ScroogeMcduck

If you're a regular ComicsAlliance reader, then you already know that I'm pretty fascinated by the weirder comics of the past, but at Christmastime, my thoughts turn to more heartwarming tales. As soon as that calendar flips over to December, 'tis the season for Santa Claus, presents, the occasional talking Christmas tree that Wonder Woman rescued from the Nazis by holding a door shut and talking about how it felt like being spanked. I mean, yeah, they're still pretty weird, but they've got that Christmas spirit! Case in point: "A Christmas For Shacktown," the title story in the latest Fantagraphics collection of Disney Duck tales by the legendary Carl Barks. At 32 pages, it's a sprawling epic (By Barks' standards, anyway) that hits those beautiful Holiday themes of altruism and the spirit of giving. Although to be fair, it does get a little closer to cannibalism than most other Christmas comics.Our story begins as Donald Duck's three nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, are taking a shortcut home from school through Shacktown, the hard-luck side of Duckburg where Calisota's poor gather together in sub-Dickensian poverty. Now, you'd think that a city built around the most successful businessman in the history of the world would be prosperous enough that even the bad neighborhoods would be doing all right, but apparently McDuck industries isn't the proven job creator that you might expect. If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably because its owner keeps three cubic acres of cash in a gigantic bin on top of a nearby hill, but I'm no economist. That's a different Chris Sims.

Don Rosa, best known as the creator of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, one of the great comics epics of the 20th century, has quit comics. After a career spanning 40 years, 20 of which were spent following in the footsteps of his idol, Carl Barks, Rosa laid out his reasons for leaving comics in an epilogue meant to run at the end of a nine-volume career retrospective put out by his European

The Money Laundering Bag Available From: TopatoCo Price: $19.00 I don't know about you guys, but one of my greatest complaints about daily life is that I don't look as much like a cartoon criminal as I think I should. Fortunately for this little aspect of the (non-animated) human condition, Dinosaur Comics creator Ryan North has remedied this situation in a way that's slightly less likely to get

Here at ComicsAlliance, we value our readership and are always open to what the masses of Internet readers have to say. That's every week, Senior Writer Chris Sims puts his comics culture knowledge to the test as he responds to your reader questions...

Here at ComicsAlliance, we value our readership and are always open to what the masses of Internet readers have to say. That's every week, Senior Writer Chris Sims puts his comics culture knowledge to the test as he responds to your reader questions...

Last week, the world of astrology was rocked when science! determined that, despite the fact that they appear in reliable newspapers all over the world, the 12 Zodiac signs might not be an accurate way of predicting the future. I know, I was shocked too...