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BERKELEY, Calif.—August 8, 2008—Geoffrey Blum, local comics
historian turned creator, will sign copies of his Uncle Scrooge stories
at a special event on August 23, 3pm to 5pm, hosted by Comic Relief,
Berkeley’s award-winning downtown comic book store. This will be
a family friendly event welcoming all ages, entertaining current fans of
Blum’s work as well as introducing the fascinating world of Duckburg
to all others who attend.
Blum, who has spent twenty-five years writing criticism for collectors’
editions of classic Disney comics, is an expert on the Donald Duck
family of characters. Eight years ago he began penning original stories
for Egmont, Disney’s Scandinavian publisher. Fans will be pleased to
hear that Uncle Scrooge 377, out this month from Gemstone Publishing,
is a special all-Blum issue, bringing four of his stories to North America
for the first time. Two of the tales are based on plot ideas by Carl Barks,
the legendary cartoonist who created Uncle Scrooge, while a third takes
place at Point Isabel, an East Bay dog park that featured on KRON
television’s show Bay Area Backroads.
“My dog and I are daily visitors at Point Isabel,” said Blum. “I spun the
story around six-year-old squabbles between dog owners, prospective
developers, and preservationists who wanted to kick out both and turn
the shoreline into a bird preserve. The same sort of political jockeying
gets into ‘Race for the Golden Apples,’ where I used Barks’ beauty pageant
and Atalanta-themed race as vehicles for my own gender wars. Donald
and Scrooge and their kin have been around for decades, but you can’t
rely on nostalgia alone to draw readers. By bringing modern peeves and
concerns to bear on the ducks—which entertains me—I hope to entertain
others. That’s what Barks did sixty years ago.”
Comic Relief is located at 2026 Shattuck Avenue, near the downtown
Berkeley BART station. Blum will meet fans and sign comics on Saturday,
August 23, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. For more information, e-mail
info@comicrelief.net or contact Jonathan La Mantia at 510-843-5002.
