Uncle Scrooge’s Father (February/March 2001 | Volume: 52, Issue: 1)

Uncle Scrooge’s Father

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Authors: John Steele Gordon

Historic Era: Era 9: Postwar United States (1945 to early 1970s)

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February/March 2001 | Volume 52, Issue 1

 

It was, perhaps, fate that I ended up writing business history for a living, for when I was still young enough to have my nose buried in comic books, my favorite character was Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck’s billionaire uncle. Scrooge loved money and saw not the slightest reason to be embarrassed about having a great deal of it. Indeed, he loved to swim through the contents of his money bin, which measured a wonderfully meaningless “three cubic acres” in size. Usually aided by his nephew Donald and grandnephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, Scrooge had excellent adventures. Once he added one dime too many to his bin and the floor collapsed, sending his fortune plummeting into an underground cavern. Another time, when his bin simply wouldn’t hold another dime, Donald volunteered to help Scrooge spend the excess. Learning at a fancy restaurant that a cherry on top of his sundae would cost an extra five dollars, Donald ordered a handful, while Scrooge nearly had apoplexy. But Scrooge wasn’t a miser either. In one story, he had a limousine so vast that it featured a secretary complete with office among its amenities.

Scrooge McDuck has been in the news lately because his creator, Carl Barks, died last year at the ripe old age of 99. His long life nearly coincided with the rise of an invention that, seemingly trivial at the time, would have major consequences throughout the creative world (see, for instance, the article on pop art in this issue): the comic strip.

Although grounded in caricature, which dates from the Renaissance, and in political cartoons, which began in the eighteenth century, the comic strip dates only to the 1890s. It differs from its ancestors in that it does not deal with real people and features continuing characters. The modern comic is also a purely American invention. The first real comic strip is generally regarded as being The Yellow Kid , drawn by Richard F. Outcault. It initially appeared in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World in February 1896. It was an immediate hit, and William Randolph Hearst quickly hired Outcault away for his New York Journal. Pulitzer just as quickly raised the ante, and Outcault returned to the World . The escalating offers and counteroffers for The Yellow Kid , part of the ferocious circulation war between the two press barons, gave rise to the expression yellow journalism. Within a few years most major newspapers had “funny papers,” and the founding of King Features Syndicate in 1915 allowed cartoonists to build national reputations (and earn handsome incomes) by appearing in many newspapers at the same time.

Carl Barks was born on an Oregon farm. Partially deaf as well as living on an isolated farm, he had a rather solitary childhood, a condition that often leads to an active imagination. He left school at 15 and earned his living