(spoilers for the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck - King of the Klondike)
I’ve been rereading the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck again and no matter how many times I read it the raw pain of the scene above always hits HARD:
Rosa never really elaborates on what happens between the time Scrooge rips the river boat apart and he finds the goose egg nugget but I can’t imagine it was a particularly happy time in his life. This lead me to coming up with the drawing below which takes place shortly after he returns to the cabin from Dawson after the incident above. In it he finally has some time alone by himself to reflect on the stark cruelty of what has happened to him personally and the reality sinking in of the loss of his mother. On the floor beside him are what’s left of the letters from home that he fished out of the wreckage ‘cause you just KNOW he went back in for them.
source: goldiejake11
This right here is what sold me on Scrooge McDuck as one of Disney’s greatest characters. Even though the hard hitting emotions were glossed over, but the layers and layers of aching loneliness, pain, humiliation, being hunted, and being reduced to nothing but the clothes on his back and watch and dime in his pockets made me see this little Duck in a whole new light. I know the ache of feeling ostracized and isolated from family for years. I know the pain of losing a parent. Seeing Hulk Scrooge at his strongest, when he was the most broken, and imagining how Scrooge processed the loss of his mother, all alone, with nothing but wilderness around him, and nobody he could trust for thousands of miles, gutted me.
This art is perfect. I head canoned the same thing about him going back for the torn letters. I’m curious about the spots on the floor? Is that mud from walking home?
If I may add, I like how that scene is written, I like that you, the reader, get to learn about Scrooge’s mom’s passongbat the same time he does, but what the reader would most likely feel is sadness and compassion for this hard working duck we have been following, and we see with satisfaction, yet pain, how he let’s his anger out.
I love the art at the end on OP’s post. It works well as closure for the reader.
Scrooge Mcduck is one of the most beloved characters in the duckverse and, in the end, he is the main protagonist.
This is his story and the story of his family (and his favorite nephew)
