"Poster 12 - Sixty-One Christmases with Uncle $crooge"
"Poster 12 - Sixty-One Christmases with Uncle $crooge"
As the 12th pin-up would appear at Christmas, the true and exact 60th anniversary of $crooge's first appearance! The first appearance of $crooge was in a Christmas story in a Christmas issue! In fact, Barks' name for his new character (in the American originals) was "Scrooge" after the character in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"... Dickens' "Ebenezer Scrooge" was not especially wealthy, he was just greedy and sour. If $crooge McDuck had first appeared in a story at any other time of year, Barks probably would have named him "John Rockerduck" or a name indicating a *wealthy* character. But Barks had given his character a Christmas name... So my answer was to have the "big finish" pin-up spotlight $crooge McDuck as a Christmas character created for a Christmas story. And this is now his sixty-FIRST Christmas appearance!
Don Rosa got the idea of making the 12th poster a Christmas poster from an e-mail exchange of ideas with the Norwegian Duckfan Sigvald Grøsfjeld (WEB-master of these pages!!!) who listed the famous Barks $crooge stories that wasn't featured in the first 11 pin-ups - including several Christmas stories.
Clockwise from top-left:
- In the upper left & right corners of the page appear $crooge offering Donald the Bear disguise worn in that first story Christmas on Bear Mountain (DONALD DUCK FOUR COLOR #178)
- Spanning the entire page below that is the scene of $crooge leading his parade of the "Twelve Days of Christmas" from the story The Thrifty Spendthrift (UNCLE $CROOGE #47)
- A horse poorly disguised as a reindeer, pulling a rented sled (seen on the opposite side of the page) in Letter to Santa (WALT DISNEY'S CHRISTMAS PARADE #1)
- Donald tries to trick Uncle $crooge out of a free Christmas feast by disguising himself as a fellow millionaire businessman in Turkey with All the Schemings (WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #148<)/LI>
- A combined scene from Uncle Scrooge's Christmas Carol (LITTLE GOLDEN BOOK #D84) published in 1960. Barks provided the art for this illustrated children's storybook about $crooge's nephews disguising themselves as the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present & Future and causing their uncle to experience the Dickens story of his namesake character.
- A giant Christmas Tree being hoisted atop a Ferris Wheel next to Duckburg City Hall in Christmas in Duckburg (WALT DISNEY'S CHRISTMAS PARADE #9)
- A toy-train rescues some of $crooge's lost money in A Christmas for Shacktown (DONALD DUCK FOUR COLOR #367)
- The Ducks enjoy a white Christmas (due to volcanic ash) on a tropical island while hunting black pearls in The Black Pearls of Tabu Yama (CHRISTMAS IN DISNEYLAND #1)
- A submarine search for a sunken ocean liner in Search for the Cuspidoria (WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #172)
- $crooge forcing Donald to dress up as a cut-rate Santa Claus to fool Huey, Dewey and Louie in Letter to Santa (WALT DISNEY'S CHRISTMAS PARADE #1)
Central scene:
A "generic" picture of a smiling $crooge wearing a Christmas wreath made out of $
D.U.C.K.-SPOILER:
Look at the top of the hats of four of the twelve drummers, at the upper left corner.
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