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New From The Twighlight Manor Press: 2008 Calendar

Twighlight Manor Press on LuLu
Twighlight Manor Art by Wendy C. Allen 2008 12 month calendar
All art, drawings, and paintings by Wendy C. Allen, featureing the characters from the Twighlight Manor series, including EelKat, Sir Roderic, Etiole, Xavier, and more.
Price: $19.79

Top 20 Things that came from the 80′s

1 C*C*DeVille (1983)
2 Poison (the metal band/rock group–1983)
3 Glam Rock (1983)
4 The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa (1987)
5 Scrooge McDuck His Life and Times by Carl Barks (1981)
6 The Smurfs (1982)
7 Jem* dolls (1986)
8 teased hair in bright colors…mine was blue
9 the clothes…glitter, sequins, jewels and chains, mico-minis, a frilly ball gowns, and fishnet hose, all in neon colors
10 women get freedom at last…I remember the 70′s when working women were still being frowned upon by the general public
11 Ms. PacMan, Dig-Dug, Space Invaders, and Centerpide (Atiri & Namco games) (1981)
12 Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Genisis games) (1987)
13 Mt St Smurf A.K.A. Mt St Helen’s eupted, causeing the Smurf Village to move and change the whole series (1982)
14 The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo aired staring Vincent Price as Vincent VanGoul (1987 ?)
15 makeup was cool, bright, colorful and very wild
16 nail polish was now more than red and pink…yippie!…blue and orange became my faves
17 Presidant Regan was the best one ever
18 Labyrinth (1986)
19 Dark Crystal (1984)
20 David Bowie still rocking

#1 Dime Part 4

The “lesson”…Scrooge’s family had no money, life was hard on them, and Fergus didn’t believe in getting anything “the easy way”, he preached hard work, hard work, and more hard work…in a panel not shown hear is what Fergus said…

“I want him to earn his first pay on a tough job, so he’ll learn a lesson about hard work! When burt pays him that useless American dime, he’ll learn to no be so trutin’!”

Apearently, unlike the old Scrooge who trusts no one, the young Scrooge trusted everyone, and his father believed that to be a bad thing. Also it must be remembered that the whole history of the dime was written by Don Rosa, based on the notes and stories of Carl Barks…Barks never explained how Scrooge became so mean and untrusting of people, although, from many flashbacks when Scrooge talked of his past, he had a very hard life, and was basicly alone thoughout nearly 70 years of his life…When chonicalizing Carl Barks facts, Don Rosa, realized that Scrooge didn’t always tell the truth, he made things far better or far worse than they where, and when it can to his childhood, he would rarely speak of it at all, changing the subject instead, saying he wanted to forget it. It was also known that he got the dime at age ten from a shoe-shinning job, and that that one event had such an effect on his mind that he never was able to get over it. And so it seemed logical that it was Scrooge’s own father that had been harsh and cynical, and the #1 dime was a lesson to trust no one and look at the darker side of people.

“The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck” has been discribed as a “dark story”, it is very unlike other stories by Disney, in that it is rarely cheerful, and takes you throught life as it is, as it was seen first by a small boy sent out to work to support his family, and teenager who left home because a father had dreams of wealth and put that burden on his son, a young man who wanted to return home and clung dearly to letters from his mother, letters that where than stolen buy a criminal—and the story of “The King of The Klondike” is where we see a major turn in Scrooge…a mean streak that never went away after…one the way home from the post office he was captured and beaten by Soapy Slick, a friend of Goldie’s (as I said–Goldie started out a villian), the letter that Scrooge never read, was read to the town by Slick—the first and only letter from his father, saying simply that Scrooge’s mother was dead. A casino full of ridicul at the death of his beloved mother, who he haddn’t seen since his childhood, turned Scrooge into a very mean and hateful wild-fire. From that point on we see an end of the young Scrooge full of joy and happiness, and we see a progressivly meaner Scrooge as the book goes on. He has learned his father’s lesson all to well—to trust no one, but Scrooge is pushed beyond that, to hate everyone, and he holds on the the dime as a reminder of that.

For a short while, Scrooge’s atitude changes—he falls in love with Goldie, and intends to marry her, but Goldie is ever the wild-cat and she and Scrooge have one last fight that results in the town being set on fire and the police chaseing down Scrooge, who flees the Yukon territory…now also hateing the only person he ever loved–Goldie, and vowing to never love anyone again as long as he lives…saying that the only constant thing in life in gold/money, and sets out to prove that he is better that the lot of them, by building an empire like nothing the world has ever seen, and not caring who he trampled to do it. The one thing he still had going for him was his 2 sisters, who after their father’s death, moved to America to live with Scrooge. But a trip to Africa with Scrooge setting fire to a village and burning hundreds of families out of their homes resulted in a feud between Scrooge and his sister’s and even they would have nothing to do with him. Years of more thing happening, each making Scrooge hate everyone even more, go by, until final in his late 60′s he retuns home to live with his money. The sister’s are there to great him, one of who intoduces Scrooge to her som Donald (about 4 or 5 years old), Scrooge by this time is so full of hate that he acusses them of being their to ask for money (which was the only time family ever talked to Scrooge–when they needed money), they tried to end the fued, but Scrooge refussed to listen and set them away, saying he never wanted to see family again. They left and never came back. And the next 15 or so years Scrooge spend alone, looked up in a house near the Money Bin, refussing to speak to anyone.

For people used to reading Disney’s traditional “fluff and pixie dust” Scrooge stories—”Life and Times” is a real eye-opener. What it amounts to is 211 pages of sheer hell and heartbreak, and explains the reason why Scrooge is Scrooge. It is not your typical Uncle Scrooge story.

howd the nick get in the dime?

It is said that Scrooge can identify his #1 dime by it’s sharp edge on one side, however it appears that Don Rosa made a mistake here because Scrooge also said that the edge got worn by his always carrying it with him.

Richest Duck

ant of eBay asked:

is scrooge the richest duck of all? I mean does he
have competition to his fortune? and if so who?

my answer:

Hi Ant,

I’m back Flintheart Glomgold pictus found….will get to Rockerduck in a minute…

Flinty is introduced in “Second Richest Duck” 1956 by Carl Barks.

In this story, Scrooge hears that he is no longer the
wolrd’s richest man, and sets out to Africa, to
challenge the new holder of that title. Once there he
finds a duck equal to him in every way…right down to
the Money Bin and the #1 rand (African dime). The 2 of them battle it out comparing everything they own, and
everything is equal…same amount of money in the bin,
same amount of jewels in the vaults, same amount of oil
wells, same amount of gold and diamond mines, every business Scrooge owns–Flinty owns one just like it.
Finally it comes down to a string collection, and 2
enormous balls of string are brought out, which they unroll across Africa for days and miles…and in the end, even that comes out the same, however, Scrooge has
his #1 dime tied to him by a string, and unties the dime adds the string to the end of his string, and wins as
the world’s richest man, by 5″ of string.

In every story since than when Flinty appears, he and Scrooge are at war for the title of world’s richest tycoon, and both have spies watching the other, when one
buys something, the other buys the same thing only
better. The only real differance between them is that
Scrooge tries to live by honesty (not always easy for
him…he’d like to forget he’s an honest man), while Flinty will stop at nothing and often steals, cheats,
and lies to gain his wealth.

These 2 pictures comes form Flinty’s first story…the
coloring is differant here, because this is from a rare
book and not a comic book…Flinty does not normaly have red hair. One shows his money bin, the other shows them
at the end of the race with their string. On first
appearances it would seem that this is the first time the 2 ever met….however, it must also be remembered that 85 year old Scrooge suffers from “Blinkus of the Thinkus” (alzhimers) and remembers very little of his past or even the past few days…

…and as we see here, the 2 ducks had meet many years earlier, in their mid-twenties, and were fighting even back then…you’ll notice that Flinty only gets away
because Scrooge ran out of bullets, and is picking up
the used bullets to reload his gun with—Scrooge always
carries a gun and Bowie knife, (young Scrooge and old Scrooge), but he will never shoot at a person or animal,
because bullets cost money so he only shoots at things
he can pull the bullets out of, so he can reuse them…

This picture shows them once again fighting over the
string…and the rights to own the only poultry farm
that has square eggs., land by square chickens…
(note…this panel was edited for use in an article I wrote, so you can’t read it straight though as several
panels are missing)