Scans_Daily

So here's something else I usually don't discuss in this community: Disney comics and me go back a long, long way. My grandparents in China had been buying a bimonthly Disney publication for me since I was about five or six, and they didn't stop for a good long while even after I had immigrated over to the United States. It was through those comics that I first became familiar with the classic Disney cast - Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, Daisy, and of course, the subject of today's post.

(Incidentally, those comics also regularly featured pretty damn obscure characters from the Disney stable. Quick show of hands - who remembers Mad Madame Mim, Li'l Hiawatha, or Li'l Bad Wolf?)

Disney comics tend to be regarded as barely a footnote to the American public, but from what I gather, they sell like hotcakes in places like Latin America and Europe. One name, in particular, comes up again and again: Don Rosa.

Now, I'm not a Rosa obsessive like so many others are, but even a cursory glance at his Wikipedia page shows that he was Something Special. The Disney Juggernaut typically puts so little thought into its comics that even the hackiest folks at Marvel and DC look like Alan freaking Moore in comparison, but Rosa was the exception: a man who went at his Disney comics with the kind of passion and attention to detail that anyone would've been envious of. He began as just another writer/artist in the Duck comics, but in the early nineties, he put out his Eisner-winning magnum opus: The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.

Scrooge probably has the somewhat narrow honor of being the most popular Disney character have been born on the printed page instead of on the screen (though a Donald Duck short from '43 did seem to lay a prototype for him), and it's not hard to see why: he's more versatile than even Donald himself, able to go from hero to villain at the drop of a hat while always remaining true to his core personality. He can be protagonist, antagonist, plot device, damsel-in-distress, chew-toy... the sky's the limit, really.

And it all began on the unforgiving streets of Scotland...



( The duck tougher than the toughies, and smarter than the smarties, behind the cut! )