Historian/Uncle Scrooge writer Geoffrey Blum will be at Comic Relief in Berkeley Aug. 23. The complete press release can be found after the jump.
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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 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.
