King" in UNCLE $CROOGE #69. (Barks' story has $crooge say he was the "cannon on the Wabash Cannonball"... but I can't figure out what that's supposed to mean. But it sounds good!) Though the "Wabash Cannonball" never really existed and was merely the name of a popular tune on the early 20th Century, I have otherwise made my usual effort to base the rest of my story on fact. The Galt House is where the action really was in 19th Century Louisville, and the Legend of the Drennan Whyte was actually a popular tall tale of the time. And believe it or not, the town of Monkey's Eyebrow, Kentucky, actually exists! I would never dare make up a name that silly! But I must confess I did relocate it just a few miles, as I needed for it to be on the Mississippi River rather than where it's actually located around the bend on (or near) the Ohio River. * INSANE DETAILS TO NOTE: The Dilly Dollar's smokestacks are still damaged in the 1882 segment of this tale, as they were in the Barks story that I was using as a springboard. Ratchet makes a reference to just having repaired the boilers. I couldn't have $crooge's Uncle Pothole hire him for 30 cents an hour as $crooge now pays his nephew, as 30 cents an hour in 1880 would have been a handsome salary! All the gag references that Pothole makes to how muddy the Mississippi is are swiped from Mark Twain books. That safe in the Drennan Whyte was originally labeled an OSO SAFE, the same company that $crooge deals with in later life. But the Scandinavian editors always delete any lettering I stick in the backgrounds of my stories. I finally had to give up such background signage and abandoned what had previously been one of my favorite sources for background humor. I'll show you a few other special panels before those giant sound effects were implanted. * *D.U.C.K. SPOILER*: After the cover, it should have been easy. The splash page dedication is again in the corncob pipe. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Pencil Page][Black and White Art] [Next Episode] [Home]