Kalevala, "The Coin", Money, PP & CK

[Olivier]

Hello everyone!

Don Rosa:
>>I was always very careful to never refer to it in my script as
>>"the land of the dead". I don't even recall if that was my implied intention --

In the French version (PM 344,  Sept 2000), p 13 panel 7, Väinämöinen
clearly tells the ducks that
                "Louhi still lives but is sound asleep
                In the shadows of  the underworld.
                To Tuonela you must go".
She's *alive*, so it's clearly not "the land of  the dead" (or ot would have to be
"the land of  the living dead"...)

Then (p 14 panel 3) they reach "the land of  the sleepers".
And then again (p 15) there's this joke about Donald being highly respected
in the realm of  the sleepers".

But--
at the top of  this same page (15, panel 2) Donald won't go any further because
that's "the threshold of  death"!
The descriptive paragraph at the top of  panel 3 p 14 reads:
"The phantom [?] drakkar sails through the every denser mists to this *last*
harbor no sailor is in a rush to dock at".

And as Harry pointed out, the gatekeeper  *is* a skeleton.
Also, I think any reference to an underworld, with a cave for entrance, (and which
you sail to) calls up to mind Hades' kingdom of  the dead.
And there's donald's own little joke which Harry mentioned as well.

So it really looks like "the land of  the dead", even though Louhi and the others
are shown and clearly said to be merely asleep-- but then, "sleep" is a euphemism
for "death". The references to death (intended or not) seem to prevail ultimately.



Anders:
I can't find the message (it was about "The Coin") in which you made a comment
about the font. PM uses a terrible font that looks like a very shaky handwriting.
If  there's anyone in touch with Picsou Magazine reading this: please change the font!
(Thanks)



Don Rosa:
>>So I thought it might seem like an interesting idea that the Bin contained,
>>as you say, the money he made *by himself* before his business ventures
>>became so complex as to require armies of assistants.
Mike:
>>he's got lots of bank accounts with huge amounts of money, and
>>that he would spend.

Problem: where does it stop & start?
I totally agree with the purely sentimental value of  the money in the bin
and the fact that the money invested is just money he made "indirectly".
So for Scrooge, money falls in two categories:
a/    the-money-I-earned-myself-working-hard-and-which-I'll-never-ever-part-with
b/    the-money-I-have-in-several-banks-and-use-for-investments-and-come-and-goes-
       and-has-no-sentimental-value-whatsoever
We know about the first item from category A (the first dime).
Now, what about the first item that started category B?
I mean, for B to exist, there has to be some point when Scrooge actually parted with
money from category A.
So what's the story of  Old Number B?
Maybe it was money he did not earn but found and invested.
There's this bank in Whitehorse also.
Don Rosa showed Scrooge's first sentimental attachment to a coin in L&T chapter 2.
At this point and for a long time and just out of  necessity, he could not hoard all of  his
money, and had to use some of  it for various and sundry expenses.
So: how did A and B come to be? At what point and how did Scrooge sort his money
and decided that this would be A and this would be B?
Maybe that's just it: maybe at one point he decided he'd only keep the money linked
to his adventures around the globe and use the more recent money for investments,
and there was no clear-cut transition.
Which means that some coins he (would have) valued (A category) "accidentally"
became B-- that is, he may have realized it too late.



Kriton:
>>The introduction to the Captain Kentucky volume points out that in episode 84
>>there is a picture of  Uncle Scrooge hanging on a wall in one of the panels.
Actually there are (so far in my reading) two (*much*) earlier visual references to
Uncle Scrooge, but I won't spoil your fun by telling you where.





Olivier