Uncle Scrooge: Earth’s Mightiest Duck

Duckberg’s darkest day has descended:  The city is under assault from the interstellar menace of the Conniseurs and their army of coin-operated robots.  Though none fought harder against them than Scrooge McDuck, he was captured by them in the end and is now being subjected to their mental probe.  That’s because while they managed to capture the World’s Richest Duck, they didn’t get his fortune.  Now the Conniseurs are going to tear through his memories to get what they want; except, Scrooge has lived a life filled to the brim with hardship and adventure, and his memories of these things may be all the weapons he’ll need to fight back.

I’m honestly surprised that there haven’t been more projects like this out of Marvel after it was bought by Disney.  By that I mean having one of the House of Ideas’ top writers, in this case Jason Aaron, tackle characters owned by the House of Mouse, along with some of the company’s best artists.  Adam Kubert, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Esad Ribic, Pete Woods, David Lafuente, Mahmud Asrar, Nick Bradshaw, Ario Anindito, and Mirka Andolfo all contribute to this volume (along with some of Europe’s most established Duck artists).  They all do impressive work, even though the best comes from artists who are willing to bust out a new or drastically different style (Ribic, Kubert) or do their established style with enough detail and craft that you wish they’d done the whole thing (Bradshaw).

Aaron’s work here, however, is more uneven.  While there’s no denying that his over-the-top style is very well suited to the character, the pacing and scale of it is all over the place.  The end-of-the-world setup feels out of place for a Duck story, and the narrative never gets much momentum as it ping-pongs back and forth between the real world and Scrooge’s memories.  Though it’s fun to see the World’s Richest Duck interact with past versions of himself, and there’s even some pathos to his struggle at the end, the whole thing feels like it’s trying too hard to force an epic Uncle Scrooge story into being more than anything else.  With nice art, at least.