DRL: “On Stolen Time” (1991)
Capsule Review: Don Rosa concocts a twisty time travel-ish tale where the Beagle Boys can stop time to steal Scrooge McDuck’s money. This is an imaginative romp with unintended consequences that are both funny and inventive. Scrooge, Donald, and the nephews come off as smart and well-considered, even in the face of such an insane challenge.
I mentioned in my review of “Incident at McDuck Tower” how much I love the “bottle stories” where everything takes place in one cool location. This story features the flat-out coolest location in all of comics. No, not the Bat Cave or the Avengers Mansion to Maestro’s Trophy Room.
It’s Scrooge McDuck’s Money Bin!
It’s an artist’s delight or pure hell, depending on their point of view, with plenty of opportunities for background gags and creative gags using (or ignoring) the laws of physics. Uncle Scrooge’s ability to dive through it like a porpoise, burrow through it like a gopher, and let the coins hit him on the top of his head is one of the most iconic things in comic book history.
The Money Bin is where this story starts. The Beagle Boys have stolen a stopwatch that can stop time from Gyro Gearloose. They’re using it to rob Scrooge blind, one large stack of bills at a time.
Don Rosa made sure to put some limitations on this power to give the Ducks a chance to fight back — if you’re within ten meters of the watch, you will not be stuck in time. And you have to turn the watch off and on again to restart time.
That’s just enough elements to leave a vulnerability for a smart writer to get his hero characters out of a situation. That’s what happens here, as Donald, Scrooge, Gyro, and the nephews work quickly to find a way past the Beagle Boys’ magic doodad.
The story moves out of the money bin for the second half, where the Ducks take their fight with the Beagle Boys to the streets — through the park and over to their secret hideout. Along the way, Rosa uses the unique characteristics of his time-stopping device to give us interesting moments, like the way the Ducks can’t walk on the grass because it’s frozen and won’t give under their feet. Then the Beagle Boys use a flock of frozen birds like a set of stairs into the sky to help get away.
It’s inventive and fun tricks like that which make Rosa’s Duck stories so memorable, above the stellar characterization and historical knowledge.
This story also has another early example of the ways Don Rosa uses the comics medium to tell his story. In this case, the panels where the Beagle Boys have stopped time are outlined in yellow. As the story moves faster and we go back and forth between characters, it’s a smart visual trick to help the reader follow the story.
A single comic panel can’t show movement, so the reader needs an extra hand in tracking when people should be frozen and not. This is triply true when characters start to pretend that they’re frozen when they really aren’t. The yellow borders then add a whole new layer to the story.
Summary
“On Stolen Time” is a smartly constructed 14-page story that hits Scrooge where it hurts the most — right in the Money Bin. Ultimately, it’s about Scrooge and his crew figuring out a workaround for the unintended consequences of a pilfered Gyro Gearloose device. The Beagle Boys act tough and are formidable foes, but they aren’t smart enough to think of everything, and that’s where the Ducks save the day.
The story doesn’t get lost in its own mystery. The Ducks quickly work out ways to poke at the stopwatch’s boundaries and even to defeat it. However, they use that knowledge to construct a clever plan to save the day, rather than just running into things like a bull in a china shop.
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