Glomgold, Magica and "evil"

Katie Sullivan vazali at yahoo.com
Sat Sep 27 03:19:36 CEST 2003


I don't see Glomgold as evil, either.  He's one of my favorite
characters, and always has been.  He's no saint, to be sure, but
he's not evil.

I see him and Scrooge starting out life with very similar
attitudes.  They diverged when they got older and realized how
hard a place the world really is.  Scrooge eventually realized
that he had to be "tougher than the toughies" and "sharper than
the sharpies," etc, but that he would *make it square.* 
Flintheart made a similar vow, he just left off that last part.
;)  Their tough attitudes are their reactions to the big, harsh
world out there; they just chose different approaches to the
problem.  Scrooge was determined to retain his dignity, honor
and morals by not allowing himself to stoop to the level of
cheaters and crooks.  Flintheart tries to beat cheaters and
crooks at their own game, by doing them one better (or worse)
than they would do to him.

"So Far No Safari" seems to contain a caricature of the Glomgold
in the earlier stories; all his bad points magnified and little
if any of his good (or neutral) points shown.  I seem to recall
reading somewhere that Barks even admitted that this was a
different kind of character from how he had shown Flintheart
before, but that he needed an adversary for the story and chose
to bring in Flinty because of the convenient geography.

One of my favorite Barks panels is the last one in Flintheart's
debut story, "The Second Richest Duck."  The nephews are holding
Flinty up as he walks behind Scrooge, crushed by defeat.  It
says so much about the boys' characters, as well as
Flintheart's.  They recognize how similar Scrooge and Flintheart
are.  Sort of a "there, but for the grace of God, goes OUR
uncle" idea.

There's far too much of Scrooge in Flintheart for me to dislike
him.  ;)  Quite the contrary, "The Second Richest Duck" was tied
with "Land Beneath the Ground" for my favorite duck story when I
was around five years old.  :)


As for Magica, I see her as more "evil" than Glomgold, but still
not *entirely* "evil."  She respects Scrooge as a worthy
adversary.  However, that respect only goes so far, and she's
more than willing to foof-bomb the living daylights out of
anybody who stands in her way.  ;)


As I (an American) understand the word "evil" in this context,
evil means completely without pity, mercy or compassion.  I also
associate it with the desire to do bad things just for the sake
of doing bad.  Evil for evil's sake.
Flintheart is mischieveous, sneaky, underhanded, dishonest and
selfish, but he's not evil in the above sense.


So there's my $00.02!  Keep the change!  ;)


Katie Sullivan
http://www.sullivanet.com/  (back up now!!!)  :)

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