Uncle Scrooge 21

[Matilda]

OK, whatever shows up this weekend, U$ 21 is going to rank as one of the best Christmas presents I get this year. Such a joy to have The Substitute Santa (The Orphan's Christmas) in English...and speaking of the dialogue, I particularly appreciated Byron Erickson's "Peat, don't fail me now!" You'd suspect that the whole scene had been set up to make that line possible...except that it wasn't written to be published in English only. It's a delight to get a new chapter of Scrooge's early life which is L&T-compatible. I'm always happy to get a new, interesting female character, and as a redhead, I'm naturally pleased that the Scrooge of today has such fond feelings for a redheaded girl he shared an adventure with as a kid. I hope Brenda went on to have a great life in Scotland!

And speaking of female characters in Duck stories, I was very happy to see the back-up story, The Roundabout Rally. It's my favorite of the Belle Duck stories I managed to read before any were published here. The last panel always reminds me of Kathi Maio's review of the movie "Mystic Pizza", where she comments on the fact that the final scene unusually shows the female characters in an embrace of friendship. How often does this appear in Hollywood as the climactic scene? How often does this appear in Duck comics in *any* scene? Pretty cool.

[demiscy]

Even though I cut back on some IDW Disney comics, I couldn't resist buying the XMAS U$ 21
I really enjoyed the story!

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Great how the "Substitude Santa" cover makes it look like the classic "Life and Times" cover… In France, that story was straight-out advertised as a new chapter of L&T.

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Knowing nothing about the story beforehand, when I first received this issue and flipped through the pages, I thought Brenda was actually Matilda. Although the story was very enjoyable, I was somewhat disappointed that Scrooge's parents and sisters did not appear. Oh well, I guess we'll get to see them when IDW prints "Donald's Homemade Christmas". Also, I wish we could have seen what became of Brenda ... it would have been nice to learn that Scrooge has been in touch with her all these years, and she now runs a charitable organization dedicated to supporting children's homes or something similar, and that Scrooge is a secret benefactor to her cause ... continuing to justify his description as having a "soft heart". I also liked that despite her pompous demeanor and brusque manner, Lady Meddlesome's motivations were ultimately shown to be altruistic ... for a while there it looked like she was being set up as the crook. And the art in this story was great! The only sore point ... it strains credulity that Mr. Jolly/MacMiser doesn't see through "Prudence"'s disguise, since he clearly is acquainted with Scrooge in the beginning of the story.