Somebody’s First Comic Book: Uncle Scrooge #27

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TITLE: Uncle Scrooge and the Money Champ

CREDITS:
Writer: Carl Barks
Art: Carl Barks
Letters: Garé Barks
Publisher: Dell Comics

PRIOR KNOWLEDGE: Uncle Scrooge. Donald’s uncle. Richest duck in the world. We’ve all seen the cartoons, right?

IMPRESSIONS: In “Uncle Scrooge and the Money Champ,” Scrooge encounters another particularly wealthy duck, Flintheart Glomgold. Thanks to some handy expository dialogue from his nephews, we learn that Scrooge and Glomgold have gotten into it before, with a contest to see which of them had acquired more wealth, and Scrooge literally won by having more string. Well, both ducks have made more money since then, and Glomgold challenges him to a rematch, to be accomplished by converting everything they own into silver dollars and measuring the piles. (Why they don’t just have their personal belongings appraised by an impartial third party is beyond me.) As they begin to build the huge mountain of silver dollars, Scrooge and the boys are worried that Glomgold is going to cheat, which let’s face it, he almost certainly will. Great story – funny, with familiar characters, and even the tiny bit of prior knowledge necessary to understand this comic is given to us by the nephews. But that’s just the lead story, there are a few others…

TITLE: Gyro Gearloose and the Firefly Tracker

IMPRESSIONS: Gyro Gearloose, Scrooge’s wacky inventor friend (if my knowledge of the Ducktales cartoon holds true) decides to invent a machine that will track fireflies to as his entry in the Inventors’ Congress exposition. The invention works, but it’s a bust with the judges, until he finds an alternative use. It’s a short story, but a solid one that gives you everything you need.

TITLE: Uncle Scrooge and His Handy Andy

IMPRESSIONS: The next story brings us back to Scrooge, where the world’s richest duck is entering a yacht race. His fancy craft, the “Handy Andy,” is full of gadgets and gizmos to help him win. It’s a fun story, watching Scrooge whip out the right device for any given situation. He kind of comes across as a show-off at the end, though.

TITLE: Uncle Scrooge Crawls For Cash

IMPRESSIONS: The book ends with a half-page gag strip about Scrooge, laid up with a broken leg, showing just how greedy he can be.

Overall, this is really the perfect comic for a new reader. Every story is self-contained, except for the quick mention of the previous Glomgold story, but the script gives us more than enough information to know exactly what the history of that character is and why he’s significant to Scrooge and the nephews. If you’ve ever seen an Uncle Scrooge cartoon before, this comic book won’t present the slightest problem for the beginning reader.

GRADE: A