Customer Reviews

Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge: The Golden Fleecing (Gladstone Comic Album Series No. 19)

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Only two Stories in this Comic, but wow these are gems.
The Cover story, THE GOLDEN FLEECING takes up most of the comic, and STAMPS OUT CRIME is a brilliant way for H,D and L ( Huey , Dewey and Louie) to basically get their way, and outwit Uncle Scrooge.
The essay inside of the Front cover is extra-ordinarily useful. It covers how essential, or really, Quintessential, the Retelling of the golden Fleece story is, and how Carl Barks got his way despite censorship restrictions.
Both Stories are perfectly suited to the young ones, and also brilliant for the older fans.So much of this is just extremely re-readable, and so very layered, that it is a great item for the price and will provide a lot of entertainment for the Ducks fans.
I really do not want to say too much about the story except that it is an "in-search of" type of Duck Adventure funded by Scrooge; really, anything I say will not be helpful, just that it is great, and if you know the two source versions of the Golden Fleece, then you will probably get more out of it, but even if you don't it is still a very, VERY good adventure story for any Duck fan.
Carl Barks succeeds again in creating two superb stories ( Although Barks does not write STAMPS OUT CRIME, he does draw a brilliant piece).

In the late 1980's, Gladstone Comics release a set of Comics albums in a large 11" tall graphic novel format. The albums collected classic Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge from the 1940's to the 1960's as drawn by Carl Barks, who also wrote almost every story he drew. Barks was know as the good duck artist for decades before collectors knew his name since Disney did not allow artists to sign the stories back then. I read Barks as a kid in the late 1960's and early 1970's and knew his art was different than the other duck artists at Disney, but did not know his name until many years later. I started collecting the Gladstone reprints in my 20's during the 1980's and still have them today.
In this issue we have:
1) "The Golden Fleecing". Originally published in Dell Comic Uncle Scrooge #12 in December 1955. It is an exciting tale with gold treasure, mythical creatures, a rescue by the nephews and so much more. A huge 32 page Uncle Scrooge adventure story, with art & script by Carl Barks.
2) The next Uncle Scrooge story was not drawn or written by Carl Barks, but produced by the European comics Gutenberghus Group, with a script by Geoffrey Blum. Gladstone used to publish translated versions of these stories, but most Scrooge fans preferred the Barks reprints.

The Barks story is worth the price of the book alone, an original comic of the book would cost 10 times what this reprint cost, and you get the comic reproduced from the original black & white art with new coloring.

Growing up in Australia in the late 1950s, I enjoyed Australian reprints of American comics, as well as local comics, and especially "Classics Illustrated" (comic-books based on classic novels).
But for me the best comics of all (excepting a handful of brilliant "Classics Illustrated" issues --notably "The War of the Worlds", "The Time Machine", "The Downfall" [Zola], "Caesar's Conquests", "The Red Badge of Courage", "The Man Who Laughed", "The Prairie", "King Solomon's Mines" -- some illustrated by great comic-book artists) were Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck.
Years later I realised that the best of the Uncle Scrooge tales were written and drawn by Carl Barks -- a man to place beside Herge of "Tintin" fame!
Barks is a star, also comparable, for arguments' sake, to Dr Seuss!
Barks was not just the creator of Scrooge McDuck (Topolino, in Italian), of course.
Donald Duck sometimes has a major role, as in the great Christmas story when Huey, Dewey and Louis ask Santa Claus for a steam shovel! Marvellous! (Scrooge has a bit-part in this saga, as I recall.) This is a story to rival "How the Grinch Stole Christmas".
Of these, several Scrooge titles stood out, including:
-- his epic contest with Flintheart Glomgold as they unrolled massive balls of string across Africa;
-- his journey into the marvellous subterranean world of the Terries and Fermies;
--his exploration of the Seven Lost Cities of Cibola (my favourite);
-- his extended struggles to preserve his cubic acre of money from a horde of lemmings, or from the wicked Beagle Boys; and
-- his encounter with a "Hiawatha"-verse speaking tribe of dwarf Indians who happen to live in a mineral-rich wilderness.

"The Golden Fleecing" is probably my second favourite after "The Seven Lost Cities of Cibola".
Both get some of their greatness from their foundations in an ancient tale or legend -- Jason's search for the Golden Fleece, and the Spanish exploration for ancient Indian gold.
(Another tale founded on something "ancient" is a Scrooge version of the Ruskin fairytale about the King of the Golden River -- but this is a rare Scrooge comic-book.)
"The Golden Fleecing" begins as a mystery: who are these strange old ladies who fascinate the ducks?
Rather than spoil a brilliant story, and give away secrets of the initial mystery, please take my word for it -- "The Golden Fleecing" is one of the great comic-books -- and very funny! One of the greatest, ever!!
Rhubarb and parsnips will never be the same again!
Barks', and Scrooge's exploration of Jason's epic voyage should be compared with Tim Severin's marvellous boat-re-creation and historical re-enactments!

John Gough -- Deakin University -- jugh@deakin.edu.au