![]() ![]() Never mind the off-handed murder of Hortense and Matilda that this entails-please explain to me, in this case, just how the hell Donald and HDL are supposed to be Scrooge's nephews, unless Rumpus is supposed to be Donald's father, which he isn't. ![]() And it's further specified-in the story in which Rumpus is introduced-that he is meant to be Scrooge's only sibling. I know that by taking umbrage at this I am giving up any pretense at being anything other than a complete fanboy dork, but SCROOGE DOES NOT HAVE A HALF-BROTHER, GODDAMMIT. It's just that, without that context, it's hard to know what sort of conclusion you would expect anyone to draw from that panel.Įven if that doesn't bother you, though, surely the distinct "you dern kids get off my lawn!" vibe does.Īlso, for no justifiable reason, he created an original character named "Rumpus McFowl" who is meant to be Scrooge's half-brother. There is ample evidence in his work that he is an equal-opportunity reactionary in that regard, and that he hates all kinds of Devil Music. Please note that I am not accusing Van Horn of being a racist here. Would I be accused of excessive political correctness if I asserted that there's something just a tad problematic about dismissing a majority-black artform as so much undifferentiated noise with no agency? I'm no huge hip-hop fan, but come on. Behold, the single most embarrassing story in the history of duck comics: It's a pretty safe bet that any Van Horn comic that spells out the fact that it's not taking place in an indeterminate fifties era is not going to be felicitous. He mostly does Barksish ten-pagers, and they always struck me as kind of aimless-the art was fine, and the dialogue was sporadically amusing (I suppose I should give him credit for the first and to date only use of the word "chiaroscuro" I've seen in a Disney comic), but I would generally be left shrugging-so? Why should I care? Also, he would occasionally make truly horrendous stabs at social relevance-including plot twists involving reality shows and the like-that kind of made me want to die. Sorry!Ī lot of people speak Van Horn's name in the same breath as Barks and Rosa, which is something that baffled me a little-I would read his stories in the issues of Gemstone's comics (the ones with which I started building a collection of contemporary duckbooks) that I was accumulating, and I had trouble discerning anything all that special about his work. Fair warning: this entry is only incidentally about "Close-Ups." It's really just an excuse for me to maunder on at great length about William Van Horn. ![]()
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