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Anthropomorphism Week continues with Duck Day 2: Duck by Dawn! Another great duck in comics is today's, who is, surely, the richest member of the family Anatidae since the goose that laid the golden egg.

Yadda yadda, archive. Onwards!

6/5/07

156. Uncle Scrooge McDuck

Never before has a funny animal version of a Charles Dickens character been more beloved! Okay, maybe that's a heap of faint praise, but Scrooge McDuck smashed his way into the Disney mythos in 1947 in an issue of Four Color by the brilliant Carl Barks. Scrooge is Donald Duck's obscenely rich, miserly old Scottish uncle who takes his nephews and grand-nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie on wacky adventures. It saddens me to say this, really, but I'm such a young'n that I didn't even know Uncle Scrooge originated in comics and not cartoons! Well, unless you count a propaganda short called "The Spirit of '43," but that old dude was never named and probably isn't official or whatever.

But, yeah. Scrooge loves money, especially coinage. In fact, he loves money so much, and he's so stinkin' rich, that he's replaced almost every watery or water-based substance in his life with money. He swims in it, bathes in it, sleds on it, and even soaks his feet in it! Let's not forget the other things he does with money: he launders it (not in the illegal way), fans himself off with it, sleeps under a blanket of it, wallpapers his home with it, turns it into a musical instrument, wears it as a lei, hang glides over it, and, er, cooks with it, for some reason. He's even proved that money does grow on trees.

I've only got a handful of Uncle Scrooge comics myself-- old smelly hand-me-down comics, but they're great fun. Hell, they must be, as Scrooge has survived multiple publishers and numerous reprints. We've had Dell issues, Gold Key issues, Whitman issues, Gladstone, Gemstone... but Uncle Scrooge perseveres!

And of course, he starred in the fantastic cartoon DuckTales (woo-hoo!). You can't beat that.

Now, everyone adored Carl Barks' work, and, well, of course they did! Why not? Heh. There is one man who can be considered Barks' successor, though, and that's Don Rosa, who crafted one of the best Scrooge stories of all time, The Life and Time of Scrooge McDuck. Trust the reviews-- from our main man Brian Cronin; from pop culture aficionado Tom the Dog; and from Randy Lander, the internet's favorite comics reviewer.

Uncle Scrooge is an international star, baby! The comics are everywhere. So what the hey, if you're not familiar with Scrooge McDuck-- or even if you are-- dive into the ol' money bin and dig up some great treasure.

And click into the Wiki while you're at it; quite informative.