"Scrooge's Wedding"

[Scrooge MacDuck]

The story Scrooge's Wedding has recently been published in France. Any thoughts from people who have read it? For those who don't know, it features flashbacks to when Scrooge was a steamboat captain, and later his reunion with a long-lost sweetheart of his from this time of his life, Clementine. Especially considering we have the writer of the story as one of the forum members, this thread might prove interesting… 

Especially for Robb, as a matter of fact: why create Clementine? Isn't it going to be disheartening to Goldie fans? How did you get this idea?

[RobbK1]

Jun 12, 2016 14:43:59 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

The story Scrooge's Wedding has recently been published in France. Any thoughts from people who have read it? For those who don't know, it features flashbacks to when Scrooge was a steamboat captain, and later his reunion with a long-lost sweetheart of his from this time of his life, Clementine. Especially considering we have the writer of the story as one of the forum members, this thread might prove interesting… 

Especially for Robb, as a matter of fact: why create Clementine? Isn't it going to be disheartening to Goldie fans? How did you get this idea?

I knew that probably a lot of fans would have wanted me to use Glittering Goldie as Scrooge's long-lost sweetheart.  But, I have always wanted to expand The Duck universe with more characters and more history of existing characters, and widening of the experiences and character traits of existing characters.  I have written and storyboarded stories with Gus Goose having a ladyfriend, Gyro Gearloose wanting badly to date a particular woman (albeit a very intelligent and successful inventor, in her own right), and now Uncle Scrooge actually getting married (yes, it is true).  In that same vein of wanting to learn more about The Duck family, and Duckburg's cast of characters, I introduced Sadstone Gander, Gladstone's identical twin brother, who inherited only bad luck, while his twin, Gladstone, inherited only good luck.  Unfortunately, my editors felt that we couldn't introduce a twin brother of Gladstone, that had never before appeared in stories, so they changed him to an "identical first cousin" (Schade!)

I made the choice to use a different woman for Scrooge, as Goldie has been used in several stories, and she was in Scrooge's life when he was a gold digger in The Klondike gold strike in the late 1890s.  But my story was about Uncle Scrooges time as a steamboat pilot on The Mississippi River during the 1880s.  I thought that Goldie shouldn't have been there and involved with Scrooge BEFORE he went to The Yukon or Alaska, as if she had been, she wouldn't have behaved like she did in Barks' "Back To The Klondike".  In addition, I assumed that Scrooge would have been interested in more than one woman in his long life.  I think it is nicer as a fan to have more characters introduced, who can provide more flexibility in more Uncle Scrooge stories.  Perhaps BOTH Goldie and Clementine can fight over attention from Scrooge in a future story (either set in the past, or in the present).

Yes, I am curious what you other Forum members think of this story.  It had already been printed in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany and Finland, but, sadly, not in The Netherlands (but I will be hard at work trying to get my Dutch editors to print it - so I can have so many of my friends read it, and so I can read a printed version, easily, with no hard labour).

I think it is one of mine and Jan's very best stories.  We plan to use the villainess more in the future.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

I perfectly understand those reasons for using Clementine instead of Goldie. At any rate, I loved the story, but I couldn't help but notice a thorough inconsistency with what we already knew about Scrooge's steamboat captain past: it is clearly established in Don Rosa's "Master of the Mississippi" that Scrooge only ever sailed one ship, the "Dilly Dollar", which he bought from Pothole; and that when the ship was blown to smithereens by the Beagle Boys at the end of the story, this was the point where Scrooge quit being a steamboat captain and left town. So, where does the sinking of his boat in your story fit into this?

[RobbK1]

I based my history on Barks' story, but don't accept Don Rosa's history of The Ducks and McDucks. Actually, I've read only a couple Don Rosa stories. I can't stand his artwork, and so, find it difficult to read his stories. I had Scrooge moving on to Montana because he had no reason to stay on the Mississippi with Clementine gone.

I had some other stories related to Scrooge's past and the history of The Ducks, loosely related to Barks references, that I couldn't use because of Don Rosa "tying up most of the years of Scrooge's life. I didn't like that. I liked it in the old days, when we fans could continue to get new stories of Scrooge McDuck's adventures, ad hoc, one at a time, and always a surprise. But those stories were rejected because of Don Rosa's "Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck". I think that is a shame for other creators, who don't share Rosa's exact vision.

[jubalpomp]

[Source] RobbK1 said:

I had some other stories related to Scrooge's past and the history of The Ducks, loosely related to Barks references, that I couldn't use because of Don Rosa "tying up most of the years of Scrooge's life. I didn't like that. I liked it in the old days, when we fans could continue to get new stories of Scrooge McDuck's adventures, ad hoc, one at a time, and always a surprise. But those stories were rejected because of Don Rosa's "Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck". I think that is a shame for other creators, who don't share Rosa's exact vision.

It sounds odd to me: here in Italy really few authors follow Don's line, and sometimes it's a pity.

[RobbK1]

Jun 12, 2016 21:06:04 GMT jubalpomp said:

[Source] RobbK1 said:

I had some other stories related to Scrooge's past and the history of The Ducks, loosely related to Barks references, that I couldn't use because of Don Rosa "tying up most of the years of Scrooge's life. I didn't like that. I liked it in the old days, when we fans could continue to get new stories of Scrooge McDuck's adventures, ad hoc, one at a time, and always a surprise. But those stories were rejected because of Don Rosa's "Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck". I think that is a shame for other creators, who don't share Rosa's exact vision.

It sounds odd to me: here in Italy really few authors follow Don's line, and sometimes it's a pity.

Good to know!  Perhaps I'll submit some of my historical Scrooge McDuck and other Duck-related historical stories to Disney Italia, just to be able to get several longer adventure stories published and Scrooge's and Duck family history (as I see it) published, earlier, rather than having to wait and hope for a change in Egmont's policies.  It's already very tough for me to get Sanoma to buy long stories from me.  They have a very tight budget for overal page production, and much moreso, for long stories.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

I see. I am also personally very unhappy of Don Rosa's precise dating that makes it hard to cram new ideas in-between (although I love his artwork… a matter of taste, I guess). On the other hand, I love continuity, so although I don't like the principle of filling everything, I also disagree with the principle of ignoring what other authors have already said.

[RobbK1]

I, too, would have loved a continuity of history of The Ducks and McDucks, that would have been kept true by all the Disney Comics artists and writers. But that has been impossible from the start. Many of the other artists differed from Barks' history of The Ducks and Duckburg, starting already near the end of the 1940s, and it became a problem already in the early 1950s. It would be too difficult for ALL the artists and writers to keep track of what every other writer and artist has portrayed. As a writer and storyboard and cover artist, I would like to be able to portray my ideas of what might have happened in the history of The McDuck and Duck Clans, Duckburg, and the other Disney characters' histories, without having to do intensive research on what has been written by all creators in the various countries.

[That Duckfan]

It's part of the charm, I think. A rigid continuity has its benefits (as evident in many excellent TV series, and we pretty much got that in Don Rosa's universe), but it's also very constricting. Disney comics have never led themselves be constricted in that way. Their primary mode of publication for the past 75 years has been an anthology comic book -- the whole idea is that you can publish a brand new story from Denmark next to an Italian classic from 50 years ago, by now.

So what do you do when continuity is just impossible? (For those not convinced -- try reconciling Donald's dozens of uncles that turned up exactly ONCE at their nephew's house and were never mentioned again, or those Glittering Goldie expies that Scrooge romanced in the Klondike (starting with Barks' very own Katie Mallard), or all those Klondike mining partners.) Every creator goes their own way, and picks and chooses what he or she likes. A kaleidoscope of comic continuities.

I approach Disney comics continuity by approaching each artist on their own terms. Barks is Barks, Klein is Klein, Cavazzano is Cavazzano, Rota is Rota.
And then, when I'm feeling mischievous, mix it up a little and poke at it with a stick.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 14, 2016 13:41:23 GMT That Duckfan said:

So what do you do when continuity is just impossible? (For those not convinced -- try reconciling Donald's dozens of uncles that turned up exactly ONCE at their nephew's house and were never mentioned again, or those Glittering Goldie expies that Scrooge romanced in the Klondike (starting with Barks' very own Katie Mallard), or all those Klondike mining partners.) Every creator goes their own way, and picks and chooses what he or she likes. A kaleidoscope of comic continuities.

I'm still not convinced. I know it was not intended that way, but I have found plausible enough ways of reconciling all those things you mention. For instance, the dozens of mining partners, I imagine, were met and befriended by Scrooge during the period of the Klondike days that Don Rosa skipped over: the time he started being a businessman, just after he bought the Whitehorse bank. At that point, I imagine he tried to associate himself with all the good prospectors he met, but since he wasn't that good at business, could not manage to keep them around more than a month or two at the most. The Glittering Goldie Expies romances I could also see happening at this point -- none of them being his true love, but all of them Scrooge would have felt unconsciously attracted to as replacements for Goldie, whom he'd just lost. (Although Katie Mallard is not from the Klondike days, I remind you; she's from Auropolis, which is in a desert and thus obviously much further south).

[That Duckfan]

Jun 14, 2016 16:35:39 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Jun 14, 2016 13:41:23 GMT That Duckfan said:

So what do you do when continuity is just impossible? (For those not convinced -- try reconciling Donald's dozens of uncles that turned up exactly ONCE at their nephew's house and were never mentioned again, or those Glittering Goldie expies that Scrooge romanced in the Klondike (starting with Barks' very own Katie Mallard), or all those Klondike mining partners.) Every creator goes their own way, and picks and chooses what he or she likes. A kaleidoscope of comic continuities.

I'm still not convinced. I know it was not intended that way, but I have found plausible enough ways of reconciling all those things you mention. For instance, the dozens of mining partners, I imagine, were met and befriended by Scrooge during the period of the Klondike days that Don Rosa skipped over: the time he started being a businessman, just after he bought the Whitehorse bank. At that point, I imagine he tried to associate himself with all the good prospectors he met, but since he wasn't that good at business, could not manage to keep them around more than a month or two at the most. The Glittering Goldie Expies romances I could also see happening at this point -- none of them being his true love, but all of them Scrooge would have felt unconsciously attracted to as replacements for Goldie, whom he'd just lost. (Although Katie Mallard is not from the Klondike days, I remind you; she's from Auropolis, which is in a desert and thus obviously much further south).

I don't know. I keep going back and forward, trying to engage with the material in an interesting way. That's also an appealing way of looking at it, I'll admit, and one that I used for a long time. You're not wrong.

Katie Mallard, true, she's not from the Klondike, but she does fit the boom-town-girl model well enough. Her origins are clearly of a similar type as Goldie, even if Barks took her character into a very different direction, where she's more like Barks's Grandma Duck of that era or so.
Katie is a very interesting character in her own right, by the way, because of the way Scrooge talks to her. They're clearly more than vague acquaintances, and they share this common past, which I think brings out a side in Scrooge that we rarely see. Normally, when he isn't running around madly, there's a kind of patriarchal seniority about him, you know, him being the most senior guy in the room. There's none of that with Katie, and I like that most of their relationship is left vague, which is comparatively rare.

[Scroogerello]

Yesterday this story (finally) got published in the Netherlands as well, although it was printed in a special subscribers-only issue, and is therefore not available in stores...From what I can see on the INDUCKS, they re-colored the story (as they often do in the weeklies,) and a cover to the story was drawn my Michel Nadorp. Clementine and Vitriola's names have been translated as "Rosa Glashart" and "Vitriola Valz".

[RobbK1]

Feb 8, 2019 22:44:41 GMT Scroogerello said:

Yesterday this story (finally) got published in the Netherlands as well, although it was printed in a special subscribers-only issue, and is therefore not available in stores...From what I can see on the INDUCKS, they re-colored the story (as they often do in the weeklies,) and a cover to the story was drawn my Michel Nadorp. Clementine and Vitriola's names have been translated as "Rosa Glashart" and "Vitriola Valz".

Yes, finally!  And I'm glad it was printed in total, intact - not in 3 separate issues.

[RobbK1]

Here is Michel Nadorp's great cover, made just for the special book, featuring my story:

[Mesterius]

Rob, I just wanted to point out that, of the countries you mention in your first comment in this thread...

Jun 12, 2016 18:09:51 GMT RobbK1 said:

It had already been printed in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany and Finland

...this story actually HASN'T been published in my home country Norway! Logically, it should have been printed in the same issues of the Norwegian Donald Duck & Co weekly as the corresponding issues of the Danish and Swedish weeklies (the first three issues of 2015)... but according to Inducks, it wasn't. I wonder what happened there. The story sounds intriguing, so it's a pity it has never been published in Norway.