I have an unabashed love for Duck comics. The major creators Carl Barks and Don Rosa (whose works are collected by Fantagraphics, who published this volume). They created a world of adventure and intrigue that always leaves room for interesting characters. The McDucks love making profits, but they always have something a little more human up their sleeves as well. As human as anthropomorphic ducks get, anyway.
Buy Uncle Scrooge: Clan McDuck Stories and GloriesIn Uncle Scrooge: Clan McDuck Stories and Glories, we explore the McDuck family tree. These noble (and sometimes ignoble) drakes and ducks led to those pinnacle characters, Scrooge, Donald, and the three ever-ready nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. This collection contains four major stories (40-pages plus) and four interstitials that detail the lives of McDucks past.
The stories are rather varied, though two of them are about sea-faring. In “Seafoam McDuck’s Wonderful Travels,” the sea-bound duck is obsessed with chasing down a kelpie, a sea-traveling horse he spied in his youth. This eventually involves consulting Jonathan Swift and discovering that all of Gulliver’s Travels were indeed based on real places.
“The Double Life of Molly Mallard” is about the hardships of living in a coal-mining town. A sad-sack young duck lives a double life as a live comedian, mocking the coal bosses that make the town miserable. “Castle McDuck’s Final Secret” is one of two stories that involve Swamphole McDuck. He was first introduced as a long-dead ancestor in a Carl Barks story in the ’40s. He’s brought to life here in a series of adventures and swindles that lead from Robin Hood to the Loch Ness Monster.
The final large story, “Matey McDuck, Corsair,” is about a rare McDuck who is shamed by his family because he seeks adventure for its own sake, not to make a profit. The four large stories are all illustrated and written by Italian artists. Each has very distinct visual styles, one painterly, another in pastels. The four shorter stories are all by one author and artist, the Finnish Karl Korhonen. His style adheres most closely to what I would call the “Disney comic style”: strong silhouettes, cartoony illustrations. They form the bridge for the various stories in the book, as Donald and the boys explore Scrooge’s vast library of McDuck family lore.
I would always stand by the notion that the best Donald Duck and Scrooge comics are from Bark and Rosa. However, these more contemporary stories (everything here was previously published between 2023 and 2025, according to the copyright page) prove there’s a lot of life to be found in the McDuck family tree yet. While varied, they all have the sense of adventure and characters with drive that make this nearly century old continuity so special. I know I’ve thought this before, but I don’t know if I’ve written it in a review: Ducks comics are the best comics.
