Back to “Back to the Klondike”: The 70 Year Saga of Scrooge McDuck’s Lost Love

If you grew up connected comics successful the 1950s oregon cartoons successful the 1980s (or the 2010s), you’re astir apt acquainted with Scrooge McDuck. Donald Duck’s fantastically affluent but ridiculously miserly uncle is 1 of the astir beloved pantsless cartoon animals of each time. He’s besides globally beloved, acknowledgment to the thriving Disney comics manufacture astir the world. (Donald’s play mag sells higher successful tiny Finland than Batman oregon Spider-Man does successful the States.)

You whitethorn not cognize astir Scrooge’s romanticist history, however. But 70 years agone this month, readers were introduced to the thwarted emotion communicative successful Scrooge’s past. So let’s people the juncture by going backmost to “Back to the Klondike!”

“Back to the Klondike” archetypal appeared successful Four Color #456 and was written and drawn by Carl Barks, the undisputed maestro of Duck comics. From the aboriginal ’40s done the precocious ’60s, Barks drew astir 500 stories for Disney. Along the way, Barks created overmuch of Donald’s cardinal supporting cast, including Gyro Gearloose, Flintheart Glomgold, the Beagle Boys, Magica De Spell…and astir importantly, Scrooge McDuck.

Though uncredited for overmuch of his vocation and known lone to modern fans arsenic “the bully Duck artist,” Barks’s value to some Disney and comics arsenic a mean is hard to overstate. His enactment inspired not conscionable 2 abstracted DuckTales shows, but creators crossed a scope of media. You cognize the elephantine chromatic shot deathtrap successful Raiders of the Lost Arc? Yeah, Spielberg and Lucas — some Barks fans — lifted that from an Uncle Scrooge comic.

Scrooge debuted successful 1947’s “Christmas connected Bear Mountain” arsenic a reasonably one-note skinflint, but implicit the adjacent fewer years, Barks refined his creation, adding successful his adventurous tone arsenic good arsenic the occasional grudging glimpse astatine his softer side. And 1953’s “Back to the Klondike” is simply a shining illustration of both.

The communicative begins successful a reasonably roundabout way, with Scrooge experiencing immoderate superior representation issues, and, aft Donald bullies him into seeing the doctor, being diagnosed with “blinkus of the thinkus,” a mild signifier of amnesia. He’s prescribed pills that amended his representation truthful much, helium abruptly remembers a cache of golden helium buried during the Yukon golden unreserved 50 years prior.

He besides remembers a girl:

I don’t cognize astir you, but that sounds similar #goals to me.

Scrooge rushes disconnected to the Klondike to retrieve his gold, with Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Louie successful tow, lone to larn that his aged compartment is occupied by a fierce aged woman with a shotgun and a ferocious favored bear. After galore pages of mishaps, the boys sneak into the compartment and observe that the aged woman is nary different than Glittering Goldie, successful sadly reduced circumstances ever since the golden unreserved ended.

Despite being intelligibly inactive smitten with her, Scrooge insists that she owes him an astronomical sum, and he’s present to collect. Her caput held high, Goldie scornfully hands implicit the past of her jewelry and the deed to her assertion and marches disconnected to the poorhouse, arrogant to the last.

DONALD’S EXPRESSION THOUGH

Shockingly, Scrooge suffers a abrupt pang of conscience, and challenges Goldie to a contest: she ever said she could excavation much golden than helium could, truthful if she tin beryllium it, she tin support the claim, plus immoderate golden she finds. He directs her to an improbable spot…and wouldn’t you cognize it, she promptly uncovers the precise cache helium came backmost to the Klondike to retrieve!

Scrooge promptly throws a large tantrum, lamenting his nonaccomplishment to instrumentality his representation pills, but Donald knows better. He’s been keeping track, and there’s 1 little pill this greeting than determination was past night, meaning Scrooge rigged the contention to lose. As the Nephews enactment it: “Good aged Unca Scrooge!”

It’s a charming communicative and shows each of the characters astatine their precise best: Scrooge softer than we’ve ever seen him before, Donald astatine his astir nurturing and emotionally intelligent, the Nephews astatine their astir resourceful. Goldie doesn’t get a ton of leafage time, but she’s pugnacious arsenic nails and dignified to the end. It’s not a astonishment that it was reprinted aggregate times.

But arsenic primitively published, thing seems to beryllium missing. Why does Goldie beryllium Scrooge a 1000 dollars? What precisely happened betwixt them backmost successful the day?

The information is excessively salacious for Disney — oregon astatine least, it was successful 1953. See, a 4 leafage flashback was chopped from Barks’s archetypal communicative for the archetypal printing. In those pages, a young and cocky Scrooge swaggers into Goldie’s creation hallway with a golden nugget the size of a goose egg. Goldie promptly offers him a drugged cupful of coffee, and Scrooge wakes up successful the snowfall extracurricular to observe he’s been robbed. He storms backmost into the creation hall, beats up astatine slightest 19 men successful 1 gloriously over-the-top panel, drags Goldie disconnected to his claim, and forces her to enactment determination for a period truthful that she sees however hard a beingness miners have. When helium pays her a paltry $0.50 cents a time for her labor, she throws it successful his look and storms off.

Scrooge. Scrooge this is kidnapping. Scrooge no.

Drugs! Barroom brawls! Abduction! Ducks surviving successful sin! It’s nary wonderment that Disney looked astatine this communicative and went “Carl. No.” Especially a twelvemonth earlier Seduction of the Innocent and the enactment of the Comics Code Authority, erstwhile pearl-clutching implicit inappropriate worldly successful comics was astatine its height.

Personally, arsenic admittedly problematic arsenic it is, I find the saucier mentation of the communicative adjacent much amusive than the already fantabulous Bowdlerized one. I’m not unsocial successful that. Don Rosa, the Duck creator who is wide considered the successor to Barks’s crown, gleefully expanded connected that four-page flashback successful his The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion, playing up some the doomed romance and the intersexual tension. There’s adjacent an unsubtle fade-to-black scene. Yes, with cartoon ducks. Trust me, it works successful context.

Don Rosa’s “Hearts of the Yukon” gives Goldie a batch much bureau and makes the full happening less…yikesy. And besides adds a batch of enactment jokes.

Both versions of DuckTales person utilized Goldie. The 1987 amusement stuck with a reasonably faithful adaptation of “Back to the Klondike,” with Goldie voiced by Joan Gerber. The 2017 mentation of DuckTales took much liberties with the character, utilizing her aggregate times arsenic a foil for Scrooge — conscionable arsenic clever, brave, and adventurous arsenic him, but besides an unrepentant con artist. Voiced by the large Allison Janney, this mentation of Goldie retains each of her grit and sass, but she besides gets to beryllium successful connected the action, alternatively of sitting astir for 50 years successful expanding poverty, waiting for Scrooge.

Barks’s stories are products of their clip and arsenic specified frequently problematic, but they besides clasp an enduring appeal. “Back to the Klondike,” with its aboriginal hint astatine Scrooge’s vulnerabilities and Goldie successful each of her fierce, spangled-and-flashy glory, is simply a large illustration of why. I anticipation Duck artists proceed to usage her, and I anticipation she keeps making it into adaptations for astatine least the adjacent 70 years. Happy birthday, Goldie!

Want to work much Duck comics? “Back to the Klondike” is collected in Only a Poor Old Man, portion of Fantagraphics’s gorgeous Complete Carl Barks Library series. Or check retired this article for different places to commencement with the Ducks!