I'd have Flintheart's father have been an adventurer, who left his native Scotland while in his younger 20s, and emigrated to The Orange Free State in the late 1850s, and soon married an Afrikaner Boerman's daughter. The father helped run his father-in-law's large farm, and later, inherited it. He became wealthier by finding a small diamond mine in The Kimberley Strike between 1868 and 1871, before DeBeers had a monopoly over the area.
Flintheart was born about 1870, or so, and grew up on an estate in a wealthy (but not super-wealthy) household. His conservative father wanted his son to know all about how farming works - not to be a lazy, pampered, wealthy elite landowner that would just count on his hired help to run his land empire. But Flinty was lazy, and didn't like the hard work of farming. Flintheart didn't like learning farming "from the ground up". He wanted to get wealthier without working hard. He Got richer than he would have been just inheriting his many hectares of highly productive farm and ranchland, and his father's estate, by stealing other (hard-working) miner's claims during the early 1880s second wave of The Kimberly Diamond Strike (in The North Cape Province, near the border of The Orange Free State), and later, in the mid-to-late 1880s, in The Witwatersrand Gold Strike in The Transvaal. Later, during the 1890s through the 1950s, Flintheart added to his large fortune through oil strikes, and chemical industries, shipping, manufacturing, and many of the diversified industries which Scrooge also branched into. Despite his making much money from legitimate businesses in legitimate industries, Glomgold generally got into his solid ownership positions, through trickery, chicanery, and dishonest behaviour (not unlike Rockefeller, Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Rockerduck, and the other "Robber Barons"). Of course, he grew up bilingual, in Afrikaans and English (Scots dialect- so he and Scrooge can insult each other in an especially understandable way). Like Scrooge, Glomgold was self-made in the real World of cut-throat business school of hard knocks, not attending university.
Well, there are two published stories that are relevant: Wejp-Olsen & Anderson/Branca, The Top Treasure in Town (Quest for the Curious Constable), and Jensen/Rota The Glomgold Heritage. INDUCKS notes that The Glomgold Heritage was not intended to be a sequel to The Top Treasure, but it can be read that way. Both stories include Flinty's grandfather, Stoneheart Glomgold, and The Glomgold Heritage has a photo of and characterization of his honest and kind mother.
"The Glomgold Heritage" goes far as to tell how the Glomgold family moved around the UK and Africa—and why. Flintheart's father, Brickheart, is also introduced and shown.
As unscrupulous as he is, it is sad that he's the only character, even among the villains, who has zero backstory.
"The Glomgold Heritage" isn't intended to be a sequel to "Top Treasure," but starts with its lore and expands from there, covering the point in Barks that Glomgold felt his mother would be ashamed of his villainy. It's a careful attempt to expand the canon by two prominent, renowned comics creators—I think it's absolutely valid as a backstory.
Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Aug 4, 2020 15:35:11 GMT
I forget its name, but there's also that one Vicar(?) story where younger Scrooge and Glomgold were both errand boys for the same grocery store once… anyone remember the title?
I forget its name, but there's also that one Vicar(?) story where younger Scrooge and Glomgold were both errand boys for the same grocery store once… anyone remember the title?
Of course! It appeared in the last issue of the Dutch Uncle Scrooge, the one album that appeared after all the Rosa stories were published. Vicar's Plunkett's Emporium!
Hector I think with that story Rosa very eleganty told everything about Glomgold's past that we need to know. Anything else would be superfluous. Glomgold is an archetypal "evil twin" so the reader can easily imagine his life from the end of The Terror Of The Transvaal until him meeting Scrooge in The Second-richest Duck.
Hector I think with that story Rosa very eleganty told everything about Glomgold's past that we need to know. Anything else would be superfluous. Glomgold is an archetypal "evil twin" so the reader can easily imagine his life from the end of The Terror Of The Transvaal until him meeting Scrooge in The Second-richest Duck.
That's true, but I think you're not giving Whatever's position the credit it deserves. I understand that position to be: “Terror of the Transvaal 's Young Glomgold is exactly what you could expect a younger version of a scumbag like Modern Glomgold to havebeen like, but that's a waste of a great opportunity to add new complexity to the character; a good story of Glomgold's youth should take things in an unexpected direction, and shed new light on the psychology of the present-day Glomgold, rather than simply give an Occam's Razor account of what kind of person one might expect to grow up into Modern Glomgold”.
There’s also another Vicar story where Scrooge and Glomgold knew each other when they were young : inducks.org/story.php?c=D++9346
Jensen and Rota’s “Glomgold Heritage” was nicely drawn, but story-wise it was pretty meager; there was no real plot, just a sequence of events that didn’t really go anywhere. I still enjoyed it, but it shouldn’t prevent other creators from using a different backstory for Glomgold when needed.
Looks like Glomgold’s mother makes a cameo in a new story by Pat and Carol McGreal and Giorgio Cavazzanno, published last week in Lustiges Taschenbuch 536.
No idea about the context though—it hasn’t even been indexed yet. Interestingly, they used Rockerduck’s mother’s appearance from an old Scarpa story, where she was a nurse in the Klondike.
There's also this, a story about young Scrooge and Glomgold as poor adventurers in Egypt. Can't find any scans unfortunately, and I have no bloody clue where my 30 year old comic book is. inducks.org/story.php?c=D+89276