acara:
>>>>>A couple of days ago I saw the recent addition on Peter Kylling’s website of the Scrooge biography written by Carl Barks himself, although undated... Honestly, I had not known it existed. By going through it I see that Barks himself recognizes that Scrooge’s ancestry dates back at the time described in "King scrooge the first". Now, this is something that has been completely dismissed by Don Rosa (his own writing at
http://duckman.pettho.com/mcduck/history.html ).
So, I am now wandering whether Don Rosa had known of it and, if so, why he decided to dismiss it anyway.
No, I never knew about this "brief biography". My first reaction is that I wonder what proof there is that Barks did write it? Why would he write it?Where has it been all this time? Perhaps it surfaced during the recent selling-off of every scrap of paper from Barks' personal files that was conducted, I assume, by his heirs. And which I thought was rather a sad thing to do with the personal papers of such a great man. But then, it's none of my business what they do with their inherited property.
As this includes a reference to the final U$ story Barks wrote, we know it was therefore written after he retired. But WHY would he write it? I'm puzzled.
But I find it amusing if he *did* write it, and I'd like to think he *did*. Ever since I did my own "Life of $crooge", a few die-hard Barks fans have accused me of improperly stringing together loose facts from old Barks stories and of assembling a definite biography of $crooge that Barks never intended. And here we see that Barks himself had already done it, even with siting issue numbers to support his own "continuity". Hah!
But why would this change what I think about what was in "King Scrooge the First"? I already knew Barks wrote that story. And I still feel about it exactly as described in that link that is included above. Perhaps "acara" did not know that "King Scrooge the First" is well-known to have been written by Barks?
And still, the reference to that story is odd in that it's the only item in the short text not accompanied by an issue number where the story appeared. Also odd that it states that the "McDuck lineage can be traced back" 4,000 years, when that is not shown in the original story. The story involved some sort of "genetic memories" induced in the Ducks by potions. I mean, how can any lineage actually be traced back forty centuries?! Half the people on the planet are now probably related in some way to a Middle-Eastern potentate of 2,000 BC. Even if I didn't "dismiss" the details of that story, that sort of preposterously distant lineage would be senseless to mention in a biography.
But still, nobody knows what my final lineage of the McDuck family might have been since those pages were rejected from my original rough draft of chapter 1 of my "Life of $crooge" -- had that sequence been left in the story, I don't know what my final version of the McDuck ancestry would have been. I have no idea what I would or would not have included in a lineage I never completed.
(However... I'll still have to admit that I would *not* have included any reference reaching back forty centuries!)