The Butterly Tribe is a comic story whose synopsis was written by Peter Höpfner, and which was scripted by Maya Åstrup and Saskia Hauff as well as drawn by Flemming Andersen. It features Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck, Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck, Brigitta McBridge, the Beagle Boys, Bertram and the Butterfly of Columbus. Christopher Columbus is mentioned, and the Butterfly Tribe make their debut.
Plot[]
Only just returning to the Money Bin from Costa Rica, Scrooge McDuck is recalled there by Donald Duck and the triplets, as the Ducks have lost the giant gold nugget they acquired to the Beagle Boys — besides which, he is firmly intent on investigating the curiously long lifespan of the butterfly who led him to the treasure in the first place! But before Scrooge arrives, Beagles, Ducks, gold and all lose themselves into the jungle and come across a mysterious people who mean to protect the butterfly and its secrets…
Continuity[]
- The story is a direct sequel to Uncle Scrooge and the Bodacious Butterfly Trail (1962), beginning a day or two after the end of the previous tale, and makes heavy references to it.
- Prologue to the Complete Donald Duck (1966) already featured a sequence in which, reminded of this adventure by Daisy, Donald recounts what happened next and how he lost the gold due to being accused of trying to smuggle it once he reached the border, after numerous other misadventures. This seemingly conflicts with the events of The Butterly Tribe, where Donald seems intent on giving the gold to Scrooge.
Behind the scenes[]
This story was first printed in October of 2017 in the Danish Jumbobog #458. It has never been officially printed in English.
As a sequel to classic Scrooge story Uncle Scrooge and the Bodacious Butterfly Trail, The Butterfly Tribe was one of the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of Scrooge's creation (1947). Part of the story's raison-d'être also seems to have been to fix a glaring leap of logic in the plotting of Scarpa's tale, wherein the butterfly bearing Columbus's markings would seem to be impossibly old to still be alive by 1962 (overlooking the scientifically-aberrant implication that the markings were actually made on an ancestor of the butterfly's and were passed down the generations), hence the "Butterfly of Eternal Life" plotline displayed here.
In an amusing visual nod, the first two pages are exact recreations of the art of the original story, though the dialogye is changed.