Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Scrooge McDuck originally portrayed as the epitome of greed and heartlessness in the Disney version of A Christmas Carol? And now he’s some good guy? Get the fuck outta here. Also he has a coin vault he swims in daily. Now what the fuck is that all about?
This book was a big part of my radicalization. I already knew from my local context how the biggest bourge newspaper (owned by one of the og capitalist families) here brought Donald Duck into the country and started publishing it to “help kids learn to read” and I always thought it was sus.
The comic soon became the go-to kids comic here that was also loved by adults, it was never questioned on anything other than a dumb moral panic about the ducks not wearing pants. The first baby picture ever taken of me was with this comic to show how small I was. My dads side was Whites and they had collections of these comics that ended up being the only comic I ever really was exposed to as a kid. This and the far worse Italian Donald Duck stories that I felt were vile even as a kid reading them.
I have thrown away my pretty large collection of these since. I cannot read them anymore and not see it. I always hated the misogyny in them even as a girl reading them, but these days I cannot overlook any of the settlerism, colonialism, racism… Disney is such a tool for US imperialism.
what happened in italian donald duck?
Those stories were always very ruthless and mean, they have a fully different vibe to them. There is a separate comic book series that is published here that is mostly these Italian writers work. The only story type I ever sort of enjoyed in them was Donald as the superhero, because that felt like a redemption arch for him. The way his failures and person tends to be portrayed is very demeaning. I think he is one of the few actual prole characters of Duckburg. Closest thing I can think of to compare them to is modern AmeriKKKan comedy where individualism and meanness is often the point.
My favourite Donald Duck story writer was a Chilean guy called Vicar whose Donald stories were more about him working in the margarine factory and stumbling in his various side hustles that always seemed very neurodiversity coded so I related to them. They were still very brainwormy but often more empathetic to the failures of Donald Duck.