*Is* it an illustration? It's got dialogue and isn't meant to be a cover or poster, that counts as a story in my book.
*shrug* Not in mine. Main reason I don't include his illustrations by the way is because he drew covers for other artists in his time at Gladstone --- and it's too much of a stretch to include The Lentils of Babylon in a Rosa canon.
Also, I believe Rosa himself has stated somewhere that he sees "That's No Fable" as the reason Scrooge was able to go on in such good health until the age of 100 — though he didn't relate it to the matter of HDL's age, as he believes in a yet again more compressed timeline than you're constructing — 1947-1955 or so.
Interesting. It's a very prozaic reason for Scrooge's age -- I'd much rather believe in some kind of waffle about immortality through the comics of Carl Barks/the works of Walt Disney. In fact, the reason Barks himself gave (Go Slowly, Sands of Time) is one of the most beautifully poetic ever articulated in a Disney comic. But Rosa never invoked it, so it ain't here.
Post by TheMidgetMoose on Jul 18, 2020 20:38:59 GMT
Very detailed analysis, here. I'm both impressed by the amount of thought and consideration put into it and confused as to when I personally believe Scrooge's return should have occurred. The amount of contradictory evidence which I had never noticed before is incredible. The biggest obstacle for me, is that Scrooge's blackest day apparently occurred just a year after an event that, based on real-world history, must have taken place around 1904, but, as you point out, Scrooge had pre-blackest day adventures as late as 1908. That's frustrating.
Anyway, for about the past year, I've figured that Scrooge's return to Duckburg occurred in late 1931, and I guess I'll just stick to that for my personal headcanon. 1933 is a bit too late for me, since I imagine Scrooge's adventures with his nephews taking place from 1947 to circa 1954, not 1947 to 1959 and even later. Even if there is evidence that his adventures with his nephews last for nearly 15 years, I just really really can't swallow that Huey, Dewey, and Louie would still be so young and that Donald and Daisy would still have such an unstable relationship after all that time.
Once again, good work on compiling and working through all this information! You've done a very good job. I cannot wait to see at least a quick outline of your entire timeline hopefully very soon.
No matter what I say or do, know that Jesus loves you.
And anyway, this is all within my usual timeline-making; creating a unified Dsney comics timeline which (among other things) accounts for Rosa's material is a very different business from creating a timeline of Rosa's Duckverse, and in the latter endeavour, where I have but dabbled, I could see deciding that Rosa's authorial intent overrides Barks's. And Rosa clearly believes that some Barks stories happen at different points than they were released; he said as much on the DCML once.
Did he? Interesting.
A term I heard a lot thrown about a decade ago was a "Barks-Rosa universe", popularized by people who presumably came to Barks comics via Rosa. In reality, there's no such thing, that's something I try to emphasize more now: the universe would be more accurately described as Rosa-Barks+.
A Barks timeline is an entirely different beast, as you say. Let alone a Disney comics universe, while has to reconcile infinitely more contradictions.
How do you feel about the proposal that within a Barks-Rosa-centric timeline, Last Sled is in fact the last Scrooge story (or thereabouts), taking place a short time after Letter From Home — with Scrooge staying with Goldie after the ending? The final panel is certainly a nice bookend with the last panel of Last of the Clan McDuck, and heck, having "Last" in the title certainly lends a story a certain finality from the get-go.
I can't sign up on that, I'm afraid. Rosa's date for the story is 1954, and I see little reason to depart from it. In fact, if I were to give it a different place, I'd place it earlier: slotting it in between Back to the Klondike to A Little Something Special. I don't think you can quite go from the one to the climax of the other with Last Sled to Dawson as intermediary.
I also don't subscribe to the theory that Scrooge lived out his last years with Goldie in the Rosa universe. In fact, I make no pronouncements on what happens in the future (though the headcanon thread we had a while back certainly brought new ideas to life).
We'll see if it holds up to your more precise research, but in terms of an overall narrative of the Rosaverse, my feeling is that there's a definite "ending" that goes something like A Little Something Special (Goldie proposes to Scrooge) -> King Crœsus's Treasutre (Scrooge's rivalry with Magica ends) - Son of the Sun/Last Lord of Eldorado (Scrooge defeats Glomgold; has to be post-King Crœsus due to the easter egg you mentioned in Son othe Sun) -> Return to Xanadu/Crown of the Crusader Kings/Letter From Home (Scrooge reaches a dead-end with his treasure-seeking, and is eventually driven to reconcile himself with his remaining family) -> Last Sled to Dawson (Scrooge ties up the other letter-based dead end set up by the events of the L&T and presumably accepts Goldie's proposal).
You have to work Quest for Kalevala somewhere in there too. But it's clearly a period of at least three years, spanning 1952-1955, so there are a bunch of Rosa stories also taking place in that loose "cycle of endings".
The last real-life event checked off in my Rosa timeline is the establishment of the Peace Corps by president Kennedy in March 1961, which appears in one or two stories (Barks' Bongo on the Congo and Rosa's Escape from Forbidden Valley, IIRC). That's on the far end of the timeline. Sometimes I am beholden to certain references or outright dates, so I can't fully create the timeline I'd like. I've been forced to give Donald two separate mental breakdowns, for instance -- one circa 1955, and one circa 1959. But you're on the track of what I'm aiming for.
For the record: A Little Something Special takes place in the fall of 1952. It would be infinitely more helpful if I could move it ever so slightly, but there's really no going around this one. Last Sled to Dawson is 1954 in my book. I have no reason to disagree with Rosa at this point, though that could always change. The Treasury of Croesus doesn't leave a whole lot of clues. I agree that it's more or less the end to the Magica saga, so I've put it as the latest treasure we see in Scrooge's museum exhibit in The Son of the Sun. So that's the very end of 1956. The Son of the Sun was one I labored with for a long time. I'd prefer an early dating, as it's made clear that this is the first time Scrooge and Glomgold square off as treasure hunters, rather than in measuring their fortune. This kept causing the whole thing to collapse, so I've now confined it to January 1957 for... reasons. Return to Xanadu takes place after a whole lot of stories, but takes place before The Crown of the Crusader Kings. Also, Scrooge unexplicably has the Philosopher's Stone in his private collection. I've placed it in conjunction with The Son of the Sun for that reason, so spring of 1957. The Crown of the Crusader Kings and A Letter from Home take place over December 1957 and early 1958, as explained above. The Quest for Kalevala is indeed one of the very latest Rosa stories, thematically speaking. I've got it down as the winter of 1961. In fact, it's Scrooge's last adventure quest in my book, but not quite his last story.
I can't sign up on that, I'm afraid. Rosa's date for the story is 1954, and I see little reason to depart from it.
Ah, but as I said, neither do I. Last Sled to Dawson in the Rosaverse does take place in 1954 and that is when Scrooge's adventures come to a close. I am fairly certain I saw a Rosa quote to the effect that in his head, it's all compressed within 1947-1955 or so, the occasional historical reference be damned (hence the relatively unaging HDL; they start off seven years old in Christmas on Bear Mountain and are 15 in Last Sled).
And when the fancy catches me to try and reconstruct a Don Rosa timeline, as opposed to my usual Duckverse canonwelding, which, as you know, is far from only being Barks-centric — that is what I hold onto. The Barks-Rosan Scrooge's recorded adventures do end in 1954, more or less, and Barks was at best telling a lot of stories quite late, and at worst telling them completely out of order; we now for sure that outrageously 60's though it might seem, the Rosaverse's Midas Touch , and probably at least some of Barks's subsequent Magica stories, must happen around 1951, since the Scrooge-Magica rivalry must be well-established by 1952 in time for A Little Something Special. Ditto the Scrooge-Glomgold enmity, for that matter.
Again, this is me in Mr Hyde mode. The ordinary Scrooge MacDuck would instead lecture you on how the sanest way to go about ALSS is that it must actually take place in 1962. But if I'm going to be faithful to Rosa's intent, I'm not going to do things by half.
Not to say there isn't value in your more history-based approach, of course — it's a very interesting experiment. But I don't think that's how Rosa ticks in these matters. I imagine he'd tune out mention of e.g. the Peace Corps just like he'll tune out the too-advanced technology of Island in the Sky, or indeed himself place much more sputniks in the skies of Duckburg than there were in the real world even at the end of the 1960's.
And when the fancy catches me to try and reconstruct a Don Rosa timeline, as opposed to my usual Duckverse canonwelding, which, as you know, is far from only being Barks-centric — that is what I hold onto. The Barks-Rosan Scrooge's recorded adventures do end in 1954, more or less, and Barks was at best telling a lot of stories quite late, and at worst telling them completely out of order; we now for sure that outrageously 60's though it might seem, the Rosaverse's Midas Touch , and probably at least some of Barks's subsequent Magica stories, must happen around 1951, since the Scrooge-Magica rivalry must be well-established by 1952 in time for A Little Something Special. Ditto the Scrooge-Glomgold enmity, for that matter.
Indeed, that's the position I take in this particular timeline, weird as it seems.
Again, this is me in Mr Hyde mode. The ordinary Scrooge MacDuck would instead lecture you on how the sanest way to go about ALSS is that it must actually take place in 1962. But if I'm going to be faithful to Rosa's intent, I'm not going to do things by half.
My instinct when it comes to a general timeline is to just ignore Rosa. I come from Doctor Who fandom, where stories about long-dead Doctors continue to be written, and there I've taken the position that only stories that take place in the present, count. Rosa-like retroactive continuity (or other stuff, like the Italian history of Scrooge) don't count. So after Barks lays down his pen, Donald takes up the mask of Duck Avenger, etc.
Another timeline fancy is something I do while coming up with my own stories: a Rosa-esque Timeline B that takes inspiration from Barks, but goes into a different direction with it. If you just take one little "Barksian fact" and build on that, you don't have to explain how all of it fits together. For instance, Barks-Scrooge's boast in Migrating Millions that Scrooge's money bin has been on that hill for seventy years? Sure, I'll use that in an Old West story as a place where cowboy Scrooge stashed away what little money he had, in an unassuming little shack or something. (Ignoring that Barks celebrated Scrooge's 75th birthday in another comic, for instance...)
In fact, the foundation of my greatest attempt at a semi-coherent fanfiction spin-off was built directly on reinterpreting some of the Barksian facts that Rosa never showed. (Of course, these days the Ducks play only a minor role in that story, but they're still there and I need everything to fit.)
Not to say there isn't value in your more history-based approach, of course — it's a very interesting experiment. But I don't think that's how Rosa ticks in these matters. I imagine he'd tune out mention of e.g. the Peace Corps just like he'll tune out the too-advanced technology of Island in the Sky, or indeed himself place much more sputniks in the skies of Duckburg than there were in the real world even at the end of the 1960's.
Of course it's not how he thinks. Just as Rosa didn't try to think too hard about how Barks thought about Scrooge's life when he was writing the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. Ultimately it's his story, Rosa's, in the same way that this is mine. Rosa is only author I could do with this at all, because he works in some many historical details in his adventures. Normal Disney comics have a kind of timeless quality about them.
It's just a Sherlockian game in the end. After watching Rosa puzzle his way through history and Barks references, now it's time for me to do the same to his work. If he ever finds out, he'll declare that I'm out of my mind --- and he would be right! Because at the end of the day, no matter how much I try, there's more of me in the timeline narrative than there is of him. Hopefully.
How's that for a Mr. Hyde, eh?
Last Edit: Jul 20, 2020 22:21:30 GMT by That Duckfan
I come from Doctor Who fandom, where stories about long-dead Doctors continue to be written, and there I've taken the position that only stories that take place in the present, count.
Dunno if I mentioned, but I too am well-versed in Gallifreyan matters! Heck, I'm now writing professionally in the far edges of the EU. We might have to make a Lounge thread about it at this rate — but what you describe seems like a very unusual way to approach Who. As you say yourself it is one of its defining features that stories are constantly being told about a variety of eras from the in-universe history; if I understand it right (that is to say, "only stories told for the then-current era count; ignore throwbacks like Big Finish telling Fifth Doctor stories in 2018"), your standard seems like it would yield such odd results as the John and Gillian comics "counting" more than Night of the Doctor does.
(Personally, I take exactly the same view of the Whoniverse as I do of the Duckverse, namely that everything is canonical, literally everything. And it's a much easier fit than for Disney comics, because the possibility of temporal manipulation is built into the premise much more than it is for the Duckburg mythos, Gyro or not. Also, half the recurring cast officially has a lifespan of several hundred years, which certainly gives one a certain liberty.)
In fact, the foundation of my greatest attempt at a semi-coherent fanfiction spin-off was built directly on reinterpreting some of the Barksian facts that Rosa never showed. (Of course, these days the Ducks play only a minor role in that story, but they're still there and I need everything to fit.)
Your what now? Please elaborate, this is very intriguing and sounds like something I'd want to read.
Of course it's not how he thinks. Just as Rosa didn't try to think too hard about how Barks thought about Scrooge's life when he was writing the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. Ultimately it's his story, Rosa's, in the same way that this is mine.
As I said, absolutely fair enough. Still, the fact is that there is such a thing as an "official" Rosa timeline, for a given value of the term "official" — the sum total of his Duckverse work (counting his stories, his interviews, his DCML message, the lot) gestures at a more-or-less fixed timeline he has in his head of how it all works. Not that I'm at all confident he's written it down somewhere, but it ostensibly does "exist". There has never, to my knowledge, been a fully-completed attempt to reconstruct that thing. I hoped yours might be it; oh well. Still interesting stuff.
I'm glad to see that there is more Duck/Doctor Who-fandom overlap here than I originally thought!
When it comes to Doctor Who, I'm more of an everything-counts- (as long as it doesn't contradict anything else) -person. Yet, in the Duck universe, I tend to stick with only Gottfredson, Taliaferro, Barks, and Rosa (plus a few minor additions). I wonder why I make this distinction... Probably because, like Scrooge said, Doctor Who has characters that can survive for as long as the narrative needs them to, which allows for countless stories to happen. This is in contrast to ducks who need to visibly age sooner or later. There's limited time in which HDL can stay kids, for example.
Dunno if I mentioned, but I too am well-versed in Gallifreyan matters! Heck, I'm now writing professionally in the far edges of the EU. We might have to make a Lounge thread about it at this rate — but what you describe seems like a very unusual way to approach Who. As you say yourself it is one of its defining features that stories are constantly being told about a variety of eras from the in-universe history; if I understand it right (that is to say, "only stories told for the then-current era count; ignore throwbacks like Big Finish telling Fifth Doctor stories in 2018"), your standard seems like it would yield such odd results as the John and Gillian comics "counting" more than Night of the Doctor does.
(Personally, I take exactly the same view of the Whoniverse as I do of the Duckverse, namely that everything is canonical, literally everything. And it's a much easier fit than for Disney comics, because the possibility of temporal manipulation is built into the premise much more than it is for the Duckburg mythos, Gyro or not. Also, half the recurring cast officially has a lifespan of several hundred years, which certainly gives one a certain liberty.)
I should have mentioned that I'm doing a TV marathon on GallifreyBase (come in and say hi, who would have guessed it's the sanest part of the forum?), and I was thinking more of it in that context -- and in particular the Wilderness Years. I've decided count the Virgin New Adventures and Eighth Doctor Adventures as continuing the story moreso than Big Finish or the comics, because the former ran contemporaneously with the (lack of) TV series. (Also I find it hard to get into the audio medium.) Of course you're right in that it's all true.
I'm not sure if you've ever mentioned it on the forum, but I caught up with your blog a while back!
Your what now? Please elaborate, this is very intriguing and sounds like something I'd want to read.
Hit me up with a PM!
As I said, absolutely fair enough. Still, the fact is that there is such a thing as an "official" Rosa timeline, for a given value of the term "official" — the sum total of his Duckverse work (counting his stories, his interviews, his DCML message, the lot) gestures at a more-or-less fixed timeline he has in his head of how it all works. Not that I'm at all confident he's written it down somewhere, but it ostensibly does "exist". There has never, to my knowledge, been a fully-completed attempt to reconstruct that thing. I hoped yours might be it; oh well. Still interesting stuff.
I'm not so sure there is. I'm sure Rosa has headcanon he keeps from us because knows the havoc it would cause in fandom, but I don't think he ever had a Grand Plan in his mind. Not much more than we have, anyway -- The Life and Times of Donald Duck thread excepted.
I'm glad to see that there is more Duck/Doctor Who-fandom overlap here than I originally thought!
We should start a club! I always find it interesting how far similar interests can reach.
When it comes to Doctor Who, I'm more of an everything-counts- (as long as it doesn't contradict anything else) -person. Yet, in the Duck universe, I tend to stick with only Gottfredson, Taliaferro, Barks, and Rosa (plus a few minor additions). I wonder why I make this distinction... Probably because, like Scrooge said, Doctor Who has characters that can survive for as long as the narrative needs them to, which allows for countless stories to happen. This is in contrast to ducks who need to visibly age sooner or later. There's limited time in which HDL can stay kids, for example.
Interesting stuff to think about.
That is interesting, because I don't make that distinction in Disney. I guess Doctor Who is more tied to contemporary events, whereas there's only a vague whiff of time in Disney comics. I grew up reading contemporary comics and 1930s comics side by side --- where's the difference, apart from a few cosmetic changes?
Last Edit: Jul 26, 2020 22:31:56 GMT by That Duckfan
I've decided count the Virgin New Adventures and Eighth Doctor Adventures as continuing the story moreso than Big Finish or the comics, because the former ran contemporaneously with the (lack of) TV series. (Also I find it hard to get into the audio medium.)
I'm not that fond of audio either! But the War of the Eights in the latter years of the Wilderness Years was very much about how Big Finish were also trying to take over the title of True Continuation; their Eight Doctor audios started a significant amount of time before the Welsh Series was even announced. And the DWM comic strip likewise ran throughout the Wilderness Years; indeed, they tried to make sure their Seventh Doctor comic strips slotted into the gaps of the VNAs in real time, though they were less careful with their Eighth Doctor strips relative to the EDAs. (You might recall that when the Welsh Series began, Davies briefly considered giving DWM the right to end their Eighth Doctor strips with a regeneration of their McGann into Eccleston, which certainly gives them a certain legitimacy as having been "the current era" in their day.)
All of which to say: by all means ignore what you like; I don't blame you for not wanting to deal with Zagreus, and I'm glad it doesn't extend to the VNAs and EDAs, but I'm not sure the criterion you cite actually accounts for what you want to exclude.
As I said, absolutely fair enough. Still, the fact is that there is such a thing as an "official" Rosa timeline, for a given value of the term "official" — the sum total of his Duckverse work (counting his stories, his interviews, his DCML message, the lot) gestures at a more-or-less fixed timeline he has in his head of how it all works. Not that I'm at all confident he's written it down somewhere, but it ostensibly does "exist". There has never, to my knowledge, been a fully-completed attempt to reconstruct that thing. I hoped yours might be it; oh well. Still interesting stuff.
I'm not so sure there is. I'm sure Rosa has headcanon he keeps from us because knows the havoc it would cause in fandom, but I don't think he ever had a Grand Plan in his mind. Not much more than we have, anyway -- The Life and Times of Donald Duck thread excepted.
Well it's… how should I put this? I don't believ Rosa has a Master Plan, either. But he also has a sort of opinion on the matter that he hasn't necessarily voiced, but which can be gleaned from his writing. It would be possible to construct a timeline from all his words and come up with something faced with which he'd say, "yes, that's about right". On any one point of continuity not made explicit in a story, he does not necessarily have a position now, but he would be able to give a defintive answer if asked. So I am proposing to create a completely Rosa-compliant timeline in the sense of a timeline which makes the best stab it can at "creating the Grand Plan for him", wondering every step of the way "is that how he'd do it if the problem presented itself to him?".
King Crœsus's Treasutre (Scrooge's rivalry with Magica ends)
I read through The Treasury of Croesus in order to experience this. Scrooge and Magica's rivalry ending - that would be statues-quo-changing! It would be an important event in Duck-universe history! However... no...? There's no indication that this would be the end of their rivalry. In fact, this is Magica's last line of the story:
She's telling him that this ISN'T the end! That's the opposite of end! Did I miss something?
And sure - we're told that Donald is wise because he says that it is foolish for Scrooge and Magica to constantly fight over gold. But those are the words of HDL. Scrooge and Magica don't seem to agree at all!
King Crœsus's Treasutre (Scrooge's rivalry with Magica ends)
I read through The Treasury of Croesus in order to experience this. Scrooge and Magica's rivalry ending - that would be statues-quo-changing! It would be an important event in Duck-universe history! However... no...? There's no indication that this would be the end of their rivalry. In fact, this is Magica's last line of the story:
She's telling him that this ISN'T the end! That's the opposite of end! Did I miss something?
And sure - we're told that Donald is wise because he says that it is foolish for Scrooge and Magica to constantly fight over gold. But those are the words of HDL. Scrooge and Magica don't seem to agree at all!
Well, it's no more explicit (indeed, slightly explicit) than Glomgold's apparent "final defeat" in the Rosaverse in Last Lord of Eldorado, of course. There's only so much that Rosa could get past his editors. And I'm sorry if I gave you false hopes.
But I do stand by my reading. Donald's speech comes after Magica's threat you quote, and said quote is so perfunctory, so cartoonishly "I'll get you next time, Gadget!"y that I can't help but see it as ringing deliberately empty. With Magica finally getting to make the amulet only for it not to work, Magica's story has been wound as tight as it ever could be wound, only to peter out; there's nowhere to go but down, and when Scrooge and Magica propose to resume their usual monthly shenanigans after this, Donald becomes the author and reader's mouthpiece, telling them both: "That's quite enough of that, you screaming kids.". I mean, you could feasibly have low-scale Magica vs. Scrooge fights after this, not involving Donald. But can you really picture Donald helping Scrooge through another Magica yarn like it weren't no thing, after saying his piece here? Really?
As you say, looking at the hard facts, there's no reason everyone can't shrug it off and have Magica come back with another cockamamie plot in the next issue. That's the price Rosa had to pay to get the story past the publisher. But dramatically speaking, it's just not satisfying that things would revert to the status-quo after this.
(Note also how both Scrooge and Magica might quite possibly be lying to themselves about the reason the amulet didn't work. Magica's theories about the Midas Touch have always been a bit, well, quacky, and Scrooge is desperate to know for sure that he's the richest there's ever been. Too desperate. A perfectly valid reading of Croesus Treasure is that it has Magica discover proof that the the Amulet of Midas is just a myth.)
King Crœsus's Treasutre (Scrooge's rivalry with Magica ends)
I read through The Treasury of Croesus in order to experience this. Scrooge and Magica's rivalry ending - that would be statues-quo-changing! It would be an important event in Duck-universe history! However... no...? There's no indication that this would be the end of their rivalry. In fact, this is Magica's last line of the story:
She's telling him that this ISN'T the end! That's the opposite of end! Did I miss something?
And sure - we're told that Donald is wise because he says that it is foolish for Scrooge and Magica to constantly fight over gold. But those are the words of HDL. Scrooge and Magica don't seem to agree at all!
I agree that this isn't the last of what we see of Magica, although she does disappear from my timeline for a couple of years while other villains take the lead. Rosa prefers to use her for his short physics-breaking stories (On a Silver Platter, A Matter of Some Gravity, and Forget It!), but she doesn't she doesn't play a strong sentimental role in the stories (even her role in Croesus is purfunctory), so I relegate most of her stories to the mid-1950s.
(In my view...) Magica's earliest appearance in a Rosa story is in early 1952, in Of Ducks and Dimes and Destinies. You might argue that Magica's time travel magic is game-breaking, and should therefore be one of the later stories, and you would have a good point. But since the framing device of that stories is Scrooge telling a story after a dinner at Donald's, I thought it would be nice to put it during the Great McDuck Calamity. Donald doesn't mind Scrooge's stories all that much yet, and Scrooge is not yet in the habit of telling them. Her next appearance is in the summer of that year, in On a Silver Platter. I can't remember why I placed story precisely here. The most noteworthy elements are that Magica suffers a defeat and Scrooge fires his two detectives on Mount Vesuvius. This means he doesn't know of her movements in the months leading up to... A Little Something Special, fall of 1952. We've discussed this one. There's little going around it. Her next appearance is as a portrait in Cash Flow, which takes place in 1953. During this time, a Barks look-a-like is wanted by the police. (See also: The Christmas Cha-Cha). Magica returns with a vengeance in A Matter of Gravity and Forget It! in '55 and '56. There's very little about these stories that suggest certain dates, but it's around this time that Duck stories are starting to get weird. Invading Beagle Boys are one thing, going to the center of the earth is quite another. We then follow this up with Magica's strangest attack yet, The Treasury of Croesus in late '56. She vows to be back soon, but no. Maybe she's after Flintheart Glomgold for a while or something. The next time we see Magica is in a cameo, in Attaaaaaack!. Again, it's difficult to know when this story takes place, but the appearances of the Brutopian consul and Arpin Lusène suggest that this is pretty late. I have it down as 1960 at the moment, as part of Donald's mental breakdown that year, though that one is subject to change. Scrooge seems to be a little out of nutmeg, if you know what I mean. The last Magica story? I nominate The Quest for Kalevala. Mainly because of where Scrooge is at in the stage of his character development.
Does Magica ever change her ways? Who knows. But not in The Treasury of Croesus. What do you think?
I agree that this isn't the last of what we see of Magica, although she does disappear from my timeline for a couple of years while other villains take the lead. Rosa prefers to use her for his short physics-breaking stories (On a Silver Platter, A Matter of Some Gravity, and Forget It!), but she doesn't she doesn't play a strong sentimental role in the stories (even her role in Croesus is purfunctory), so I relegate most of her stories to the mid-1950s.
(In my view...) Magica's earliest appearance in a Rosa story is in early 1952, in Of Ducks and Dimes and Destinies. You might argue that Magica's time travel magic is game-breaking, and should therefore be one of the later stories, and you would have a good point. But since the framing device of that stories is Scrooge telling a story after a dinner at Donald's, I thought it would be nice to put it during the Great McDuck Calamity. Donald doesn't mind Scrooge's stories all that much yet, and Scrooge is not yet in the habit of telling them. Her next appearance is in the summer of that year, in On a Silver Platter. I can't remember why I placed story precisely here. The most noteworthy elements are that Magica suffers a defeat and Scrooge fires his two detectives on Mount Vesuvius. This means he doesn't know of her movements in the months leading up to... A Little Something Special, fall of 1952. We've discussed this one. There's little going around it. Her next appearance is as a portrait in Cash Flow, which takes place in 1953. During this time, a Barks look-a-like is wanted by the police. (See also: The Christmas Cha-Cha). Magica returns with a vengeance in A Matter of Gravity and Forget It! in '55 and '56. There's very little about these stories that suggest certain dates, but it's around this time that Duck stories are starting to get weird. Invading Beagle Boys are one thing, going to the center of the earth is quite another. We then follow this up with Magica's strangest attack yet, The Treasury of Croesus in late '56. She vows to be back soon, but no. Maybe she's after Flintheart Glomgold for a while or something. The next time we see Magica is in a cameo, in Attaaaaaack!. Again, it's difficult to know when this story takes place, but the appearances of the Brutopian consul and Arpin Lusène suggest that this is pretty late. I have it down as 1960 at the moment, as part of Donald's mental breakdown that year, though that one is subject to change. Scrooge seems to be a little out of nutmeg, if you know what I mean. The last Magica story? I nominate The Quest for Kalevala. Mainly because of where Scrooge is at in the stage of his character development.
Does Magica ever change her ways? Who knows. But not in The Treasury of Croesus. What do you think?
I'm not sure if we discussed this specific idea on this forum yet or not, but I actually thought the exact same thing about Of Ducks, Dimes, and Destinies occurring in between A Christmas for Shacktown and Gyro's First Invention. I don't know if I read about that idea here or just came up with it on my own. The only issue is that Scrooge mentions "my place" in Destinies, but Donald and one of his nephews say in Gyro's First Invention that Scrooge was living with them during that time. Perhaps they just meant that Scrooge was coming over so often that he essentially lived with them, though he did have a residence elsewhere which he was referencing in Destinies.
I personally place Attaaaack! in 1954 because of the ledger seen in it bearing that date, but I reckon that my dating is also influenced by my desire to have the timeline end in the mid-1950's, while your timeline stretches out much longer.
I definitely agree that The Quest for Kalevala is the last story for Magica. I view it as one of the last "present-day" stories on the entire timeline. It is, however, not really a "normal" Magica vs. Scrooge story in the sense that the two are not fighting over the number one dime but another object. I assume that Magica and Scrooge's conflict surrounding the dime had resolved before that, though Magica still has a distaste for Scrooge.
No matter what I say or do, know that Jesus loves you.
Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Sept 9, 2020 0:47:06 GMT
Yeah, I definitely have no issue with placing "Kalevala" after "Croesus". Within a Don Rosa canon, I simply think that Croesus marks the end of the "increasingly complex schemes to get the Dime" face-offs, but it needn't be the last time Magica visits Duckburg! I'm unsure why Attaaaaack! would need to be post-Croesus, though, though this of course depends on quite when one places a whole bunch of other stories.