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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>In the story oncle picsou et l'infernale machine
Zio paperone e l'offesa...defensiva (Cimino/Cavazzano), Scrooge decided one day
to build a machine for protecting the money bin; a night the Beagle boys try to
enter the money bin and they are stopped by a sort of electric giant, looking
like Scrooge, and shrunk at a small dimension with other dignitaries of
Duckburg who were trying to annoy Scrooge's plans of living; in the story
Picsou et le mystère persécutor Zio paperone e il mistero di persecutor 1967
(good story which begins with the usual theme of a new
competitor threatening Scrooge's industrial power (altough here the
competitor is just a little seller of apples!) and ending with a paranoia crisis
of Scrooge which leads him to a splitted personality : he is used
to going out every night wearing a long dark cape (in somewhat
the style of the phantom blot) and accomplishes some revenge against the
authorities, which are responsable in his opinion
of favouring his competitor, leading him to misery; well, a lot of this
mayhem around the money bin, all this artillery don't seem to attract against
him the population of Duckburg; the people of Duckburg often seem like some
silhouettes, they take an astonished look at all this agitation but nobody can
really say they play an involvement in the development of the events :
Duckburg as i said in a previous comment is not a social world; the only
public intervention for cause of mayhem is the intervention of the public force,
the intervention of the state government : the cop, the judge; sometimes the
justice civil service appears in the old italian stories like an
instrument not fair but in the pay of Scrooge for inciting Donald to pay his
debts or going with him around the world; but this is not all the times the case
and we often see Scrooge getting fear of the authorities and the police
(picsou et le billiard au milliards Zio paperone e il billiardi de un
milliardo); this latter story is a strange and complex one in
which Scrooge is the robber whereas the beagle boys are arrested by the police
in lieu of him! This story is also a mix of different influences : the
vaudeville of course, but also the film noir : there is indeniably some elements
of film noir in it : the night atmosphere, the police, a long and exciting
sequence of a theft, a big fight with the beagle boys in their home, by
the end of the story.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>- Rarely, the people of duckburg play a role in
the development of the events and annoy the purpose of Scrooge; this is
however the case in the story Picsou parie sur la publicité percutante Zio
paperone e la micropublicita perniciosa 1970 where a mass and noisy
advertising by Scrooge cause a destruction of his advertising campaign
due to the exasperated people of the city; this criticism of the advertising is
also present in two other stories aforementionned in some of my previous
comments, in Mickey buddies, in fact : Topolino e la città cavia and at a less
degree and more symbolicly in astralpipo 9999, both stories of Mickey; however
this is rare, very rare in the italian stories, the people of Duckburg are often
just shadows crossing other shadows on the pavement of the streets, we don't
often pay attention to them, they are in the background and the main characters
of Duckburg grab rather our attention with the action, the events; however the
rise of a public opinion can be seen in more modern stories : in a story of
William Van Horn the people of Duckburg can't stand the amount of chocolate
lying down in donald's garden ('l'erreur publique numéro 1' 'Public ugly
number one' 1991), this story is in fact the follow up of the story 'Sac
d'embrouille' 'It's in the bag! It's in the bag! 1990 and must be taken as a
whole; in the first story 'it's in the bag!' we see donald concerns with his
neighbourhood, in the halloween story, donald knock at the door of angry people
and is received with very bad feelings (not to mention the problems of donald
with his neighbourood like in 'douce nuit' 'Silent night', story not free
of cruelty for Donald, i think evidently at the end of this one); in the Freddy
Milton/Daan Jippes story called 'lecture honteuse' Twilight man 1979, we see
donald trying to hide some unfamous pulp fiction that he can only read secretly
due to a character wanting to supress fun entertainment comics (by the way, this
story has a pretty good use of the background, i think of the vignette at the
beginning of the story where we see Donald looking in background at the meeting
under the tent); so, here, in the stories aforementioned, we can see a sort of
social world with an emergence of the people of Duckburg.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>- Now, i would like to say two words about the
representation of danger in Duckburg, and coming from the obsessional
villains of Duckburg :the beagle boys seem always on the run in their
war against the money bin; one question how can they make it since, due to their
numerous arrests, they should be in prison for one thousand years; but, again,
with a new story, the cycle starts again at the beginning and the beagle
boys are again fighting the indestructible bin; this is the same case for
Magica, the purpose are slightly different, Magica is just interested by one
precise coin; all that leads to consider the villains in Duckburg like an
obsessional repetitive nightmare of Scrooge; the enemies of Scrooge have not the
aim of destroy him personally, Duckburg is not an universe of revenge,
Flintheart Glomgold, Rockerduck (Flairsou) are not really villains, they
just have the purpose to compete with Scrooge on the grounds of economy
industry, Magica is only interested by the first coin, the beagle boys by the
money, none of this people have a revenge to satisfy against Scrooge
personally.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>For ending, just a remark about Ludwig Von Drake
(Donald Dingue), i think this is still the old difference between american and
italian stories but the character of Ludwig Von Drake was really
important in the italian stories of the sixties, and if he is less used in
the comics nowadays, this is somehow a loss.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>