Undaunted Ducks Search for Treasure in Uncle Scrooge: Messes Become Successes

When it was on the air, I often watched DuckTales, the Disney cartoon focusing on Scottish skinflint Scrooge McDuck and his efforts to protect his existing fortune and amass a larger one. While his iconic nephew Donald occasionally came into the picture, his triplet great-nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie were much more frequently involved in his adventures, as was his sweet great-niece Webby and his dunder-headed personal pilot, Launchpad McQuack. I hadn’t ventured to Duckburg in quite a while, so it was fun to return to it with the comic collection Uncle Scrooge in DuckTales: Messes Become Successes.

This book, released in 2011, includes nine different stories about Scrooge, his nephews, his niece and his various friends, acquaintances and rivals. Also included are the covers of the individual comic books from which these tales are drawn and sneak peeks at other Disney comic volumes, including Darkwing Duck: Crisis on Infinite Darkwings, in which Darkwing must deal with an infestation of alternate universe versions of himself; Donald Duck and Friends: Double Duck, in which Donald becomes a spy; Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers: Worldwide Rescue, in which the Rangers must navigate a crocodile-infested underworld; and Uncle Scrooge in DuckTales: Like a Hurricane, another collection of Scrooge comics. The main course, however, consists of the stories preceding this portion of the book.

Most of the stories are fairly short, ranging in length from two to 19 pages. All of them involve Scrooge and most also involve the triplets and Launchpad. Donald, Webby and oddball inventor Gyro make more infrequent appearances. Meanwhile, certain villains, particularly Scrooge’s primary competitor in wealth, the bearded, kilted crank Flintheart Glomgold, often surface to make his life more difficult. The quality of the artwork is excellent, and the dialogue is well done, with Launchpad’s distinctively dopey speech patterns particularly entertaining. The stories contain lots of little reference to movies, books and TV shows ranging from The Aristocats and Lord of the Rings to Quantum Leap and Star Trek, so while Scrooge searching for his treasure, spotting these references is a treasure hunt for the reader.

The book opens with Lovelorn Launchpad. In this short tale written by Paul Halas and Jack Sutter, Launchpad’s intense infatuation with an Amelia Earhart-like pilot leads him to initiate a rescue mission after her plane falls off the radar. This story quickly establishes Launchpad as good-hearted but slow-witted, two characteristics emphasized in Bob Langhans’ Double Indemnity, in which an evil sorceress named Magica creates a clone of him and transforms the original into a pigeon. The book’s shortest story, A Dolt From the Blue by William Van Horn, finds Launchpad exercising his foolishness on Gyro’s experimental plane.

Gyro’s genius causes problems for Launchpad in The Belt of Time, whose contributors include Disney-Abril, Haroldo Guimaraes, Diego Jourdan and Jason Arthur, when the inventor attaches a time-traveling belt to the hapless pilot. This is one of several stories involving the nefarious Flintheart, who tries to outwit Scrooge in the brief but funny Scrooge’s Nose Knows Gold, written by John Lustig, and outbid him in The Last Auction Hero, created by Paul Halas, Dave Angus, Jose Maria Millet Lopez and Joe Torcivia.

Of the nine stories, the only one I really couldn’t get into was Paul Halas and Tom Anderson’s Big Blimp in Little Trouble, in which Scrooge decides to start offering paying customers blimp tours in an effort to boost his business. However, I loved The Arcadian Urn, written by the same pair. In this story, the longest in the book, Scrooge, Launchpad, Donald, the triplets and Webby travel to a mysterious island housing the legendary Atlantis-like city of Arcadia in hopes of bringing back a valuable artifact. My favorite story, though, is probably the last one, Carl Banks’ Christmas Cheers, in which the triplets, Donald and Scrooge all want something specific for Christmas and wonder if there’s any chance of their getting it. A fun tale involving a retired reindeer and a hidden cache of gold, it concludes the collection on a festive note.

While I have several collections of comic strips, I don’t often read comic books telling an ongoing story for several pages. I like the format but I often felt, as I read these stories, that I was being asked to fill in a lot of blanks between panels, or some of them anyway, and I wasn’t necessarily doing a very good job of it. That’s more of a problem in some than others, but I think I had that stilted experience at least once during every story. On the other hand, by the time I reached the end, I usually had a clear idea of what the basic arc of the story had been. I just had a little trouble connecting some of the dots as events unfolded. Aside from this phenomenon, which might be improved if I got better accustomed to the format, I enjoyed this sojourn with Scrooge and hope to get my hands on Like a Hurricane before long.

This Show's Just Ducky!

Donald Duck has been a part of American culture for decades, and his nephews have been in the limelight for nearly as long. They run poor Donald to a frazzle, though he often deserves it. "Ducktales" affords Donald some long awaited R and R as his mischievous nephews go to live with their miserly uncle, the Scottish billionaire Scrooge McDuck. As the accumulator of such a vast amount of wealth, he is often the target of thieves and big-time operators looking to put him out of business.

Luckily, Huey, Dewey and Louie have the energy and ingenuity to get their aging uncle out of every mess he finds himself in. He is also assisted by his faithful butler, his doting housekeeper, his clumsy personal pilot Launchpad, and his niece Webby.

The ducks' adventures take them all around the world, from the pyramids to desert islands to the fountain of youth. Each episode is crammed with about as much adventure as a half-hour episode can take. And while the youngsters love getting into trouble, they also care about their uncle and focus most of their energy into making sure that nothing bad happens to him.

Right from the first notes of the catchy theme song, this show is just the way to get the day started. With great animation, fun music and high adventure, it's one of the best cartoons out there.