"Uncle Scrooge and the Horn of Plenty"

1982

Zio Paperone e la Leggendaria Cornucopia

Original Language: Italian

Translated From: French

Plotting By: Osvaldo Pavese

Art By: The Francesc Bargadà Studio

Afterword:

The longest translation posted here so far; I mainly translated it because as I read it in French (one of the only two countries it has ever been printed in), English dialogues began popping in my head, so much so that I just had to write them down. The story's not bad by any means, but I don't think it's likely to get IDW publication any time soon, especially with how obscure it is.

The art is very Barksian at times, and though it might seem like a silly thing to focus on, I really like how the goats are drawn. On the other hand, the Giant's design is nothing too interesting (why couldn't they use a Cyclops instead? They're obviously referencing Polyphemes anyway with the whole goat thing), and his size shifts on a really annoying scale from panel to panel. As for the plotting, I mostly like it, but that Brigitta lookalike at the end is frankly quite pointless. Why should all women who want to marry Scrooge look like that?

I allowed myself to make a few changes to the story to fix up a few issues (beyond minor rewrites in the dialogue to make it flow better):

• The original never mentions "nymphs", though this is presumably what the various female, apparently human characters seen on the island are supposed to be. I fixed that.
• I just had to stick a reference to Bark's “September Scrimmage” in the American Football scene. Note that I refused to erase the original dialogue for it, which may be why the bubble is a tad crowded.
• The next change is befitting of my concerns with the whole "Brigitta Lookalike" thing: in the original, Scrooge seems to be objecting to the wedding entirely on the basis that this Brigitis must be just like Brigitta in every way, simply because they look alike. My Scrooge instead replies that he doesn't even know Brigitis as a person.
• The perhaps heavy-handed hints that the people of Erinia were using the Horn as their sole source of food are all mine. I feel like this is what the story was trying to do, which would put Scrooge in front of a moral dilemma as taking the Horn would mean he'd leave the Erinians to starve, but the story never adresses it in front and Scrooge never realizes it.