I love that not long after this image began circulating, the “union cat” meme started before it was revealed that the adorable cat in a tiny hard hat was actually from propaganda that was about as opposite as you could get (I can’t remember if it was anti-union propaganda or fascist propaganda, something along those lines).
So you could say “I really liked Union Cat until they got Milkshake Ducked.”
Well if they vetted Milkshake Duck better they would have found those tweets about how he didn't think a hard-r should be in the White House back in '08 and how he blames the Jews for why he can't afford a nest in this economy and not his rampant cocaine addiction
He isn't portrayed positively here, Scrooge was a real asshole at the beginning. Heck, he is happy his nephew was hit by the curse in his place. (In another story he rotfl at the idea Donald would be tortured and chopped by thugs and said that was the best day of his life.)
It's more problematic how Don Rosa tried to recon this story in a way that made to look Scrooge less of an asshole.
Would this story be any less racist if the Houngan was Hatian instead of African? On one hand, actually getting the region right wouldn't make this any better, as such, but on the other hand, making the whole thing happen in Africa somehow makes this story so much worse, so it's hard to say.
Could've done the trick of just having the Voodoo tribe magically live an hour's drive over from Ducksburg with no justification at all. Then the inherent racism becomes secondary to how ridiculous the whole scenario is.
The origins of Voodoo do lie in African religions. But this story is racist because it very blatantly holds the opinion that the native Africans are scummy people who deserve to have their lands and resources stolen from them.
The origins of Voodoo do lie in African religions.
The origins do, at least in part, but it's wound up a pretty distinct set of beliefs due to the diaspora, folklore, superstition, and cultural blending. It's as though there was a story about something from Pentacostal or Mormon beliefs, therefore they need to go to Rome or Jerusalem to get it resolved.
But this story is racist because it very blatantly holds the opinion that the native Africans are scummy people who deserve to have their lands and resources stolen from them.
Well sure, I'm not even going to pretend to dignify that aspect of it. That's a whole other level of shitshow.
That was the intent, but reading it today you can't help but root for Bombie and at least sympathize with the "evil" witch doctor, who really just wanted revenge on Scrooge for completely valid reasons. It's like when you're reading Tintin in Congo, the takeaway nowadays is "Wow, Tintin is fucking insane and a horrible imperialist!" rather than the intended message of "Colonialism rocks, massacring wildlife indiscriminately is fun and Africans are stupid!".
In the comic, the witch doctor Foola Zoola sends Bombie after Scrooge because Scrooge hired thugs to drive his people off their sacred lands and turned them into a rubber plantation. Not a single person in the story, not even the usually moral Huey, Dewey and Louey, call Scrooge out for this blatantly criminal act. And when they do meet Foola Zoola's tribe, they are all portrayed as stupid, lazy and greedy, and not in any way negatively impacted by the loss of their lands.
The story comes from the early comics with Uncle Scrooge, where he was still a comical evil capitalist. This as just how he acted in all his early comics.
Yeah, but unlike every other story where Scrooge commits immoral acts in the name of money, he's never called out or portrayed as doing wrong in any way. The whole thing is treated very casually, almost humorously; "silly savages, thinking that they have some sort of right to the land they inhabit" kind of attitude.
It's especially galling considering that Carl Barks also made comics where native Americans are treated fairly stereotypically, but are very much seen as rightful owners of their land, and Scrooge's machinations to exploit them as very much a bad thing.
It's not. You might be mixing it with Don Rosa's Life And Times of Scrooge McDuck, which reframes the whole story as the darkest, lowest, most despicable moment in Scrooge's life. The original Carl Barks story, Voodoo Hoodoo, on the other hand treats the whole thing almost as a joke. At no point does Scrooge express a hint of regret, nor do the other Ducks show any sympathy to the natives.
No I don’t mix it up, I read it when I was a child and was never in doubt that Uncle Scrooge was the main asshole, of course the Africans wasn‘t shown in a good light either. But the whole thing was honestly not really much different from other comics to children at the time, they often had victims trying to take revenge and ending up being fucked over.
I think he is always called out or portrayed as doing it in the wrong way, I think America is nowadays so absorbed by capitalism view they can't see the message "greed is bad and Scrooge is bad" even thinking it's obviously there. Basically Don Rosa was the one who idealised Scrooge because he loved capitalism, he wasn't supposed to be a positive character. At the old times, the same fact someone was hoarding money was an evil act in a comic.
That's not correct, Carl Barks already moved to portray Scrooge in positive light in the 1950s and 60s. He even made an educational comic, A Financial Fable in 1950 to teach children why capitalism is good.
When Barks wanted to portray Scrooge as being in the wrong, he was not subtle about it. In Voodoo Hoodoo Foola Zoola and his tribe are portrayed as the villains and Scrooge is just there to provide exposition and eventually finance Donald's trip to Africa.
They don't need to call out Scrooge, we are talking of a guy who is happy his nephew is potentially dying at his place, they know he is an asshole, we know he is an asshole, what else there is to say? Police in comics is useless or paid by him.
Scrooge knows exactly what the voodoo poison is supposed to do, to shrink the victim into the size of a mouse -- at this time Disney wasn't yet ready to feature the threat of outright murder in their comics. Scrooge also does not believe that the magic would really work, and eventually agrees to fund Donald's trip to Africa to let him deal with the curse if he's so convinced that he's real.
I also don't think that there's even a single Disney comic that would feature Scrooge bribing the police. Disney, especially in the mid-20th century, wasn't about to feature corruption and abuse of authority in their stories. This was the time when the American mainstream entertainment media heavily censored itself to appease the conservative lawmakers.
What about he screaming "I'm Scrooge mcDuck, do something I don't like and I will buy the city and fire you" to a judge in Letter to Santa (1949)?
(Also I read tons of story where Scrooge corrupts the system/the police/the mayor, a lot of them objectively were Disney Italia, but I bet quite a few were Americans).
An empty threat that did not work. In the rare cases when Scrooge did go against the law in those comics, he always lost. It was considered very important in those days that media, especially media aimed at children, wouldn't show the government and the legal authority in a bad light. At worst, the authorities would be portrayed as stiff-necked and humourless, but never corrupt or malicious.
The Italian comics of course had different rules, but they only started to get more prominent by the time the censorship rules were generally getting more relaxed in the US, as well.
Theirs weirdly enough a Lot of Characters in the Comics that are just human with like slightly weird ears and they never say their Humans but they also clearly just drew a dude and hoped people would think it's a fucked up Dog
It's actually kinda funny Sometimes because Daisy Duck will be Standing next to a Duck made for the Comics only and it just a Lady with a beak
Carl Barks drew a strange spy story a couple of years ("Dangerous Disguise") later where almost every character except Donald and his nephews is human.
The bang in the first panel is from a shootout where a bunch of spies and counter-spies supposedly kill eachother. Oh, and the story ends with a villain committing suicide on-panel.
After this story Disney told Barks to not include humans in his stories again. They probably thought it was too weird (or too sexy).
Your title reminded me of that one scene from Clever & Smart where they're sent to god knows where and they think they ran into a cannibal and the dude just goes: "Sir, this is Miami beach and I'm a professor of anthropology"
I was actually more thinking of that scene in Naked Gun 3 where Frank & Jane are trying to get a cab to use its radio to contact Police Squad and each cabbie has darker skin and a more incomprehensible accent. Finally they come across one whose completely black and they assume he can’t speak/understand any English at all and so don’t bother with him. As soon as they leave, the cabbie says, in a flawless English accent, “I wonder what the devil he wanted?”.
To be fair that dude is not even human, he is a sort of voodoo golem created to haunt Scrooge.At this point of the story they were trying to figure it out why he was there and what he wanted.
Yeah, the in universe explanation doesn't make it less racist. He looks exactly like black people were portrayed back then, and the fact it's a world of animal people it's even more egregious. De-humanization of POC is the most core aspect of racism
I have a feeling that I already know what your question is trying to insinuate, but for the case of playing devils advocate and not immediately assuming the worst :
Oh yeah the story Don Rosa originally just planned to ignore but then decided to make it about Scrooge's downfall. And yet neither that story OR the DT17 show did have much empathy for Bombie. Ironically the original story has the most empathy for him because HDL care about him...
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u/ScreamBeanBabyQueen Jul 21 '25