Uncle Scrooge already has all types of adventures; as a character that’s been around for nearly a century, he’s certainly had time for them. Creators – from his original creator, Carl Barks, to hundreds of cartoonists worldwide – have put him in strange scenario after strange scenario, literally to the moon and back. He’s a swashbuckler, a Klondike gold-farmer, and he’s done battle with aliens.
Rarely has a comic put so many types of Scrooge adventures together like they’ve been put together in Jason Aaron’s Uncle Scrooge: Earth’s Mightiest Duck.
Earth’s Mightiest Duck is perhaps the most American superhero-leaning that a Scrooge McDuck story has ever been; it should feel familiar to any longtime reader of that genre. There’s a bit of Spider-Verse to the book, a bit of Crisis on Infinite Earths. The book has a feeling that a summer crossover event might have, slamming a wide array of characters together so that they might overcome a great evil.
That wide array of characters just so happens to be a collection of Scrooge McDucks pulled from Scrooge’s memories. This is a team-up of Scrooge’s past selves.
Marvel
An evil race of alien collectors has taken over the world: they seek to seal away all of Earth’s great treasures in mylar bags, where no one will ever be able to see them again. After hoarding all the classic art and sculpture, all that remains to be collected is Scrooge’s treasure, which he has somehow smuggled from the Money Bin and hidden from them. The story follows their memory probes as they attempt to prize the secret from Scrooge’s very brain.
Aaron celebrates Scrooge’s long history of adventures, pulling versions of the character who may feel familiar to readers of classic Scrooge adventures. Young Scrooge is here, fresh from his hard work shining shoes; Scrooge “Buck” McDuck, a sort of cowboy Scrooge of the Old West stands alongside a Scrooge in armor who once protected Castle McDuck. By building an adventuring party of Scrooges, we can see that he has always been Tougher than the Toughies.
Marvel
Outside Scrooge’s memory, the nephews – Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and even Gladstone Gander – make up a cyber-punk underground resistance. They don’t play a hand directly in Scrooge’s story, but their inclusion adds depth to the larger conflict; they also happen to be the most badass part of the story.
This book also resembles American superhero comics more than any other Scrooge story has, for one simple reason: the book has been illustrated by some true luminaries of that field. The inclusions of artists like Esad Ribic or Pete Woods – artists who are masters of their craft and whose art feels lively and powerful in a superhero setting – only highlight that not all Duck artists are created equal. There are cartoonists who have made it their life’s mission to fluidly ink Donald Duck, and few of these superhero guys can touch that iconic, animated world. It’s interesting to see them try, and – as with Adam Kubert’s pages – it’s charming, but the book works best under the trained Disney cartoonists like Andrea Freccero and Lorenzo Pastrovicchio.
Earth’s Mightiest Duck is a wonder of a tale, and a great celebration of its characters. It crosses two classic comic sensibilities – the early adventure tale and the massively popular superhero genre – in such a way that never feels hackneyed or cliché. It’s a truly unique experience, handled by fantastic creators.
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