Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
. . . or: "STILL MORE Evidence That Carl Barks Was the Greatest Comics Writer of All Time. . . Bar None. (No Foolin')"
Good gravy,
people -- !! 
The previous two-page entry on the marvelous, never-to-be-equaled thirty
years-plus Carl Barks era, re: the Disney ducks occasioned more e-mail
commentary -- all of it wildly enthusiastic -- than any offering(s) on
this site since way, waaaaayyyyy back when the BATMAN
and JUSTICE LEAGUE pages first went up!
Contrary to popularly-held opinion: this is one li'l plush toy
who doesn't need a ramshackle, Kansas-style farm house dropped on top
of him, a la the late Margaret Hamilton.
More Barks youwant...? More Barks it is, then.
... and may I take this opportunity, incidentally, to congratulate you, one
and all, on your excellent taste...?
It may well startle the recent Barks initiate to discover that the canon was actually somewhat unclear as to whether or not Scrooge McDuck -- he of the "three cubic acres" money bin; who enjoyed nothing better than "burrowing through" his mountainous piles of Mammon "like a gopher" -- was, in point of fact, The Richest Man In the Whole, Wide World or not.
Certainly, recurring character (and nemesis du jour) "Flintheart Glomgold" was ready and willing to debate the issue -- anytime, anywhere.
The rapacious fellow Scotsman (who was every bit as miserly and nakedly opportunistic as Scrooge himself... only minus the latter's adamantine scruples, re: the notions of fiscal "Fair Play") lived his life in a constant state of Slow Burn, nettled to the nines over the notion that any man or mallard could possibly be counted wealthier than he.
The two drakes waged all-out, devil-take-the-hindmost fiduciary war over the issue, time and again, throughout the length of the Barks run on such titles as UNCLE SCROOGE ADVENTURES and WALT DISNEY COMICS AND STORIES. And -- if the issue was never, ultimately, settled and done with, once and for all -- the well-crafted (and devilishly entertaining) stories did, certainly, serve to better illuminate the more admirable aspects of Scrooge's character, by way of storytelling comparison. Glomgold thought nothing whatsoever of using mischief; mayhem; or even (attempted) murder, in his never-ending attempts to attain the coveted status of "World's Richest Duck" at Scrooge's expense. The latter, to his eternal credit (to say nothing of the reader's relief), always eschewed any and all behaviors unfit to the demeanor of a sportsman and gentleman. (Albeit a greedy, penny-pinching and obsessive one.)
In fact: one of the very finest of the Barks-scripted UNCLE SCROOGE tales -- the oft-reprinted (and for darned good reason, I might add) "Pipeline To Danger" -- serves as adequately as any entry within the canon entire to illustrate how, precisely, the nonpareil Mr. Barks deftly managed to render so wantonly self-centered and opportunistic a character as Scrooge McDuck an endearing and (ultimately) sympathetic one to the readership of the day. The tale is one well worth the recounting.
Surveyors for McDuck Industries have discovered gargantuan oil deposits, situated beneath the hitherto-unexplored grounds of an all-but- secret valley somewhere in the trackless wastes of the Sahara. Scrooge -- never one to bypass the opportunity to make even so much as a nickel's profit on a business venture, much less a potential windfall of these proportions -- quickly arranges a journey to said site, there to personally oversee reclamation of the bounty.
Scrooge enlists his nephew Donald in the venture, as well, in order to teach the latter a little something about the oil game. The trio of Huey, Dewey and Louie are allowed to tag along, as well... but with the express understanding that -- being (as Scrooge so cavalierly phrases the sentiment) "little operators" -- they are to stay well out of the way of the expdition's more (putatively) "adult" members.
Upon arrival at the Sahara site, the ducks are confounded by a series of (seemingly) inexplicable mechanical failures and setbacks, re: the retrieval of the oil. As it turns out, said snafus are the deliberate handiwork of some real "little operators": an entire tribe of miniaturized mallard Bedouins, who have been living, undiscovered, within the confines of the desert valley for generation upon generation.
Scrooge's mechanized oil-retrieval paraphernalia has been wreaking untold havoc with the delicate eco-system of the micro-mallards' secret Shangri-La, and so -- their attempts at sabotage proving inneffectual, in the face of Scrooge's counter-efforts -- they abduct the startled explorer and entrepreneur, so that he might receive all the benefits of a fair trial before being summarily (*gulp*) executed for his "crimes."
As a frantic Donald attempted to discern the whereabouts of his missing uncle, Scrooge was locked in a desperate battle of wits with his centimetric captors; a contest which contained a rapidly-dwindling time element as one of its components, as well. Prior to his having been rudely kidnapped, Scrooge had already given Donald explicit orders to have the valley -- in which he, himself, was now secreted from view -- flooded, in order that the drilling site might have a permanent and dependable water supply! Unless the canny skinflint could escape from his durance vile, or else communicate the nature of his plight to a distracted Donald: scratch one "umpty-gazillionaire."
Had the three all-but-ignored Junior Woodchucks not been on site, as well -- their tracking and outdoor survival skills, as always, at the ready -- Scrooge might very well have ended up the first waterfowl in all of recorded literature to perish from drowning.
As the chastened, now-humble (for the nonce) penny-pincher himself observed, in the aftermath of his adventure: compared to both his resourceful, quick-thinking nephews, and the self-preservering tiny tribesmen... it was, in retrospect, he who most merited the appellation: "little operator."
Barks was a shrewd enough storyteller to have made absolutely certain that Huey, Dewey and Louie seldom (if ever) came up "short" in the Common Sense department. He understood the emotional and intellectual needs of his intended audience as well as (if not better than) any scripter ever to grace the comics medium. Allowing the three kids to suffer humiliation or ridicule -- under any but the most outre oof storytelling circumstances -- would have betrayed the sympathies and expectations of the very pre-adolescents on whose largess the Disney titles were predicated.
Life -- when you're still four-foot something (or under)
-- is tough enough, surely, without being forced to endure the smug, self- congratulatory
shenanigans of the so-called "grown-up" world in your own escapist literature.
I'm just sayin', is all.
I've received a great many intriguing e-mail queries from would-be initiates
into the Barksian mythos, requesting elucidation on one aspect of the canon
or another. It is on these aspects we shall, therefore, focus our attentions
on the following page. Everyone: bring your copies of The Junior
Woodchuck Handbook along with you. )
"MORE COMIC BOOKS," YOU SAY...?
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