The legendary artist Carl Barks created Scrooge McDuck and chronicled many
of his most popular adventures. In addition to superb storytelling and wonderful
entertainment, he left behind a character who was not only rich in his stories,
but one for whom the stories themselves were rich.

Modern master Don
Rosa, beginning in 1994, undertook the task of recounting Uncle Scrooge’s past
in a serialized epic. The wonderful result of his efforts is now being collected
in trade paperback form by Gemstone Publishing as The Life & Times of
Scrooge McDuck. The book is in the April 2005 Previews from Diamond
Comic Distributors.

“Carl Barks did something that a lot of great
comics creators do: he created a handful of characters and situations with
seemingly limitless potential,” said David Gerstein, Archival Editor for
Gemstone Publishing, who is also a noted Disney author and historian. “But
then-and this is the critical difference between Barks and many of his peers-he
repeatedly explored that potential and successfully realized it so often,
in so many different ways, that his work is more inspiring, more ‘living’ than
that of many other comics creators.”

“Like so many other
authors upon whose work others have expanded, Carl Barks had the ability to
include a wealth of throw-away lines and ideas into his scripts,” said
John Clark, Gemstone’s Editor-in-Chief/Disney Comics. “As an example, I’m
reminded of a Sherlock Holmes short story by Arthur Conan Doyle in which Holmes
merely mentioned to Watson an adventure in which they’d encountered ‘the giant
rat of Sumatra.’ Doyle himself never wrote the tale of the rat, but later Holmes
chroniclers have used that single statement as a springboard for new adventures
of their own. Barks did the same thing. He’d have Scrooge comment about
‘outfoxing the Dalton Gang’ in one comic, or ‘gold prospecting in Australia’ in
another. It is literally those off-hand references that Don Rosa utilized in
constructing his Life of Scrooge series.”

The Life &
Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa can be found on Page 311 of the April 2005
Previews. It has been expanded to 264 pages in full color and will sell for just
$16.99. Next week Scoop will feature an interview with Disney Comics
Editor-in-Chief John Clark about this monumental project.