Uncles and such + Uncle Scrooge's age

[Per Starb{ck]

Once upon a time there was a thread here about why there are so many
uncles and cousins and so few parents in Disney comics.  There are
many possible explanations, and some of them were mentioned.  I
think the answer is a combination of several things, one of the most
important being that no creator had full control of the stories.  More
distant relatives are easier to create on the fly and then discard
later.  E.g., when Huey, Dewey, and Louie were introduced in the strip
they were meant to be used for a series of gags for a while.
Introducing sons of Donald would have been harder, and they would
have been harder to get rid of afterwards.  (In this case they became
regulars, but noone knew that they would back then.)

When mentioning parenthoods that after all do exist in Disney comics
I think you all missed one of the most important: Big Bad Wolf and
Li'l Bad Wolf.

Jamal wrote (a couple of weeks ago):
> The same problem came up concerning Uncle Scrooge's age.  (Some of you
> may remember how one perticular date changes in a reprint of "Only
> a Poor old Man", when Scrooge is relating a story to Donald... or
> was that a different story?  the Terra Firmy one?  Or mabye the Golden
> Fleace?  Bleah.)

I have the Golden Fleecing in a Whitman Dynabrite Comic from 1978 (?)
and there Scrooge mentions "this old broadcloth that I bought at a
rummage sale in Scotland in 1924".  I guess that year is changed in
the reprint (what was is originally?), and I think there are several
similar changes in other reprints.  Apropos Scrooge's age there is a
Barks one-pager from US 12 (the very book that contained the original
printing of Golden Fleecing!) where Scrooge celebrates his
seventy-fifth birthday.  The cover date for US 12 was "Dec.-Feb 1956"
so if the story took place in 1955 or 1956 Scrooge is born in 1880 or
1881, but that is perhaps a bit early.  Jack L. Chalker gets his year
of birth to be in the range 1860-1865, and Don Rosa's drawing of
Scrooge's grave shows it as 1867.
--       "
Per Starback, Uppsala, Sweden.  email: starback at student.docs.uu.se
 "And this dollar---1882!  I got that in Montana
  where I punched cows while I looked for a homestead!"