Epic Hero 5

[Tommy Tran]

DAVID: I like the web page, especially the links.  Very well done.  I am having
a problem with viewing the "NEW" Graphic, for some reason.  (Netscape broken
picture).  That looks annoying, but the rest looks very good.

DON: On the topic of movie inspiration.  I remeber a panel from LO$ 9 
(I think, my comics are not with me now, but at my home in Houston) that
refered 
to the Constitutional Peasant from _Monty Python and The Search for the Holy 
Grail_. "Peasant. . ." "Did you hear him repressing me?"
Is this so, I've been wondering since I read that.

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	The status of the legendary Scrooge McDuck, leads into the discussion of 
mythology, and integral part of an epic.  In a direct comparison, the unending 
supply of Beagle Boys (masked robbers who try to steal McDuck's money) can be 
compared to the heads of Hercules' Hydra.  The more you defeat them, the more 
they come back.  Barks draws extensively on "real" mythology directly, when 
Scrooge drags his nephew Donald, Huey, Dewy, and Louie on treasure hunts.  Even 
more appropriately, Barks chose the treasures of other epic heroes, including 
"the treasures of Ulysses" (Blum 26), the Trojan Horse ("Horsing Around with 
History" 19) and the Library of Alexandria (USA 27).  Barks down plays his use 
of myth though as he states:
        "'As for my use of myths in the plots of my stories, the reason is 
        laziness.  A myth from ancient times gave me many plot gimmicks upon 
        which to base the actions and motivations.  I was hitching rides on the 
        chariots of the gods." (Boatner A-49)
Epics need to provide a mythology of their own as well, and again Barks and
Rosa 
deliver.  In Scrooge McDuck's travels, he's discovered "Tralla La", a place 
"where there is no money, and wealth means nothing" (Cocks 78); the real cause 
of earthquakes --  races of colorful underground critters known as the Terries 
and the Fermies (Miller 76); and has visited a second moon behind ours that is 
made entirely of gold ("The Twenty-four Carat Moon" 13).  In a most fantastic 
coupe, Rosa wrote a sequel to the "Tralla La" story, revealing it as Coleridges 
legendary land of Xanadu ("Return to Xanadu" 261).  The multitude of writers 
behind Scrooge have given us a whole other world behind the scenes of our own.  
". . . the mock-heroic sweep of Barks' stories . . . made a heavy mark on a 
generation of children for whom comic books offered a powerful mythology."
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