VILLAINS! Scrooge McDuck and Buddy Turn Evil
Scratching my head over the Infinity Dime and wondering if Buddy is a villain
THIS WEEK:
Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime
BEHIND THE PAY WALL: Buddy might be a villain!
DiPerri here. In 2024, I’ve been most excited for Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department; Jerry Seinfeld’s directorial debut Unfrosted; and Marvel Comics’ Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime. The Tortured Poets Department delivered and is one of Taylor Swift’s best albums (ranking next week behind the paywall!). Unfrosted was complete disappointment. Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime was… not worth the $7.99 cover price.
Scrooge McDuck has always been my favorite character from comics. I didn’t learn of his comic book origin until middle school but he had been my steadfast favorite since my introduction to him on DuckTales when I was 3.
Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life from 1946 (the favorite film of both the director and this author) is one of Hollywood’s original multiverse films. Depressed George Bailey is shown an alternate reality in which he was never born and learns what the world would have been like without him. In an early draft of It’s A Wonderful Life, George Bailey was meant to meet an evil George Bailey in the alternate reality and the two Georges would have slugged it out over a bridge with, ultimately, the good George killing the evil George. That’s essentially what happens in the surprisingly brisk read that is Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime.
I found Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime to be a hollow, accelerated duplication of The Infinity Gauntlet and an unearned recreation of the portals scene in Avengers: Endgame, which (unfortunately) everyone is trying their hand at these days. It was a complete missed opportunity and little more than a thinly veiled bit of cross-company brand promotion.
I could only find one reviewer on Reddit who agreed with my reading experience. Every other review online and on YouTube is glowing. Comic readers and falling all over themselves for this comic and I don’t get it.
Is it me?
To be fair it had some merit and much of that merit is with interesting ideas that are poorly executed. The idea of a “what if” situation that creates an evil Scrooge McDuck is interesting but giving him Magica De Spell’s powers was strange and too convenient of an assist in helping evil Scrooge accomplish his goals. I’d like to say he’s formidable, but he isn’t because we don’t see him conquer anyone or gain anyone else’s fortune. That all happens “off screen” and we only learn of what Evil Scrooge has done and become because Gyro Gearloose and an unseen narrator tell us. I guess Marvel didn’t have the budget to show the story writer Jason Aaron wanted to tell. So he told it. As the Cliffs Notes version.
As far as ideas and potential go, the highlight of the book is the money bin of Villain Scrooge (or “Scrooge Above All” as he’s called) being so large that it blocked out the sun, putting Duckburg into an apocalyptic nuclear winter. That was cool.
But it wasn’t utilized or explored. It was just presented as a list of what has happened since Scrooge-Above-All began collecting number one dimes from multiverse Scrooges (and — as Scrooge-Above-All claims — killing those Scrooges in the process. Again, we don’t see it happen, we’re just told. Mean Scrooge says “I’m mean,” and we’re supposed to take him at his word). Scrooge-Tells-All also looks like a ravaged Doctor Strange who needs to go shopping and replace his torn and tattered purple coat.
In another example of a cool idea that isn’t well executed, they named the monolithic money bin "the All Bin” ( none of the names associated with Scrooge Vicious do anything for me) and filled it with smaller money bins. Personally, I’d rather look into a giant money bin and see riches beyond imagination… not a pile of smaller buildings.
The book also featured a handful of Scrooges teaming up but they weren’t visual variants like having Carl Barks’ Scrooge the Scrooges of Don Rosa, 1987 DuckTales, 2017 DuckTales, Nintendo DuckTales Remastered, or those of other Italian comic artists in the Zio Paperone series (though several of them divide up the mini chapters that comprise the 30 page story. That’s right — the entire story is only 30 pages). Instead, our standard Uncle Scrooge is paired with some canonical Carl Barks/Don Rosa Scrooges like 10-year-old Scrooge (the age at which he earned the number one dime) and 1800s Klondike Scrooge (the Scrooge that made his fortune in the goldrush) but also some seemingly random Scrooges that (to be fair) might have a comics history with which I’m unfamiliar like middle ages Scrooge, cowboy Scrooge, and space Scrooge. I doubt it though. Also, I’m sorry, but if you’re doing a multiverse story of superhero Scrooge, why wouldn’t you include the Masked Mallard — from the DuckTales episode when Scrooge literally put on a mask and cape and became a crime-fighting vigilante by night (fun fact: “The Masked Mallard” episode was heavily influential in the formation of the series that would later become Darkwing Duck.)?
There’s also a council of Gyro Gearlooses for no reason at all and it’s just shown in one panel as a nod to the Council of Kangs (nothing is done with this either, it’s just there) and then an army of alleged “multi-verse” Donald Ducks are unleashed on evil Scrooge as a bunch of wild pawn soldiers but they aren’t visual variations of Donald Ducks through time in comics, cinema, television, or other media. They’re just a bunch of Donald Ducks.
I love the Alex Ross cover and the best interior chapter art is provided by Paolo Mottura (Chapter 1) and Francesco D’Ippolito and Lucio De Giuseppe (pencils and inks, respectively, on Chapter 2). The comic book store at which I bought my copy was sold out of the Gabriele Dell’Otto variant cover, which would have been my preference but I love Alex Ross’ gouache painting too. The back half of the issue is fleshed out with a reprint of Uncle Scrooge’s first appearance in 1947’s Christmas on Bear Mountain. I can’t help but feel like it was all a scheme to charge a high cover price (also: "You didn’t like the Infinity Dime? Here’s a better story by Carl Barks!”) and calling the issue Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime #1 when they couldn’t (or weren’t allowed to?) even fill an entire single issue with the story is also misleading marketing and a tired comic book gimmick (assigning #1 to an issue brings customers in and was used as a ploy in the 1990s to make collectors think the issue would be worth money). Who knows. Since this is a one-off issue, maybe it will be worth something some day. Perhaps the current $7.99 cover price. Or perhaps a dime (infinity or otherwise).
VERDICT: I need to re-read Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime. There is great work done by a collection of artists and many intriguing ideas are presented by the writer but my first impression is that the execution leaves much to be desired. I’m going to give it another read because I want to like this comic but, at the moment, it’s not a recommendation.
If you want, stick around behind the paywall as Romeo provides compelling evidence that Buddy is a real live villain.
