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Captured in Bananaland (entitled Zio Paperone e il Casco d'Oro in the original Italian), for which two other English titles, The Other Golden Helmet and Brigitta's Double Jeopardy, were considered, is a comic story written by Romano Scarpa based on a premise by Carl Barks, and penciled by Scarpa with inking by Sandro Zemolin. It features Brigitta MacBridge, Scrooge McDuck, Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck, Donald Duck, Gyro Gearloose, the Beagle Boys, and, in their debuts, the Quanchos, including the Old Qualani and Hitta, as well as Justice O'Piece. A sketch of Mickey Mouse is visible on the cover of a Topolino issue Donald is seen leafing through. The name of Neptune is also mentioned.
Description[]
When Brigitta MacBridge is gifted a sample Gyro Gearloose's latest invention (incredibly potent Money Perfume), she sprays herself with large amounts of it and discovers that this unfair advantage is enough to sway Scrooge McDuck into finally acquiescing to her marriage proposal! Just as the Beagle Boys planned, for they ordered the Perfume from Gyro, hoping to rob the Money Bin while Scrooge is distracted by his honeymoon… Speaking of travels, after Scrooge's faithful nephews foil her nuptial plans, a repentant Brigitta flies to the Bananias Archipelago to clear her mind, only for the entire adventure to take an unexpected turn as Brigitta is kidnapped by an ancient underground people to become their new queen while Brigitta's Quancho lookalike Hitta wreaks havoc in the surface world!
References[]
- “Qualani” is the Quanchos' word for “Queen”.
- Prior to the beginning of this story, attempts by Scrooge McDuck to safeguard his money by moving it elsewhere than Duckburg included the Orbiting Satellite Money Bin (which cost too much fuel to keep in orbit), two giant Fake Fish filled with cash (which he lost track of due to unpredictable currents), a Money Blimp (which was punctured by cloud-shooters during a drought), and finally a hollow inactive volcano which, astounding geophysicists, proceeded to erupt anyway a week later.
Continuity[]
- The alternative title of The Other Golden Helmet was a reference to Carl Barks's The Golden Helmet (1949), although the two stories are otherwise unrelated.
- Romano Scarpa's Mad Madam Mim (1969) featured Scrooge McDuck hiding his money inside a hollow mountain, only for charges of dynamites placed there by the Beagle Boys to cause it to "erupt", sending all the money out into the air to fall back like rain, in a visual akin to what is depicted in Scrooge's "volcano anecdote" here. However, it is unclear if this is the incident being referred to, as the circumstances do not match: the flashback in Captured in Bananaland sees Scrooge's fortune being loaded into the mountain via a large aircraft, while in the 1969 story, it had been transported there by Madam Mim's powers.
- Joe Torcivia's 2019 localization of this story for its printing in the Disney Masters series includes a quip that Scrooge "hasn't taken a taxi since 1953". By Torcivia's own admission, the event being referenced is Fare Delay (1953), a one-pager by Carl Barks. However, it is worth noting that Uncle Scrooge's Portrait (1955), a comic strip written by Bob Karp and drawn by Al Taliaferro, also featured Scrooge traveling by taxi, in this case to Donald Duck's house; a narrative comment on Joe Torcivia's The Issue At Hand (2019) offered a reconciliation by showing the Collective of the Retconning Crocodiles were to blame, having erased Scrooge's 1955 taxi driver from history, meaning that in the new versions of event he indeed hadn't taken a taxi since 1953 in 1976.
Behind the scenes[]
Captured in Bananaland was based on a sketch given by Carl Barks to Romano Scarpa in 1975, which suggested the idea of Brigitta ensnaring Scrooge with Money Perfume. Scarpa eventually used that idea as a springboard for his bananas epic, which was released in March of 1978 in Topolino #1061 and #1062. It was eventually printed in English in Disney Masters #8, with localization by Joe Torcivia and an introduction by David Gerstein.
