The mystery of Inception continues to deepen beyond even the reels of the film — just yesterday, we heard that Matthew Vaughn scrapped 12 pages of the X-Men: First Class script after seeing the movie, and today the blogosphere is absolutely consumed with the fact that the plot of Christopher Nolan’s latest hit is oddly similar to an Uncle Scrooge comic book, in which the dastardly Beagle Boys invade Uncle Scrooge’s dream, leaving Donald to have to go in and save the day.

Though that is certainly interesting — read more about it here — it’s also an intriguing study on the spread of information in the modern age. Or misinformation.

Few sources mention the specific comic that the story — by legendary Duck writer and illustrator Don Rosa — appeared in, Uncle Scrooge #329. I Watch Stuff, patient zero for much of these blog posts, said the comic came out in 2002, when it appears based on ComicVine and other sources to have been published in 2004. But both ComicVine and The Wrap say that it was published that year by BOOM! Studios, when that company didn’t exist until 2005 and didn’t start putting out Disney comics until 2008 — the comic was actually published by Diamond sister company Gemstone, who had the Disney license back then.

Then there’s Cinema Blend, where writer Josh Tyler says, “Oddly enough, I actually remember this comic. I used to read Uncle Scrooge as a kid, waiting in the corner of our local laundromat for my mom to finish folding clothes and these few panels bring back a lot of Zippy Mart memories.” Given that the Facebook link on Tyler’s Cinema Blend profile says he graduated high school in 1995, it seems, at the very least, highly unlikely that he was reading this particular comic in one of those instances. (Though a lot of Disney comics were published internationally before they were released in North America, so file it under “vaguely possible.”)

This post is getting as complex as Inception itself, but the important thing is this: it’s pretty awesome and more than a little surprising that a years-old Uncle Scrooge comic is so similar to a 2010 big-budget sci-fi blockbuster. A-woo-oo.

EDIT: Looks like the comic indeed came out in Europe in 2002, so props to I Watch Stuff for getting that right. Thanks to the commenters!

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