Well I finished the book. It was sooooo great. Don Rosa himself says that this he does not see his work as the official bio of Scrooge. Actually I don‘t know any other version but if I had to decide if this is the official version or not, I would say YES! I think every artist that draws Disney comics in any country of the world should relate to facts given in this books. The facts themselves are taken from stories by Carl Barks who invented Scrooge. It all goes back to him.
In this book there are some weird things that have to do with German translations and that Italian and Danish artists treat certain characters a little different.
First of all check out this family tree done by Don Rosa: FAMILYTREEARONI
In Germany it is like this: Grandma Duck always calls Scrooge „brother“. The fun thing is that his German name is Dagobert and Grandma Duck and the Beagle Boys call him Bertel. Another unusual thing is that of course Gladstone, Fethry and Donald are cousins. But Fethry and Gladstone both call Scrooge Uncle here in Germany. I explain it to myself like this: they only do it because Scrooge is some kind of authority for them. Let’s be honest: Scrooge is the family leader.
Than Daisy Duck: Huey, Dewey and Louie (and their missing brother Phooey *haha*) always call Daisy Aunt. I just read that the father of the triplets is Daisy’s brother. That would make Donald the double Uncle of his own nephews as soon as he marries Daisy.
Then Gus Goose. I think we all know the Donald movie where Gus has his first appearance. There he eats all the time and Donald gets really angry. This movie is called „Donald’s Cousin Gus“ (watch it on Youtube: YOUTUBERONI). Now looking on the family tree you can see that Donald and Gus are no direct cousins. They only share the same great-grandparent. In Germany Gus Goose (his German name is Franz Gans) calls Grandma Duck „Frau Großmutter“, something like „Madam Grandma“. That made me always think that he also is a direct cousin to Donald and so Grandma’s grandchild. So Grandma for him is only his grandaunt, the same what Scrooge is for Donald. OMG, this family tree messed up so much things that I thought to be true. The problem is, that there is no official version of anything. Every artist uses his own family relationships. There are differences between Italian artists and artists working for Egmont Ehapa in Denmark. I think even the Dutch artist have their own characters that aren‘t even mentioned by Don Rosa.
In the Simpsons comic (yes they are a good example), you have facts given by the TV series. Of course every artist uses his artistic free space to bring in his own ideas but compared to the Disney universe they are much closer to the original TV series than most of the Disney-artists. OK, the Simpsons still run on TV. But the fact that the movie is from 1939 doesn‘t make Gus stopbeeing Donald’s cousin. I mean the story of this movie even was made by Carl Barks.
Well maybe I have to accept that there are many parallelly going universes. I wished they were a bit more consequent in some points…
Follow the little red DUCK.
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