Uncle Scrooge #4

Uncle Scrooge #4

Main story Written and Drawn by Miquel Pujol
Inked by Celeste Parramon and Mait Lopez Espi
Colored by Ehapa Verlag GmbH & Digicore Studios
Lettered by Tom B Long
Translated by Gary Leach

Backups by Al Hubbard, Alberto Savini & Andrea Freccaro

I’ve got one serious problem with this issue of Uncle Scrooge. Only two of the three available covers feature Scrooge being greedy. The third is an image of him and Donald swinging through a jungle, and  even if it is related to the story inside, fails to properly sell Scrooge as a character. The other two covers are great gags, showing us two sides of Scrooge’s personality. In the first, a brazen display of pride, Scrooge plays basketball in his vault with a giant diamond and a net strung with bills. The second shows Scrooge shamelessly fishing pennies out of an amusement park pool. Combined, they tell the reader all they need to know about Scrooge. Sure, he’s got his fortune, but it’s never enough, and it never will be. He’d be despicable in real life, but as a cartoon duck, we love him for it because his foibles make for some really funny comics.

Since acquiring the Disney comics brand recently, IDW has done a solid job entertaining us with Scrooge, Donald and company. Each issue features a main story, a backup, and a one-pager thrown in for good measure. Gary Leach supplies the translations for the great Italian cartoonist Miquel Pujol. (In Italty, this is Uncle Scrooge #408. Wow!)Pujol works in a Disney house style, but he sure knows what to do with it, filling pages with little flourishes and details to reward even the most casual read. Pujol captures emotion well, and he captures movement superbly, as characters faces explode in fits of rage and they zip around like the manic hot heads they are. This is one comic that also still uses thought balloons, and one of the issue’s best gag’s comes from Scrooge’s thinking thoughts too murderous for words, as he instead fantasizes images of him dropping his enemy out of a plane. The inkers make Pujol look great, with slick lines of varied weight, and even the letterer, Tom Long, does a great job with some wavy word balloons that look entirely hand drawn. It’s a class act all around, and on a kid’s comic, no less.

Of course, this being a kid’s comic, the target audience probably isn’t as invested in the shape of the word balloons as I am, and luckily the stories hold up as well. It’s a mystery of drastic consequences.  A strange, shifty stranger shows up, claiming to be the descendent of one of Scrooge’s old business partners, a partner whom Scrooge agreed to split all his earnings with 50/50 way back in 1898. Of course, Scrooge is reluctant to meet the man’s terms, and sets out on a quest to keep his fortune, as well as investigate a hotel he owns that’s hemorrhaging money. It’s the first half of a two-parter, and it’s got enough details to keep kids guessing, but enough is omitted to keep even the sharpest adults in the dark.

The backup is a solid, clever yarn about an old flame of Scrooge’s come to visit. Disney comics are typically clever, and Uncle Scrooge is typically the cleverest of them all. This issue is no exception. A delight for Duck fans new and old.