Tartan

[Lars Jensen]

Thoughts regarding the MacDuck tartan...

According to http://www.tartankilts.com/Tartan_Today.asp :

> To help the sale of War Bonds in 1942 Walt Disney designed the MacDuck
> tartan for curmudgeonly old Scrooge MacDuck - Mickey's Scottish uncle.

I have no idea whether the "curmudgeonly old Scrooge MacDuck - Mickey's
Scottish uncle" part is factual or a later mix of a misunderstanding
(the "Mickey's uncle" bit) and an attempt to fit the tartan into Duck
comics continuity (the rest of the line). The war bonds part of it
sounds plausible, though.

Also, there seem to be *two* MacDuck tartans: An ordinary one and a
"final version". Examples can be found here:
http://www.e-kilts.com/tartan.html?site=ekilts&list=mac&rpp=15&start=106

The tartan seen in the 1943 cartoon "The Spirit of '43" is different
from both MacDuck versions.

Barks created Scrooge in 1947, so there's a possibility he was inspired
by the MacDuck tartan and/or the 1943 cartoon. In fact, since Barks left
the Disney studios on November 6, 1942 (source: Michael Barrier's "Carl
Barks and the Art of the Comic Book"), and "The Spirit of '43" premiered
on January 7, 1943 (source: IMDb), there's a good chance Barks saw
plenty of preliminary material from this cartoon. Material which he
might have remembered later when he started work on "Christmas on Bear
Mountain".

And we discussed this only last year, as can be seen from this posting:
http://stp.ling.uu.se/pipermail/dcml/2003-April/022351.html .

Lars