The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck

"The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck"
"The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck"
	Cover of the collected edition published by Gemstone Publishing in 2005
Publisher	First: Egmont Publishing - First US: Gladstone Publishing
Publication date	First: 1992–1994 (Egmont) - First US: 1994–1996 (Gladstone Publishing)
Genre	Adventure; Funny animals
Title(s)
	First: Anders And & Co. (Egmont); #33 B-1992; #45-1992; #2-1993; #11-1993; #18-1993; #24-1993; #29-1993; #30-1993; #31-1993; #45-1993; #10-1994; #15-1994; #16-1994; #17-1994; #22-1994; ; First US: Uncle Scrooge (Gladstone Publishing); #285–296
Main character(s)	Scrooge McDuck
Creative team
Writer(s)	Don Rosa
Artist(s)	Don Rosa
Letterer(s)	Todd Klein (US edition)

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck (Lo$)^[1] 12-part comic book storyline written and drawn by Don Rosa, lettered by Todd Klein (American editions),^[2] first published by the Danish publisher Egmont in the magazine Anders And & Co. from 1992–94 and later in English in Uncle Scrooge #285 through #296 (1994–96). It follows the life of Scrooge McDuck from 1877 to 1947, the year of his real-life debut, working in almost every event about his past referenced in stories by Carl Barks.

Rosa earned the Will Eisner Award for Best Serialized Story in 1995 for this story.^[3] The trade paperback collection was also a top vote-getter for the Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Award for Favorite Reprint Graphic Novel/Album for 1997. After being out of print for several years with high demand, the book was reprinted under the BOOM! Studios label in two deluxe hardcover volumes, and again under Fantagraphics Books.

The Finnish composer Tuomas Holopainen released a concept album based on the book, titled Music Inspired by the Life and Times of Scrooge. Don Rosa illustrated the cover artwork for the album.^[4]

Chapter list

Original Storyline

Part #	Chapter Title	Pages	Story code	First publication in United States
1	The Last of the Clan McDuck	15	D 91308 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #285
1877-1880	Scrooge McDuck is born to a poor family in Scotland in 1867, where their once royal legacy has been diminished and their old castle, located in Dismal Downs, has been taken over by the Whiskervilles, who used a hound costume to scare them off the property. On his 10th birthday, Scrooge is gifted a shoeshining kit, and gets an American Dime, teaching him to be smart and cunning, and to make his money square. While gathering peat to sell to the wealthy, he gets chased into the castle by the Whiskervilles, where he meets the castle's caretaker. After scaring off the Whiskervilles with a knight filled with burning peat, he heads for the United States on a cattle boat.
2	The Master of the Mississippi	28	D 91411 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #286
1880-1882	The story takes place between 1880 and 1882. Scrooge works for his Uncle Angus "Pothole" McDuck and has his first encounter with Blackheart Beagle and his sons, the Beagle Boys.
3	The Buckaroo of the Badlands	15	D 92008 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #287
1882-1883	Scrooge becomes a cowboy and winds up having to recover a prize bull for his boss Murdo MacKenzie, then meeting future President Theodore Roosevelt while doing so.
4	The Raider of the Copper Hill	15	D 92083 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #288
1883-1885	Scrooge takes some prospecting lessons from Howard Rockerduck and almost takes over the Anaconda Copper Mine of Butte, Montana from Marcus Daly.
5	The New Laird of Castle McDuck	15	D 92191 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #289
1885	The story takes place in 1885. Scrooge returns to Scotland to save Castle McDuck from being bought by the Whiskervilles.
6	The Terror of the Transvaal	12	D 92273 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #290
1886-1889	Scrooge goes to the South African Republic, where he first encounters Flintheart Glomgold.
7	The Dreamtime Duck of the Never-Never	15	D 92314 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #291
1893-1896	Scrooge goes to Australia and learns about the Dreamtime.
8	The King of the Klondike	24	D 92514 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #292
1896-1897	Scrooge finally goes to The Yukon, participating in the Klondike Gold Rush, and strikes some gold, but not before being kidnapped by crooked gambler Soapy Slick.
9	The Billionaire of Dismal Downs	15	D 93121 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #293
1898-1902	After becoming a billionaire, Scrooge goes back to Scotland only to realize that he doesn't really belong there anymore, and so returns to the United States, accompanied by his sisters Matilda and Hortense.
10	The Invader of Fort Duckburg	15	D 93227 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #294
1902	Scrooge and his sisters move to Duckburg, Calisota, United States and meet the Duck family and the founding three members of The Junior Woodchucks. Scrooge has his first run in with the Beagle Boys since his riverboat days and is reacquainted with President Theodore Roosevelt.
11	The Empire-Builder from Calisota	24	D 93288 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #295
1909-1930	Scrooge goes around the world building his financial empire, notably including forcing the Voodoo tribe of sorcerer Foola Zoola off their land. In revenge, the sorcerer curses him to be constantly haunted by Bombie the Zombie. He returns to Duckburg and first meets his ten-year-old nephew and niece, twins Donald and Della Duck. On the same day, he loses contact with his family and becomes the richest duck in the world.
12	The Richest Duck in the World	16	D 93488 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #296
1947	On Christmas Day of 1947, one year after the events of Christmas on Bear Mountain, Donald and his grandnephews are invited to his mansion for Christmas Dinner. He reveals his money bin to them, running 100 feet deep and containing "3 cubic acres" of gold. A new generation of Beagle Boys disguised as street Santas arrive to steal the money and his Number One Dime, causing the ducks to give chase. Scrooge decides to start adventuring again, jumping into his money bin to relive old memories, while Donald remarks that his money is useless if he never spends it.

Companion stories

Part #	Chapter Title	Pages	Story code	First publication in United States
0	Of Ducks, Dimes and Destinies	15	D 91249 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #297
1877	Magica De Spell travels back in time to steal Scrooge's Number One Dime before he earns it. She convinces who would be Scrooge's first customer to hand over his dime to her in exchange for 2 shillings, which he uses at a nearby bar. Realizing that the dime would have no worth if Scrooge never earned it, she quickly places it back in his hand before returning to the present.
3B	The Cowboy Captain of the Cutty Sark	24	D 98045 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #318
1883	Scrooge imports cattle to the Dutch East Indies (present Indonesia) aboard the Cutty Sark but encounters a thief and meets his old friend Ratchet Gearloose from his Riverboat days, who helps the Cutty Sark survive the eruption of Krakatoa.
6B	The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff	24	D 96089 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #306
1890	Scrooge returns to the United States and joins with Phineas Taylor Barnum, his Uncle Pothole, Geronimo, Buffalo Bill, and Annie Oakley on a mission to recover stolen money from the Dalton Gang.
8B	The Prisoner of White Agony Creek	33	D 2005-061 at Inducks	The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion
1897	Scrooge takes Goldie O'Gilt to his property and makes her dig for gold. This was shown in the uncensored Barks-classic "Back to the Klondike".
8C	Hearts of the Yukon	24	D 95044 at Inducks	Walt Disney Giant #1
1898	Scrooge is falsely accused to the Mounties of tracking mud in Dawson. He plans to clear his name by any means and thinks that Glittering Goldie O'Gilt is the one that framed him.
10B	The Sharpie of the Culebra Cut	26	F PM 01201 at Inducks	Uncle Scrooge #332
1906	Scrooge and his sisters, Matilda and Hortense McDuck, are prospecting for gold in Panama. Their search inadvertently interferes with the construction of the Panama Canal, at the same time President Roosevelt is visiting the country to oversee the project.

Censorship

In February 2023, The Walt Disney Company instated a worldwide ban from reprinting two of Don Rosa's duck stories; "The Empire-Builder from Calisota" (listed as "The Richest Duck in the World" in the announcement) and "The Dream of a Lifetime".^[5]^[6] Both stories were noted by Rosa to feature the character Bombie the Zombie, who was cursed by a voodoo witch doctor paid by Scrooge, making future collections or reprints of Lo$ impossible as Rosa views the character to be integral to the story.

Scrooge McDuck timeline according to Rosa

1867: Scrooge was born in Glasgow, Scotland to Fergus McDuck and Downy O'Drake. He would have two younger sisters, namely Matilda McDuck (born in 1871) and Hortense McDuck (born in 1876).
1877: Scrooge, age 10, goes into business with a shoeshine kit that Fergus built for him, but his first customer fools him and pays him with an American dime (which was actually a plan of his father's). He keeps the dime he cannot spend as his symbol of success.
1880: Scrooge, age 13, emigrates to the United States. He first meets his uncle, Mississippi riverboater Angus "Pothole" McDuck, and the Beagle Boys, a family of outlaws that remain his enemies for the rest of his life.
1882: His uncle retires and leaves his riverboat, named Dilly Dollar, to Scrooge, now 15 years old. The Beagle Boys destroy the riverboat in an act of revenge. Scrooge decides to try his luck in the American West and later in the year gets hired as a cowboy by cattle baron Murdo MacKenzie (an actual historical figure, one of the many that Scrooge met).
1883: Scrooge, age 16, becomes a miner searching for silver and copper.
1885: Scrooge's father calls his son back to Scotland on an important family matter. Just a week before he leaves he meets and befriends the millionaire Howard Rockerduck, who had become rich in the California gold rush of 1849. He also meets Howard's seven-year-old spoiled son John D. Rockerduck, who will grow up to become one of Scrooge's main rivals.
1886–1889: Scrooge, age 19–22, searches for gold in South Africa (during the Witwatersrand Gold Rush). During his first year there he saves the life of a duck about his age named Flintheart Glomgold, though Scrooge learns his name more than half a century later. A little later they become bitter enemies, and remain as such for the rest of their lives. Glomgold later became the second richest duck in the world.
1889–1893: Scrooge, age 22–26, returns to the United States to search for gold, most notably near Pizen Bluff, Arizona. He meets many famous historical figures but his search fails.
1893–1896: Scrooge, age 26–29, goes to Coolgardie, Western Australia to search for gold but his search again fails.
1896–1899: Scrooge, age 29–32, searches for gold in the Klondike. During his years there he meets the saloon owner, singer and occasional thief "Glittering" Goldie O'Gilt. He carries a love/hate relationship with her for the rest of his life. His search for gold succeeds.
1897: Scrooge's mother Downy O'Drake dies, aged 57, in Dismal Downs. Scrooge is now 30.
1899–1902: Scrooge, at 32, becomes a millionaire and buys a bank in Whitehorse, Yukon. He starts building a small financial empire; by 1902, at 35, he has become a billionaire.
1902: Scrooge, age 35, returns to Scotland intending to make Castle McDuck at Dismal Downs the heart of his empire, but he soon finds local culture too stagnant and decides to return to America. His sisters Matilda McDuck and Hortense McDuck go to America with him. Also in 1902, Scrooge's father Fergus McDuck dies, aged 67, in Dismal Downs. Scrooge, Matilda and Hortense are the last of the McDuck clan. Scrooge settles in the small village of Duckburg, Calisota, United States, which he chose as his home base.
1909–1930: While his sisters remain in Duckburg and run his empire, Scrooge, age 42–63, travels the world expanding his empire in every continent.
1930: Scrooge, at 63, becomes the richest duck in the world, but a fight with his family leaves him with no contact with them for the next seventeen years. Note that during this year he met his ten-year-old nephew Donald Duck and his nephew's twin sister Della Duck for the first time. (It was possibly the only time Scrooge met his niece Della, ignoring the girl completely.)
1942: Scrooge, age 75, feels depressed and tired and decides to retire.
1947: Scrooge, age 80, meets his nephew Donald Duck, now age 27, as well as his grandnephews, Della's children, Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck, who are under Donald's care. He decides to become active again and soon a circle of activities whirl around him as he attracts the attention of relatives, old and new enemies and friends.
1955: Scrooge, age 88, is reunited and reconciled with his sister Matilda, thanks to Donald (in the story "A Letter from Home").
1967: According to Don Rosa's unofficial timeline, Scrooge McDuck died at the age of 100 years after a life of adventure.^[7]^[1]

Historical figures appearing in the work

Several notable historical figures appear in the series:

John Jacob Astor IV
P. T. Barnum
Roy Bean
Buffalo Bill
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Dalton Gang
Marcus Daly
Wyatt Earp
Geronimo
Hamengkubuwono VII of Yogyakarta and Pakubuwono IX of Surakarta^[8]
Esteban Huertas
Frank and Jesse James
Jack London

Macbeth, King of Scotland
Murdo MacKenzie^[8]
Bat Masterson
William Henry Moody
Nicholas II of Russia
Annie Oakley
Robert Peary
Edith Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Captain George R. Shanton, Canal Zone Police
John Frank Stevens
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Colonel Sam Steele

Other notable historical figures mentioned include:

Collected editions

Collections
Publication date	Title	Publisher	Format	Number of volumes	Included content	Reproduction	ISBN	INDUCKS link
1996	The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck	Gladstone Publishing	Deluxe hardcover album 8.75 × 11.25 inches 223 × 286 mm	1	Chapter 1 - 12	Color		[1]
July 2005 - September 2006	The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck^[9]^[10]	Gemstone Publishing	Softcover 6.5 × 10.1 inches 165 × 257 mm	2	Vol .1 - Chapter 1 - 12 Vol. 2 - Companion chapters	Color	Vol. 1 0-911903-96-8 Vol. 2 1-888472-40-5	Vol. 1 Vol. 2
March 2010 - December 2010	The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck^[11]^[12]	BOOM! Studios	Hardcover 7 × 10.5 inches 178 × 267 mm	3	Vol. 1 - Chapter 1 - 6 Vol. 2 - Chapter 7 - 12 Vol. 3 - Companion chapters	Color	Vol. 1 978-1-60886-538-3 Vol. 2 978-1-60886-542-0 Vol. 3 978-1-60886-653-3	Vol. 1 Vol. 2 Vol. 3
June 24, 2015^[13]	The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Artist's Edition^[14]	IDW Publishing	Hardcover 14 × 22 inches 356 × 559 mm	1	Vol. 1 - Chapter 1 - 6	Full color scans of original Black-and-white artwork	Vol. 1 978-1-63140-301-9	Vol. 1
April 9, 2019 - October 29, 2019	The Complete Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck^[15]^[16]	Fantagraphics Books	Hardcover 8.5 × 11 inches 216 × 279 mm	2	Vol. 1 - Chapter 1 - 12 Vol. 2 - Companion chapters + Last Sled to Dawson, The Dream of a Lifetime, Of Ducks and Dimes and Destinies, A Letter from Home	Color	Vol. 1 978-1-68396-174-1 Vol. 2 978-1-68396-253-3 Set (Vol. 1+2) 978-1-68396-254-0	Vol. 1 Vol. 2
November 16, 2021	The Complete Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Deluxe Edition	Fantagraphics	Hardcover (with slipcase) 10.75 x 14.5 inches 273 × 368 mm	1	Chapter 1 - 12 + Companion chapters+ Last Sled to Dawson, The Dream of a Lifetime, Of Ducks and Dimes and Destinies, A Letter from Home	Color	978-1-68396-465-0	[2]