Post by That Duckfan on Jun 10, 2016 19:58:11 GMT
(I apologize for the clickbait title.)
I was doing some research on A Christmas For Shacktown just now, and I noticed something...
I always thought that the first mention of the Money Bin was in the 10-pager "The Big Bin on Killmotor Hill" from WDC 135 (Dec. 1951). There it's still Scrooge's "new money bin", which doesn't quite flow with other mentions that the bin had been there for 70 years, and then there are other money bins entirely. Over the years there has been a shift to a permanent bin-on-hill, as was also adopted by Don Rosa (as he retroactively puts it in Lo$10 and then in the history of his other stories). Anyway. First story where the bin is named, I presumed, so early inconsistency, right? Maybe.
Maybe not.
So the money bin plays a pretty big role in A Christmas For Shacktown, as you know. INDUCKS dates the issue to January 1952 (although it was in stores earlier -- we'll run with this date because it gives us an indication of how much time passed between the publishing of WDC 135 and FC 367). But Shacktown is a 32-page story, which must have been in the works for a long time, because it's a big and complex story. Could it have been made before the 10-pager from WDC 135? Well, maybe.
INDUCKS provides evidence that supports that suggestion: the WDC 135 story was handed in at Western on May 31, 1951 -- roughly half a year before its publication. Hmm... seems unlikely that he'd hand in a story three times as long later, and that they still only get to be published one month apart. And he didn't. He handed A Christmas For Shacktown in on March 15, 1951 -- a good 2.5 months before the 10-pager. So that one is older.
Also interesting to note is another story handed in around the same time: "Terror of the Beagle Boys", that 10-pager from WDC 134 (Nov. 1951) in which the money bin is also destroyed (this time by a cannonball).
Now, of course, there are many stories in which the bin gets destroyed at the end with little hope at any return. (Only in Don Rosa's stories does the old bin always return to its rightful place in the end, even after many jaunts into the air (Gyro's First Invention), space (Attack of the Hideous Space Monsters), and pants (The Incredible Shrinking Tightwad) -- it's always there in the end.) And there seem to be many different bins. But the 'new, improved money bin' sense you get from WDC 135 might suggest something else. Continuity.
Now, with one exception, Barks never did continuity -- but here, it almost feels like he did. Twice in a row, the money bin gets damaged badly -- one of these times quite permanently, too. It would not be inconceivable for Scrooge, after the events of A Christmas For Shacktown, to take no more liberties anymore, and take all the precautions necessary. (The events of WDC 134, as an aside, seem to take place in a "McDuck Building" downtown, so we'll put that aside for now, but I do think they could have had an effect on Scrooge's thinking.) So he built a new money bin, on a hill (in contrast to the bin in the previous two stories, which were both visually not on a hill), where anything and everything had been tested out and foreseen beforehand. (Except of course for what happened in the story that followed.)
I was doing some research on A Christmas For Shacktown just now, and I noticed something...
I always thought that the first mention of the Money Bin was in the 10-pager "The Big Bin on Killmotor Hill" from WDC 135 (Dec. 1951). There it's still Scrooge's "new money bin", which doesn't quite flow with other mentions that the bin had been there for 70 years, and then there are other money bins entirely. Over the years there has been a shift to a permanent bin-on-hill, as was also adopted by Don Rosa (as he retroactively puts it in Lo$10 and then in the history of his other stories). Anyway. First story where the bin is named, I presumed, so early inconsistency, right? Maybe.
Maybe not.
So the money bin plays a pretty big role in A Christmas For Shacktown, as you know. INDUCKS dates the issue to January 1952 (although it was in stores earlier -- we'll run with this date because it gives us an indication of how much time passed between the publishing of WDC 135 and FC 367). But Shacktown is a 32-page story, which must have been in the works for a long time, because it's a big and complex story. Could it have been made before the 10-pager from WDC 135? Well, maybe.
INDUCKS provides evidence that supports that suggestion: the WDC 135 story was handed in at Western on May 31, 1951 -- roughly half a year before its publication. Hmm... seems unlikely that he'd hand in a story three times as long later, and that they still only get to be published one month apart. And he didn't. He handed A Christmas For Shacktown in on March 15, 1951 -- a good 2.5 months before the 10-pager. So that one is older.
Also interesting to note is another story handed in around the same time: "Terror of the Beagle Boys", that 10-pager from WDC 134 (Nov. 1951) in which the money bin is also destroyed (this time by a cannonball).
Now, of course, there are many stories in which the bin gets destroyed at the end with little hope at any return. (Only in Don Rosa's stories does the old bin always return to its rightful place in the end, even after many jaunts into the air (Gyro's First Invention), space (Attack of the Hideous Space Monsters), and pants (The Incredible Shrinking Tightwad) -- it's always there in the end.) And there seem to be many different bins. But the 'new, improved money bin' sense you get from WDC 135 might suggest something else. Continuity.
Now, with one exception, Barks never did continuity -- but here, it almost feels like he did. Twice in a row, the money bin gets damaged badly -- one of these times quite permanently, too. It would not be inconceivable for Scrooge, after the events of A Christmas For Shacktown, to take no more liberties anymore, and take all the precautions necessary. (The events of WDC 134, as an aside, seem to take place in a "McDuck Building" downtown, so we'll put that aside for now, but I do think they could have had an effect on Scrooge's thinking.) So he built a new money bin, on a hill (in contrast to the bin in the previous two stories, which were both visually not on a hill), where anything and everything had been tested out and foreseen beforehand. (Except of course for what happened in the story that followed.)