DCML digest #651

[Don Rosa]

From: "M.J. Prior" <M.J.Prior at let.rug.nl>
>>>In Barks' 'A Christmas for Shacktown' (1952) Donald disguises
himself as his great uncle Jake, hoping to soften his uncle
Scrooge's heart.
It isn't actually mentioned in this story that Jake McDuck at that
time lived in the United States, but as Scrooge isn't surprised to
find him living in America instead of having died somewhere in
Scotland, it could be assumed that Jake McDuck once moved to
the States.
As mr. Don Rosa is the man that revived uncle Jake, it might be
interesting to read his opinion on this particular subject.

Okay...
I have long since considered the meaning of this sequence in "Xmas for
Shacktown", if any. And I decided there is none beyond the fact that it at
least tells us $crooge has/had an Uncle named Jake. I made a mental note
that nothing else in that scene would force me to say anything else for
certain about Jake if I ever used him again. We see Donald finding a
picture of Jake in a scrapbook, but Donald may not have known anything else
about him for certain... perhaps Jake died 50 years earlier? And even
though $crooge seemed to not be surprised to see his long-dead uncle show
up, I knew I could always say that $crooge could see it was Donald in
disguise, especially if $crooge knew it couldn't possibly actually be his
dead uncle. And he put on the act about the loaned shilling (was it?) for
Donald, just to flummox him. Frankly, in my view of this Universe, Jake
would surely be dead by 1952 (time of the "Shacktown" story), or else he'd
be well over 110 years old.
I had originally planned to have Jake as a character in my "Vigilante of
Pizen Bluff", "Lo$" part 3.5, as the Uncle whom $crooge has a wild west
adventure with, but I then decided that Uncle Pothole the pulp-fiction
writer would be more fun.