DRL: “The Coin” (1999)
Capsule Summary: Don Rosa shoots for another high-concept gag story that uses the comics format for its unique capabilities. Telling the story from the point of view of Scrooge’s Number One Dime is creative and a lot of fun. I can quibble with one or two uses of it, but once you accept the technique, it’s a good use of the medium. The way he comes in and out of that technique is the best part of the story, with laughs piling up. Also, let me take a moment later in this review to praise Rosa’s famous “needless and irritating” linework.
I’ve mentioned repeatedly that Don Rosa uses the comic book format to tell his stories. He drew sideways panels to match the change in direction of gravity in “A Matter of Some Gravity“.
He used special panel borders when time is frozen in “On Stolen Time“.
He split the page in half to show how the two sides fought through a platter in “On A Silver Platter.”
But none of that holds a candle to the trick he pulls off in “The Coin.” It’s a story so wacky that it was rejected by the first publisher Rosa submitted it to. The official reason is that it wasn’t funny, but I think part of that was the conceit of the story we’ll get to soon.
Thankfully, a French publisher picked it up. We’re big believers in the power of Franco-Belgian publishing around here, and this story is a perfect case of why.
In “The Coin,” Scrooge accidentally gives Donald a coin he doesn’t want to lose to go buy a newspaper. He chases after Donald before he can spend it, but Donald drops the coin, it rolls away, and a new adventure begins.
Here’s the twist: About half the story is done from the coin’s point of view. When the panels shrink down and the panel borders go yellow (a la “On Stolen Time”), you’re seeing things from the coin’s point of view. You’re usually seeing what the coin would see as if it had googly eyes stuck to it.
Is it a gimmick? Maybe, but it’s integral to the story and makes sense to be there. Plus, it’s very entertaining and creative. This is much closer to Rosa providing storyboards to animators than it is his usual comic book fare.
The only semi-confusing part is directionality. You might not even notice it at first. The story is very easy to follow, but there are a couple of points in the story where The Coin’s point of view shifts from looking ahead at where it’s going to looking behind it to who’s chasing it down, or vice versa.
There’s one moment where the coin bounces through Scrooge’s office from a window on one side of the room and then exits through a window on the other side. As it passes Scrooge, it shifts the point of view to look back at Scrooge as it flies away.
It works in context, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a moment or two in this story where I got a little lost for a moment on the POV direction change.
In this example, The Coin is looking back at the nephews as it rolls off the top of the building, but then does a 180 degree turn on the way down to show you where it’s going instead of where it’s been.
It’s such a fun thing to see in a Duck comic, though, that I can forgive it. And, like I said, it’s only a momentary thing. The coin has an epic journey as it is, bouncing high in the sky and rolling in long straight lines to avoid getting caught. Shifting the POV makes sense and it never lost me. It just made me recalibrate what I was looking at for a split second while I shifted my own POV.
The larger story is a fun mish-mash of short story ideas. We visit Grandma and Gus as the coin causes them a flat tire on their car. Donald and Gladstone are locked in a battle over an upcoming lottery that Donald is certain he can triumph on, despite the overwhelming odds. Donald calls in Gyro for help finding the coin. And, of course, the Beagle Boys are planning to invade the Money Bin from underground.
In the end, it all ties back to a moment from a classic Barks tale. Rosa just can’t help himself.
I didn’t remember the specifics of it (though the Don Rosa Library shows you in its back matter), but I did appreciate the importance of it and how well it ties back to Carl Barks’ work.
More Duck Wordplay
We get a glimpse into the world of the Junior Woodchucks in this story.
They’re holding a raffle that is to be picked by “The Illustrious, Great P.O.T.B.E.L.L.Y.” (“Picker of Tickets and Bellower Exclaiming Lucky Lucky You.”)
These insane acronyms are a JWC tradition and they always crack me up. For those of you who’ve read Marvel comics for any length of time, you’ve seen how they’ve contorted themselves to redefine S.H.I.E.L.D. within those characters. With the Duck books, it’s always a reach, and the bigger the reach the funnier the results.
The master of going over the top with these things is William Van Horn. Fantagraphics published a collection of his stories last year that I hope to review eventually, too. We’ll see some glorious acronyms in that book, I’m sure.
Evolution of Art
Up to this point, I’ve mostly leaned on the earlier stories in Rosa’s oeuvre. This one jumps ahead quite a ways to 1999, in a story collected in the Don Rosa Library Volume 9. Nine! Rosa’s line is tighter, his backgrounds are filled with more gags, and he’s drawing more lines to approximate lighting conditions.
It’s a bit of frequent self-deprecation that Rosa refers to the “needless and irritating” line work in his comics. I don’t think he gives himself enough credit, though, and not just because I’m someone who was raised on comics in the 90s at a time when excessive lines were at record highs.
There are a few instances I saw in this story where they make sense and add to the story in some way. In the opening title panel that you see at the top of this review, he’s started to draw in the lines on the cinderblocks on the Money Bin’s walls with a lightweight line. The thinness of the lines helps keep them pushed back in the panel and not at all clashing with anything in the foreground. No line is complete. They’re broken up in a way that defines the shapes without having to draw every single inch of every single line from every single block. That would get too technical and distracting.
Note also the way those background lines disappear in something of a halo around Scrooge and Donald to help keep the layers of the panel separated.
The coins in the foreground are more detailed than anything Carl Barks would have done. Rosa draws the ridges in the sides of the coin and details The Coin’s heads side with more work than most Duck artists would ever contemplate.
I love when Rosa goes for the dramatic lighting, as with this panel. Scrooge is backlighted from the open door behind him. All those little lines help define the shadow areas and separate them from the bright areas facing the door. Their contours give shape to Scrooge’s head ad the areas on his jacket.
It’s not needless at all. I’ll grant you that some readers — particularly the old-school Duck fans — find it very irritating. But I think there’s room in Duck comics for enough of a variety of styles that this works.
Rosa also has a few challenging angles to draw in this story. Drawings buildings is bad enough (see “Incident at McDuck Tower“) and every artist hates horses (see various chapters of “Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck”), but this story from the point of view of the coin leads to some angles you don’t normally see. In one of the examples above, you can see drawings looking straight down at Duck characters as the coin falls toward them. I Have a tough enough time drawing a Duck from three-quarters perspective. I can’t imagine top down.
There are other angles showing a neighborhood from a high angle and a little forced perspective when characters reach out for the coin and a close-up of a Beagle Boy’s mouth.
Duck comics are usually filled with medium shots and wide establishing shots. Those kinds of close-up panels with exaggerated bits popping out at the reader are not common. It’s a fun part of the coin’s POV that this story gives us.
A Note About the Date of the Story: In the subject header of all of these reviews, I include the year of initial publication of the story to help better place it in the timeline of Don Rosa’s career. This is the initial publication date. In the case of “The Coin,” it first saw print in Europe in 1999, but didn’t come over to America until 2003.
