What I Learned from Multiple Supermen

Last week seemed like Superman week, and a bunch of stuff happened. It was Superman's 75th birthday (Happy birthday, Superman!), the Siegel lawsuit against DC for the ownership of Superman finally ended, and the new Superman: Man of Steel trailer came out. The most interesting thing to me was what a friend said in relation to that trailer:

I wonder if general audiences are more forgiving of characters that aren't as recognizable. Everyone has a preconceived notion of who Superman and Batman are so if they screw that up, it's much more critical. I don't think general audiences came in with a strong preconceived notion of who Thor, Hawkeye, and even Captain America are. I didn't really, so I was more ready to accept their version. I think it's a unique problem that makes Superman especially harder.

And that got me thinking, because she was right. We do tend to judge fiction by what we've seen before—I know someone who has never read a Spider-Man comic in her life, but judged last year's Amazing Spider-Man movie harshly because (and I'm not kidding about this) it didn't follow the exact same story in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies (never mind the fact that it couldn't have and that would have been storyline suicide), right down to Tobey Maguire's more built body in comparison to Andrew Garfield. And even if we try not to judge by those standards, we still assume people do—a friend told me that I didn't like the Nolan Batman movies because it didn't live up to my views of Batman, which I just thought was weird because I grew up with at least three or four different versions of Batman, and my problems with the Nolan Batman movies are problems I would have with any movies, or any works of fiction, for that matter.

You could make the argument that there is a correct version of Harry Potter, or maybe even Captain Marvel considering that no interpretation of his past the Golden Age has been anywhere near as critically or commercially successful, even if you scale down to relative fan sizes (the most popular hero of a generation, or a backup hero meant to entice hardcore fans? Not a comparison), and even that's already an argument. Don Rosa's Scrooge McDuck may be the closest thing to Carl Barks' Scrooge McDuck, but no one says the Scrooge McDucks not done by Barks and Rosa aren't "real." Cranky, miserly Scrooge McDuck who does whatever he can to not show emotion in the Barks comics is as "real" as the cranky, miserly Scrooge McDuck who's more open with his feelings in Duck Tales.

But for someone like Batman or Superman, it just seems silly. There may be wrong interpretations, but there isn't just one correct interpretation. It's impossible, and it goes against one of the greatest strengths of these characters: their adaptability.

When I was a kid, I was inundated with a lot of Superman material. These included, in no particular order because I actually can't remember the order I got these in, the Christopher Reeve Superman movies (complete with a comic adaptation of III), a digest reprinting Silver Age Superman stories, scattered issues of John Byrne's Superman, the Super Powers Superman action figure with the minicomic, Jack Kirby's Super Powers comic, and a bunch of Bronze Age comics, including Superman vs. Spider-Man: The Battle of the Century. What did these versions of Superman have in common? Well, aside from the suit, him coming from the planet Krypton, the basic power package, his secret identity as Clark Kent, and Lois Lane? Almost nothing.

And when you look at all the different versions of Superman, you can see there are many choices to be made, many aspects to his personality that need defining.  To name a few:

• Do you use clumsy Clark Kent like Christopher Reeve, or do you use hard-boiled get-the-story Clark Kent like George Reeves?
• Is Krypton a scientifically advanced utopia, like in the Silver Age, or a too-scientifically-advanced and emotionless planet of detached and disconnected people, like in Byrne's version?
• Did Superman come to Earth as a baby, as in most versions, or as a full-fledged grownup, as in the radio show?
• Are Clark Kent and Lois Lane married, dating, or stuck in that Clark-Lois-Superman triangle where Lois doesn't even know his dual identity?
• Is Clark Kent a newspaper reporter, a TV anchor, or anything else that has to do with the news?
• Does the S stand for Superman because Ma Kent made the suit, or does it stand for hope in Kryptonese?
• Does Superman embrace his Kryptonian heritage, as he does a little too much before Crisis on Infinite Earths, or does he, as Byrne established, place the Earth so far above it that Kryptonian culture ultimately doesn't matter to him?
• What's with kryptonite? Are there multiple colors and are they plentiful, or is there only green and it's rare?
• Does Superman kill when he has to, as Byrne made him do in a well-received story involving Phantom Zone criminals, or does he absolutely never kill?
• Are Ma and Pa Kent alive or dead? Or is Ma Kent alive and Pa Kent is dead? Which is it?
• Can he fly or only jump an eighth of a mile?
• Was he Superboy when he was younger or wasn't he?

Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, apparently went on record that DC ruined Superman the moment they gave him flight. It sounds so preposterous now, because flight is so ingrained in our image of him, but there was a time when he couldn't fly and apparently that was a big enough deal that at least one person thought changing that power ruined him. And this is a pure preference—that's his version of Superman, the one he thinks is ideal. It's not wrong to prefer it. It can't be.

My ideal version of Superman? The really powerful version with a Fortress of Solitude in the arctic, complete with the Bottled City of Kandor and multiple versions of Kryptonite, who loves Krypton but also loves Earth, and has accepted that the Earth is his home now. Ma and Pa Kent are both alive, and he's married to Lois. Clark Kent is a hard-boiled reporter and not a clumsy act, Lex Luthor is a businessman, Brainiac is from Krypton, and Superman doesn't kill—ever. Other superheroes can kill when they feel they have no choice and their hands are pushed, but Superman will not, and things will be fine, because that's the Superman in my head. He always finds a better way. And guess what? That Superman has never been published, ever. It's just too specific a version. There are too many factors.

Some want a more human, more relatable Superman, and while I don't get the appeal of that at all, it's still what they want, and variations of it have been known to work. Maybe not for me, but they worked. People really love that Byrne run, and Smallville did run for 10 seasons.

And I guess that's what I learned from growing up with multiple versions of Superman. There is no "right way" to do him. There are many wrong ways to do him—I think we can all agree, for example, that the infamous Kevin Smith anecdote where Jon Peters told him to make sure the Superman in his movie didn't fly, didn't wear a suit, and had to fight two polar bears and a giant spider would have been a bad idea.

It's SO funny though.

But for a right way? There isn't one. Superman has at least two classic versions: the very powerful version who's surrounded by fantastic trappings and who lets humanity find themselves, or the less powerful and more grounded version who tackles more social injustice than otherwordly evil. These two versions are not compatible. They cannot coexist at the same time. They could, perhaps, be different endpoints for the arc of the same character, but all those traits all at once? They don't mix. They can't mix. They're contradictory. Superman can't say "We need to let humanity fight its own battles" and then punch a lobbyist. He can't say he misses Krypton and then say he doesn't care about Krypton in the same story. Superman can have diametrically opposite versions and they can work. Superman is an adaptable character, but unlike someone like Spider-Man, who can adapt as the same character over time, Superman has to be rebuilt because his character aspects are so either/or that there really is no middle ground. The same is true of Batman.

I think they key is to hone in on the pulse of your intended audience. That's what Siegel and Shuster did back in 1938, when they introduced Superman as a two-fisted champion of the oppressed who took the law into his own hands and even fought corporate lobbyists, because America was still in a depression and people needed that kind of proactive attitude. It was only a few years later when Superman got turned into the perfect All-American boy, complete with eagle on his arm, which reflected America's role in World War II. Christopher Reeve gave the world a hero to admire in the midst of a time when they were cynical about it, but that same approach didn't work 20 years later when they tried it with Superman Returns. (And what were they thinking putting the star of Action Comics in a  movie with barely any action?) But even Brandon Routh's Superman is a Superman, as valid and as real as the rest of them; he was just the Superman in a really underwhelming movie.

It's obviously easier said than done, and sometimes it'll work and sometimes it doesn't, but I think the phrase "That's not Superman!" should be used in a more sparing fashion. Sometimes it's true, but more times, it's not. There's just no such thing as a "correct" Superman, and liking one version doesn't preclude you from liking the others. There are almost always pieces in any version that you like or don't like. The Man of Steel trailer may not have done anything for me, but I'm still glad he's actually, you know, punching someone in it. I love the zaniness of the Bronze Age Superman, but think it went too far sometimes, like that one time Clark Kent actually ate his costume to hide it and then said at the end of the story that it will come out all right (seriously, ew). I may not have liked what John Byrne did with Superman, but he laid a good enough foundation that I enjoyed the work of subsequent creators, especially Roger Stern's.

There's more than one way to do things. And there's nothing wrong with accepting multiple interpretations of one character. Maybe we shouldn't be so stringent about how we think these characters should be like, and maybe we should learn to let go when a writer doesn't capture our vision—after all, it's his vision, not ours. And there's nothing wrong with liking more than one version. My favorite time to have been a Superman fan since I was a kid was in 2007, when Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely were doing All-Star Superman and Geoff Johns and Gary Frank were doing Action Comics. Both Supermen were different characters, and I loved both and wanted them both to continue. All-Star was the closest version to the one in my head, but Action was the one I was showing non-comics-reading friends, because it just had such wide, primal appeal.

Maybe, instead of sticking hard and fast to our ideal versions of a character like Superman, we should be celebrating his adaptability, and encouraging DC Comics to put out multiple versions instead of pushing one "real" version. Because there is no one real Superman; just a collection of trappings that make up any version of Superman. And as long as those trappings are satisfied, it's all "real."And as long as an interpretation speaks to the target audience, then it deserves some room to breathe. Even contradictory ones, at the same time.

Interview: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

Last week saw the release of The Adventures of Superman: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, featuring, as far as I know, the first collection devoted to the man who's likely known best as DC's licensing/merchandising artist. (One of the things he's best known for is the 1982 DC Style Guide, and he still does some of the model sheets today.)

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez has always been one of my favorite artists, both in terms of drawing iconic poses and in terms of sequential interior artwork. So I grabbed that collection up, and it's some really good Bronze Age fun, with one of my favorite artists drawing one of my favorite versions of Superman.

So I decided to chat with Mr. Garcia-Lopez via Facebook and ask him some questions about his work, what he's proud of, the Superman collection, and of course, what's he's up to.


Comics Cube: You've drawn quite a number of characters over the years. Which one is your favorite to draw?

One of Garcia-Lopez's works
he's most proud of is
Cinder and Ashe, which he
did with Gerry Conway

JLGL: The ones I've created are my favorites for obvious reasons, followed by Batman, Jonah Hex, Deadman, and Wonder Woman.

As I'm sure many of your fans do, I think of you as the "face" of DC Comics due to your licensing work, which, by its very nature, doesn't explictly credit you. One of the comments I got most often when I wrote that article on your work a couple of years ago was "I've seen those drawings all my life, but I never knew who drew them!" Do you ever wish you got more recognition for this aspect of your work from more casual fans, or even from hardcore comics fans?

My comics production has been minimal and even less in recent years, so yes, anything that promotes my work in those licensing drawings are welcome for professional reasons.

What goes into an iconic pose? How do you pose, for example, Superman or Captain Marvel, and say, "Yes, that's it. That's them, and that's the image that should go on a kids' backpack"?

Most of these characters—at least the big ones like Superman, Wonder Woman,or Batman—were around before I was born, so we are not working in a vacuum. We already know what poses work better according to the characters' personalities. Anyway, the rules governing these pieces are different from the comic books. They are not directed to a regular comic fan but to a more general audience, one that is not familiar with the latest changes in comics and looks at these characters as something not different from a Coca-Cola logo, for instance. Usually I do at least three sketches for each pose, and the Art Director, Merchandising Manager, and a bunch of other people have the last word over what pose is going to finish.

An example of Garcia-Lopez's merchandising/pin-up work.

I've also noticed that some pieces of yours incorporate words. Does incorporating words or logos into a graphic take a different kind of mental process, or is it all part of the same kind of thoughts that go into designing?

The only pieces that I did integrating lettering and design elements were the ones I did for the first DC Style Guide in 1982. I presented those layouts as a whole and they were approved without any major alteration. Nowadays I concentrate only in the poses and then they are used with different backgrounds and graphic designs ,mostly digital during the last decade.


What is your penciling process like when doing a full story? While you don't do a lot of interior work, but your layouts and sense of composition are so dynamic without feeling cluttered. You break panel borders and do unconventional things (one of my favorites is the one where Wonder Woman throws Superman to a wall, and all the action is outside the panels — it really gives a sense of kinetic energy). I have to ask, how much thought do you put in when it comes to laying out a page? Do those storytelling decisions just come naturally or instinctively, or is it a more cerebral process?


There's nothing special. When I read the script or plot a couple of times, I can visualize right away the sequences and take note of references I'd need. Then comes the page layout. At the beginning I just concentrate in telling that story sequence in the best possible way. This is a very rough stage. When I feel happy with the way I can "read" the drawings, then I start playing with bigger or smaller panels or taking a character outside the panel lines to give more emphasis to the action. Everything is very intuitive. The basic rule here is no matter the way you do it, never betray the spirit of the script.

Garcia-Lopez is fond of
Twilight, which he did with
Howard Chaykin

If you had to choose just one comic book that you've drawn that really defines your skills, which one would it be?

I have at least three books I consider my favorites for different reasons. One is Twilight, the others Cinder and Ashe and Road to Perdition. The first has a lot of visual tricks to enhance the some way complicated story, while the others are straight storytelling. No fancy layouts there. You just have to read the books and not being distracted with pin-ups or splash pages.

If the day ever comes that you walk away from DC Comics, what other iconic characters (it doesn't have to be Marvel) would you like to tackle? Would you be interested in creator-owned material?

I've never intend to do "iconic" characters. They just came my way, that's all. So, I'd be open to anything that may allow me to draw and tell stories.

Can you say a few words about the Superman collection that's coming out soon? What are your fondest memories of it? What is your favorite story in it? And how does it feel seeing it in print after all these years?

Well, it's a nostalgia trip showing "the ugly, the bad, and the good." I grew up as an superhero artist doing Superman, and the first works are quite weak, but thanks to editors like Julius Schwartz or Joe Orlando and their confidence on me, I could get, finally, a some way decent Superman. All stories are good, but my favorite is Superman and Deadman. Besides the great Len Wein story, I was more confident at that time with these characters and I think it shows in this particular work.

Garcia-Lopez is also very proud of
his work on Road to Perdition.

Are there any writers in particular you'd like to work with?

I've been lucky to work always with talented writers and if I tell you names I'd risk forgetting some of them.

What can we expect in terms of full comic book work in the foreseeable future?

Not too much, I'm sorry to say. I'm not good material for keeping a schedule in a regular book, so I concentrate more in licensing/merchandising stuff and in comics just one short story here and there. Nowadays I'm working in a couple of Western stories with a character named Madame 44.

Finally, I just want to say thank you again for taking the time to answer my questions. You've been one of my favorite artists since I was a child and I first read the Batman/Hulk crossover, and you continue to be. My friend has what he calls that "Garcia-Lopez Law of Awesomeness," which means that "As long as it's awesome, it's okay if it doesn't make sense," because I once said that I don't care if Batman kicking Hulk in the stomach is ridiculous — you just drew it so convincingly that I still buy into it. So thank you again.

Well, thank you!


Get Adventures of Superman: Jose Luis-Garcia Lopez on Amazon!

Get Cinder and Ashe on Amazon!

A Sense of Wonder: Don Rosa and The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck

Welcome to the a new installment of A Sense of Wonder, a feature of indefinite length in which I detail the wonderful (and I mean that in the purest sense of the word) and imagination-inspiring aspects of the characters in the comic book medium, which would emphasize the superheroes, but would not be limited to them. Click here for the archive.

Over a year ago, Back Issue Ben recommended to me The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, by Don Rosa (not to be confused by Uncle Scrooge: His Life and Times by Carl Barks). So I tried looking for it, and... well, see for yourself. Luckily, I mentioned it to my buddy Peter, and he had a copy, and we met up one day and we lent each other comics, and I dug into The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck about a week later.

So, long story short, I loved it. Regular Cubers know I've become a huge fan of Carl Barks in the last year and a half, and the only exposure I had to Don Rosa prior to this was his "The Dream of a Lifetime" story that went viral a couple of years ago because people kept saying Inception ripped it off. What I didn't know about "The Dream of a Lifetime," though, as much as I enjoyed it, was that it was an epilogue to Rosa's Life and Times.

The basic concept between Life and Times, which came out in the mid-90s, is to show Scrooge McDuck's life before his first appearance in "Christmas on Bear Mountain," and would tell the story of how Scrooge got his riches. Rosa was meticulous about it, as he took pretty much every flashback, reference, and offhand comment Scrooge ever made about his life prior to Bear Mountain and organized them into a coherent timeline, right down to dates (and some of them exact dates). Rosa also tied that all together with heavy research into the history of the era and geography, such as the Gold Rush in the Yukon or the lives of Teddy Roosevelt.

Long-running serialized comics, of course, can't help but be exercises in continuity, which is fair, because a lot of modern creators, having grown up with these characters, are big fans. However, a lot of the time, the desire to address continuity tends to take over the story, and it becomes a case of the tail wagging the dog. It's not uncommon for hardcore fans to create things like lists, timelines, and spreadsheets detailing every little bit of minutiae about a character. That's how wikis and websites get their traction, obviously. And Rosa does much the same thing here, but he never forgets to put the character first. While he does fill in the blanks of Scrooge's life in 12 chapters, he makes it a point to make each chapter a pivotal moment in that life. When did Scrooge decide to stop trusting people? When did money take over his life in such a way that he couldn't appreciate the finer things anymore? These questions and more are addressed in an excitingly adventurous, emotionally charged way that doesn't dilute the comedy and humor you'd come to expect from a Scrooge McDuck story. Certain "answers," such as where Scrooge got the red shirt he always wears, are used as a short gag. In other words, if there's a story in it, Rosa told the story, and if there's a joke in it, he told the joke. Often, he told both.

As you might expect, throwaway comments made in Barks' long run would eventually lead to continuity inconsistencies, and Rosa threw away a few "Barksian facts" and adjusted others (as he did with some historical facts as well), all depending on what made for a better story. But the level of research, both in terms of reading a lot of Barks and in terms of reading history books, was tremendous, and evident in the book. There are even diagrams illustrating gold prospecting. That's how intensive Rosa's research was, and it's all detailed in his notes at the end of each chapter. But he wasn't beholden to it—if certain things needed moving around for the sake of drama (such as where things actually were geographically situated in the Yukon), he'd change what was needed. For Rosa, the story and the characters came first, and the challenge was to make the timeline fit, not the other way around. The timeline was the challenge, and as a result of his meeting that challenge, his love for the characters comes through.

Then there is the way the story is actually told. Rosa doesn't deviate from Barks' usual pattern of two columns and four tiers (I'm sure it has something to do with how the stories can be cut up and reformatted for differently sized reprints), and so you're not dazzled by fancy layouts and "grand achievements of design." Which is not to say that it's not well-thought-out, because it is. It just means that it's able to immerse you in the story pretty much completely just by telling the story, and without any fancy tricks. In fact, the only "fancy trick" Rosa constantly used is the same one Barks did: the masking effect, the idea of rendering more detail into background elements than in the main characters, when necessary. Rosa worked with pens instead of brushes, and as a result was able to be a bit more detailed, a bit more liberal in his rendering than Barks. Used sparingly and to great effect, it emphasizes drama and scale. The first time we walk into Castle McDuck, we're taken in by the immense amount of detail Rosa put in the columns and the stones. And when Scrooge visits his mother's grave for the first time, the moment is powerful.

Rosa also brings in an influence that wasn't quite so evident with Barks: cinema. While Barks' storytelling was clearly informed by his background in animation, Rosa makes no secret in his notes about "stealing" scenes from various movies (including one scene homaging the opening to Citizen Kane). And indeed there are many scenes where, while reading it, I can almost hear some kind of score in the background, adding to the drama of the moment. When Scrooge first meets an adult Donald at the end of the book, it's—and I hate to say this word because it's so overplayed, but there's no other word for it—epic. I had to just stop reading right there and take the page in.

As I read more and get older, occurrences of that kind of reaction from me happen less often, and when they do happen, I have no choice but to hold those moments in high regard.

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is by necessity a bittersweet book because Scrooge McDuck is a miserly hermit when he makes his first appearance, and it's the story of how he got to be that way. But there is so much humor and fancy in it that the contrast to the tragic elements of Scrooge's life are highlighted by the juxtaposition. One minute, Scrooge is catching Flintheart Glomgold (before they first officially met) on the Transvaal, riding herd on a bunch of animals, and the next you realize this is the moment Scrooge stopped trusting people. One minute, he's participating in a Scottish tournament and swimming in a muddy lake to save his (potentially resaleable) golf ball, and a few pages later, he's saying goodbye to his father, for what you realize is the last time.

As he gets older and harder and richer, Scrooge manages to push his family (his sisters Matilda and Hortense, the latter of whom is Donald's mom) away and value money almost exclusively. And yet that is one of the strengths of the Scrooge McDuck character—the front he constantly puts up. It's not about the money, and he knows he's losing his family, but he doesn't know how to fix it, and he constantly convinces himself that he has all he needs in life. When Donald confronts him at the end of the book, saying that his life has garnered him nothing but money, Huey, Dewey, and Louie set him straight, because they realize, as Scrooge realizes, that their reunion is a chance for Scrooge to reclaim that which he pushed away, and more, that the money in Scrooge's Money Bin will never be spent, not because Scrooge is a skinflint (he is), but because that's the money he earned with his own two hands since he left home to support his parents and his sister when he was 13 years old. In other words, the coins' value is not monetary; it's all sentimental—the same kind of mentality that Scrooge constantly denies throughout the book as having.

And yet we can see through him, and love him for it.

When I put down The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, I instantly checked to see if it was still in print, and it wasn't. But what was in print was The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion, which I promptly asked Sandy from Comic Odyssey to get me.  It came in two weeks, and it was as good as the first volume. In the Companion, Rosa fills in the blanks of his own story, telling stories in between his own chapters, for no other reason than, by his own admission, the desire to do so. These stories aren't as tragic as the ones in the first volume, as these are mostly told in flashbacks and so we see Scrooge as he is now with Donald and the boys in the framing sequences, but the stories are no less entertaining and powerful. There's a time travel jaunt that involves Magica de Spell (I'm surprised at how little I've read of Magica, actually. I thought she was always prominent.) trying to steal Scrooge's #1 dime before Scrooge ever earned it, a third adventure with Teddy Roosevelt, and "The Dream of a Lifetime," which I mentioned early on in this article.

"The Dream of a Lifetime" (which you can read in its entirety here) is the best way to end this journey, because Scrooge goes from one dream to another, and each dream is him reliving one of his adventures (while the Beagle Boys try to invade his dreams and steal the combination to his safe, and Donald invades his dreams and tries to stop them). When at his wit's end with only one card left to play, Donald manages to shift Scrooge's dream over to his days at the Yukon, and when the last Beagle Boy tries pushing that Scrooge around, Donald responds:

And it's such a cool moment. There really is no other way to describe it—I got goosebumps reading it, because having read the entirety of Rosa's epic at that point, I really felt what was coming: a royal Scrooge McDuck butt-whuppin'!


Scrooge in the Yukon means Glittering Goldie O'Gilt, the Star of the North, and Scrooge's "the one that got away." Goldie is an interesting character because she showed up once in Barks' stories, but made a clear impression on a young Don Rosa, because he clearly enjoyed telling the story of how Scrooge and Goldie never made it. And that's really, for me, the highlight of the Companion, and maybe even the whole epic in general. Rosa really fleshes out Goldie, making her far more than, as she's been called, Scrooge's version of Irene Adler (Though this may be a weird statement. None of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's successors ever wrote the definitive version of Sherlock Holmes after him the way Don Rosa did Scrooge's.). She has her own goals, her own fronts, her own lies to both Scrooge and herself, and her own hopes and dreams that get in the way of those aforementioned goals. She's stubborn, out for herself, and headstrong. Truly, the perfect girl for Scrooge, if only he could get her to earn her money square.

Goldie takes center stage in two stories. The first one, "The Prisoner of White Agony Creek," tells of the fateful month Scrooge took Goldie prisoner and forced her to work on his claim. (Barks had previously shown only the start and end of that month.) It is there that we find out what Scrooge's most prized possession is, and when the scene cuts back to the present day and the nephews debating what it is, Scrooge merely looks at the thing in question, looks back at them, and smiles with a knowing "No." Even though Scrooge didn't end up with Goldie, he at least took something with him: his memories of the one girl he came close enough to trusting and loving.

The second Goldie story, "Hearts of the Yukon," details how the two of them tried to meet each other after Scrooge made Goldie leave White Agony Creek, how it just wasn't to be. It shows their feelings for each other that were only available to the reader and no one else, and of the choices they made, all told in this elegant balance of whimsy, humor, drama, suspense, and, ultimately bittersweetness.

With characters that make you feel, interspersed with intensive research done not only on Barks' original stories but also actual history, featuring characters like Wyatt Earp, Buffalo Bill, Geronimo, and Teddy Roosevelt, Rosa's story was a clear challenge for the creator, and he meets that challenge head-on, and his love, more than his technical aptitude (which he has plenty of) or anything else, comes through. As I'm writing this, I'm reminded of Don Rosa's essay on why he quit, which went semiviral on the internet a few days ago, and as incredibly heartbreaking as it is because of the many reasons (chief among them his failing eyesight and the Disney corporate comics system), I felt that one part was really moving and reassuring somehow:

I have written in these volumes innumerable times that I am not a professional. I am a comics fan whom someone allowed to create comics. And ultimately I’ve even realized that’s more true than I even thought! Everything I’ve done, every professional move I’ve made, was because I love stuff that I did not create.

Fans who did know what an unfair system we Disney comics people work in have often said to me “you’ve made a name for yourself now! Why not stop this thankless work and produce comics of some character that you create yourself?” And publishers have often told me they would publish anything I decided to create for them. But my reply has always been “Any character I might create next week… I would not have grown up with that character. I wouldn’t care about him. My thrill is in creating stories about characters I’ve loved all my life.” I’m a fan.

When I finished both books, I went online and did research on the Duck family. What happened to Donald's sister Della? Who did she marry/who was the boys' father? Where was Glittering Goldie now? It made me want to learn everything about the characters, and you know what? It's been a long while since I felt like that. And when looking for a word for "that," the only one I could come up with was "fan." Typically these days, when I put a book down, my reactions are about what this writer is doing with this character, how a story might go given the constraints of corporate entertainment, the technical adeptness of this artist. But with The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck? All I can think of is how good it was. And how cool the characters were. And how full of wonder the stories were, themselves.

And I've just spent over 2,000 words trying to explain it, and I still think I don't do it justice. It's that good. It's that cool. It's that wonderful. And if you find these at affordable prices, pick 'em up. You won't regret it.

And now, for your benefit, the Donald Duck/Scrooge McDuck family tree: