Guardians of the Lost Library
Encyclopedia
Guardians of the Lost Library is a comic book
story made by Don Rosa
for The Walt Disney Company, mentioned by Comics Buyer's Guide
as "possibly the greatest comic book story of all time". Although afraid at the time of its creation of cramming too many historical details into the story, Rosa himself mentions in Uncle Scrooge
#383 (November, 2008) that in fan mail he receives to this day, Guardians of the Lost Library to his own surprise is often referred to as "'the best Rosa story' or 'the best Duck story' or even 'the best comic book story' (?!!) that fans say they've ever read."
Guardians of the Lost Library was featured in Uncle Scrooge Adventures
#27, published in July, 1994. In this story Scrooge McDuck
, Huey, Dewey and Louie
, and General Snozzie search for the Lost Library of Alexandria
. This story was Don Rosa's first use of General Snozzie, the Junior Woodchucks bloodhound.
-based, European Disney publisher Egmont
in reference to the fact that Norway
had officially declared 1993 to be "The Year of The Book" in order to promote reading (as the story was published in Norway and Denmark
in 1993, one year prior to its first edition in the original English). Rosa figured that he would honor the written word best by sending the Ducks on an epic quest for the Library of Alexandria, where he
, Greece around 400AD, to become known as the Library of Constantinople
.
In Istanbul, modern-day Turkey, these "100,000 parchment scrolls" ("perhaps they left out the plays and poetry") once were "the light of the Dark Ages for 800 years" and had "the books from the great libraries of Islam" added to them over time, but Scrooge and the nephews find they were destroyed in the 1204 Sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade
. However, for centuries the Orthodox
monks had copied them into the modern technology of 10,000 manuscripts (with each hand-written book holding 10 original scrolls). This Byzantine Library of manuscripts was sacked on the Crusade by Italian knights and brought to Venice
.
In Venice, these books were kept in an abbey whose library henceforth "sparked the Renaissance
", inspired "Leonardo
and Michelangelo
", and motivated Marco Polo
and his father to journey to the Orient, paying back the library by adding the Great Books from Kublai Khan
's Empire of Cathay
to it upon Marco's return. The Venice Library was lost in 1485 during the collapse of the abbey's bell tower, but following the invention of movable type printing by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439, the rotting books had been saved in their entirety by making their first typeset copy "of about 1,000 volumes", with each typeset book containing 10 manuscripts.
Inspired by Phoenicia
n accounts dating 600BCE of rich new lands beyond the Western ocean in the books, Lorenzo de Medici sent a bookdealer named Cristobal Colon in 1484 to buy these 1,000 volumes, but Colon never turned the books over to the Medici family. When Scrooge and the nephews find out that the English name of this bookdealer-turned sailor happens to be Christopher Columbus
("The plot thickens!" - "Like cement!") and that Columbus's private library is in Seville
, Spain, Scrooge is pacing out the door, "already halfway across France".
In the Biblioteca Columbina, they are forced to decipher Columbus's private notes hand-written in a secret, unknown code by means of the Woodchuck Guidebook, to find out Columbus had the library moved to Santo Domingo
in 1498, far from the reach of the Medici and the Spanish King, but Ferdinand II of Aragon
soon found out and had Columbus put into chains.
had it moved to his new capital, modern-day Lima
, Peru in 1535, where beginning in 1551, the Spanish added "all the knowledge of the Mayans
, Aztec
s, Incas
, and Olmec
s". When the Spanish tried to send the library home to Spain in 1579, the ships were captured by Sir Francis Drake
. As the battle had damaged his own ship, Drake was forced to go ashore on the coast of Nova Albion, founding Fort Drake Borough which later became Duckburg, for the sole purpose of burying the library below the fort, on Kill Mole Hill where Scrooge built his Money Bin in 1902. (See Fort Duckburg).
Hurrying into old caves and bricked gangways Scrooge never explored before below the Bin, they find a large crypt full of old books that were eaten by rats. In the middle of the room stands a metal case, with the emblem of the Guardians of the Lost Library our heroes first saw in Egypt, an Ibis symbolizing Thoth
, the Egyptian deity of wisdom and writing, and an inscription on a metal plate by the last survivor of Drakeborough, saying that he had the library condensed into one single volume with every information no other surviving book in the world included. As the Lost Library's last guardian, he had this one book sealed into this rat-proof metal box. Scrooge finds it empty.
The nephews stitch the remaining puzzle together: The British didn't find the library when they reoccupied Drakeborough, but Cornelius Coot, the founder of the City of Duckburg, found it during the late 18th century, and left the book to his son Clinton Coot, the founder of the Junior Woodchucks, who in turn used it as a framework for the very first edition of the Junior Woodchuck's Guidebook, the only one book in the world Scrooge can't buy. This not only explains why the Guidebook facilitated them to follow the trail of the Lost Library all over the world with its enormous knowledge base, but also the fact the Junior Woodchuck's logo, based on the letters J and two Ws, looks uncannily like the Ibis Emblem of the Guardians of the Lost Library.
Later on Scrooge comments on how depressed he is about not getting the books he has traveled all over the globe for, until the boys remind him that he would have had to turn the library over to Alexandria. Scrooge gets excited about how much money he saved on the fine he would have had to pay otherwise for 100,000 library scrolls each overdue for 2,000 years, and Donald complains about the noise drowning out the TV, muttering "Cripes! They're still going on about their stupid library! As if messing with books was as interesting as watching TV! Hah! That'll be the day!"
to be the capital of his empire. Actually, he built it to be the capital of Egypt
but not of the entire empire. Babylon
was the capital of Alexander's empire, even though Alexandria became the capital of the diadochi
c Ptolemaic Kingdom
under Alexander's immediate successor Ptolemy I Soter
.
The exact quote found in Guardians of the Lost Library, "The city was founded by Alexander the Great in the fourth century B. C. to be the capital of his empire!" is a bit ambiguous, meaning either that it was Alexander's direct personal intention or that it was about to happen independently of whatever Alexander had intended.
(1994), of Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck
where in 1902 the first three Junior Woodchucks (seen as ripe old men half a century later at the beginning of Guardians of the Lost Library) are expelled from their former headquarter, the ruins of Fort Drakeborough recently bought by Scrooge. As the boyscouts walk down Kill Mole Hill, along with some JWC pennants they carry a large, old volume with the Iris Emblem of the Guardians of the Lost Library with them. In order to reclaim the Fort, they appeal to "higher authority" by wire, which turns out as an all-ears U. S. President Theodore Roosevelt
(Attorney General William Henry Moody
: "They say a billionaire from Scotland has seized a military installation on the coast!" - Roosevelt: "Great jumping Jehoshaphat! The three dangers that I campaign strongest against - big business, foreign interference, and military threats to our shores - all rolled into one! Egad!"), who decides to mobilize the entire US Army and Navy against Fort Drakeborough. After an enduring battle fought pretty much against Scrooge alone, eventually the President's troops fold against the infamous temper of Scrooge's sister Hortense.
As the condensed book passed on by the last survivor of Drakeborough and found by Clinton Coot is the framework for the first edition of the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook, in Rosa's later story The Lost Charts of Columbus
(1995), the Junior Woodchucks intend to raise funds for excavations at the site of Cleopatra's hidden library in Egypt before it was brought to Byzantium. So they organize a raffle and Gladstone Gander wins a fishing trip to Canada, where he recovers The Golden Helmet
from Barks's eponymous story, allowing Azure Blue to resume his plans of owning North America
. Above-mentioned ancient Phoenician accounts of the Americas having inspired Lorenzo de Medici and Christopher Columbus in Guardians of the Lost Library are revisited in this story as well.
#27, July, 1994. Compared to European prints, this original English-language edition was of a poor quality where on a number of pages the CMYK printing plates had been misaligned resulting in more than obvious color fringing.
The story was eventually re-published at a higher printing quality in Gemstone
's 60 Years of Uncle $crooge celebratory edition Uncle Scrooge #383, November, 2008 (which turned out to be Gemstone's ultimate Disney comic publication, as Boom! Kids was about to take over publishing Disney's classic characters starting September, 2009). Again, original art by Rosa was used for the cover, however the artwork used for the 2008 reprint had been initially made by Rosa not specifically as cover art but as part of a series of collectibles related to his stories that had been originally published by French Disney publisher Picsou Magazine
in 2004. While the 2008 reprint featured a superior printing quality and the 2008 cover was shaded as usual with North American Disney comics, with the reprinted story itself Gemstone replaced Gladstone Publishing
's 1994 finer-graded colorization featuring many soft gradients with Egmont's European solid-hue color scheme.
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
story made by Don Rosa
Don Rosa
Keno Don Hugo Rosa, known simply as Don Rosa, is an American comic book writer and illustrator known for his stories about Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck and other characters created by Carl Barks for Disney comics, such as The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.-Early life:Don Rosa's grandfather,...
for The Walt Disney Company, mentioned by Comics Buyer's Guide
Comics Buyer's Guide
Comics Buyer's Guide , established in 1971, is the longest-running English-language periodical reporting on the American comic book industry...
as "possibly the greatest comic book story of all time". Although afraid at the time of its creation of cramming too many historical details into the story, Rosa himself mentions in Uncle Scrooge
Uncle Scrooge
Uncle Scrooge is a comic book with the stingy Scrooge McDuck "the richest duck in the world" as the main character. The series also featured Donald Duck and his nephews as supporting characters. The first 70 issues mostly consisted of stories written and drawn by Carl Barks, the creator of Scrooge...
#383 (November, 2008) that in fan mail he receives to this day, Guardians of the Lost Library to his own surprise is often referred to as "'the best Rosa story' or 'the best Duck story' or even 'the best comic book story' (?!!) that fans say they've ever read."
Guardians of the Lost Library was featured in Uncle Scrooge Adventures
Uncle Scrooge Adventures
Uncle Scrooge Adventures is a comic book published by Gladstone Publishing under license from the Walt Disney Company. It features the adventures of Scrooge McDuck and his nephews...
#27, published in July, 1994. In this story Scrooge McDuck
Scrooge McDuck
Scrooge McDuck is a cartoon character created in 1947 by Carl Barks and licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Scrooge is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a red or blue frock coat, top hat, pince-nez glasses, and spats...
, Huey, Dewey and Louie
Huey, Dewey and Louie
Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck are a trio of fictional, anthropomorphic ducks who appear in animated cartoons and comic books published by the Walt Disney Company. Identical triplets, the three are Donald Duck's nephews. Huey, Dewey, and Louie were created by Ted Osborne and Al Taliaferro, and first...
, and General Snozzie search for the Lost Library of Alexandria
Library of Alexandria
The Royal Library of Alexandria, or Ancient Library of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, was the largest and most significant great library of the ancient world. It flourished under the patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty and functioned as a major center of scholarship from its construction in the...
. This story was Don Rosa's first use of General Snozzie, the Junior Woodchucks bloodhound.
Background
Rosa created Guardians of the Lost Library at the request of ScandinaviaScandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
-based, European Disney publisher Egmont
Egmont Publishing
The Egmont Group is a media corporation founded and rooted in Copenhagen, Denmark. The business area of Egmont has traditionally been magazine publishing but has over the years evolved to comprise media generally....
in reference to the fact that Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
had officially declared 1993 to be "The Year of The Book" in order to promote reading (as the story was published in Norway and Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
in 1993, one year prior to its first edition in the original English). Rosa figured that he would honor the written word best by sending the Ducks on an epic quest for the Library of Alexandria, where he
- "could show the evolution of books from papyrusPapyrusPapyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....
scrolls through parchmentParchmentParchment is a thin material made from calfskin, sheepskin or goatskin, often split. Its most common use was as a material for writing on, for documents, notes, or the pages of a book, codex or manuscript. It is distinct from leather in that parchment is limed but not tanned; therefore, it is very...
tomes and the first Gutenberg volumes on up to the present day. [...] In the process, it was easy to show how books have recorded and even inspired the advancements of science and art through the ages [...]. And what could be better than for the key to tracing the Library around the world be that most famous mythical book of all - the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook?!"
Premise
Donald Duck and his nephews go to The Duckburg Museum to see the exhibit on artifacts from the first Junior Woodchucks. Scrooge McDuck is also there to get facts from The Junior Woodchucks Guidebook but the scoutmaster refuses, on the regulation that McDuck is too old to join the organization, and only members are allowed to read its guidebook. Also the scoutmaster suspects, correctly, that Scrooge would use the information mainly to enrich himself, as he has recently done by acquiring the entire log books of the 16th century Spanish fleet to find lost treasures. Scrooge tells the nephews that he would like to find the Library of Alexandria for the same purpose. The head of The Junior Woodchucks organization agrees to sponsor Scrooge's trip in the name of science as well as lend out General Snozzie, the Woodchucks bloodhound. Scrooge and the nephews set out to find the lost library, leaving behind Donald totally oblivious to the events as he sits constantly glued to the TV, currently holding the occupation of Scrooge's Money Bin guard.From Duckburg to Seville and back
They set out to Egypt, where they find Cleopatra had complete parchment copies made shortly before the burning of the library which were shipped to ByzantiumByzantium
Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas . The name Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...
, Greece around 400AD, to become known as the Library of Constantinople
Library of Constantinople
The Imperial Library of Constantinople, in the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, was the last of the great libraries of the ancient world. Long after the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria and the other ancient libraries, it preserved the knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans...
.
In Istanbul, modern-day Turkey, these "100,000 parchment scrolls" ("perhaps they left out the plays and poetry") once were "the light of the Dark Ages for 800 years" and had "the books from the great libraries of Islam" added to them over time, but Scrooge and the nephews find they were destroyed in the 1204 Sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade
Fourth Crusade
The Fourth Crusade was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and conquered the Christian city of Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire...
. However, for centuries the Orthodox
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
monks had copied them into the modern technology of 10,000 manuscripts (with each hand-written book holding 10 original scrolls). This Byzantine Library of manuscripts was sacked on the Crusade by Italian knights and brought to Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
.
In Venice, these books were kept in an abbey whose library henceforth "sparked the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
", inspired "Leonardo
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
and Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
", and motivated Marco Polo
Marco Polo
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
and his father to journey to the Orient, paying back the library by adding the Great Books from Kublai Khan
Kublai Khan
Kublai Khan , born Kublai and also known by the temple name Shizu , was the fifth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire from 1260 to 1294 and the founder of the Yuan Dynasty in China...
's Empire of Cathay
Cathay
Cathay is the Anglicized version of "Catai" and an alternative name for China in English. It originates from the word Khitan, the name of a nomadic people who founded the Liao Dynasty which ruled much of Northern China from 907 to 1125, and who had a state of their own centered around today's...
to it upon Marco's return. The Venice Library was lost in 1485 during the collapse of the abbey's bell tower, but following the invention of movable type printing by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439, the rotting books had been saved in their entirety by making their first typeset copy "of about 1,000 volumes", with each typeset book containing 10 manuscripts.
Inspired by Phoenicia
Phoenicia
Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
n accounts dating 600BCE of rich new lands beyond the Western ocean in the books, Lorenzo de Medici sent a bookdealer named Cristobal Colon in 1484 to buy these 1,000 volumes, but Colon never turned the books over to the Medici family. When Scrooge and the nephews find out that the English name of this bookdealer-turned sailor happens to be Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
("The plot thickens!" - "Like cement!") and that Columbus's private library is in Seville
Seville
Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...
, Spain, Scrooge is pacing out the door, "already halfway across France".
In the Biblioteca Columbina, they are forced to decipher Columbus's private notes hand-written in a secret, unknown code by means of the Woodchuck Guidebook, to find out Columbus had the library moved to Santo Domingo
Santo Domingo
Santo Domingo, known officially as Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city in the Dominican Republic. Its metropolitan population was 2,084,852 in 2003, and estimated at 3,294,385 in 2010. The city is located on the Caribbean Sea, at the mouth of the Ozama River...
in 1498, far from the reach of the Medici and the Spanish King, but Ferdinand II of Aragon
Ferdinand II of Aragon
Ferdinand the Catholic was King of Aragon , Sicily , Naples , Valencia, Sardinia, and Navarre, Count of Barcelona, jure uxoris King of Castile and then regent of that country also from 1508 to his death, in the name of...
soon found out and had Columbus put into chains.
Back in Duckburg
Scrooge and the nephews hurry back to Duckburg (where they encounter Donald still in front of the TV, making condescending remarks about their passion for "some dusty old library books") to search Scrooge's above-mentioned Spanish logs to find out whether the library had ever been removed from the island. Apparently, Francisco PizarroFrancisco Pizarro
Francisco Pizarro González, Marquess was a Spanish conquistador, conqueror of the Incan Empire, and founder of Lima, the modern-day capital of the Republic of Peru.-Early life:...
had it moved to his new capital, modern-day Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
, Peru in 1535, where beginning in 1551, the Spanish added "all the knowledge of the Mayans
Maya civilization
The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...
, Aztec
Aztec
The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...
s, Incas
Inca civilization
The Andean civilizations made up a loose patchwork of different cultures that developed from the highlands of Colombia to the Atacama Desert. The Andean civilizations are mainly based on the cultures of Ancient Peru and some others such as Tiahuanaco. The Inca Empire was the last sovereign...
, and Olmec
Olmec
The Olmec were the first major Pre-Columbian civilization in Mexico. They lived in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, in the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco....
s". When the Spanish tried to send the library home to Spain in 1579, the ships were captured by Sir Francis Drake
Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581. He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He also carried out the...
. As the battle had damaged his own ship, Drake was forced to go ashore on the coast of Nova Albion, founding Fort Drake Borough which later became Duckburg, for the sole purpose of burying the library below the fort, on Kill Mole Hill where Scrooge built his Money Bin in 1902. (See Fort Duckburg).
Hurrying into old caves and bricked gangways Scrooge never explored before below the Bin, they find a large crypt full of old books that were eaten by rats. In the middle of the room stands a metal case, with the emblem of the Guardians of the Lost Library our heroes first saw in Egypt, an Ibis symbolizing Thoth
Thoth
Thoth was considered one of the more important deities of the Egyptian pantheon. In art, he was often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis or a baboon, animals sacred to him. His feminine counterpart was Seshat...
, the Egyptian deity of wisdom and writing, and an inscription on a metal plate by the last survivor of Drakeborough, saying that he had the library condensed into one single volume with every information no other surviving book in the world included. As the Lost Library's last guardian, he had this one book sealed into this rat-proof metal box. Scrooge finds it empty.
The nephews stitch the remaining puzzle together: The British didn't find the library when they reoccupied Drakeborough, but Cornelius Coot, the founder of the City of Duckburg, found it during the late 18th century, and left the book to his son Clinton Coot, the founder of the Junior Woodchucks, who in turn used it as a framework for the very first edition of the Junior Woodchuck's Guidebook, the only one book in the world Scrooge can't buy. This not only explains why the Guidebook facilitated them to follow the trail of the Lost Library all over the world with its enormous knowledge base, but also the fact the Junior Woodchuck's logo, based on the letters J and two Ws, looks uncannily like the Ibis Emblem of the Guardians of the Lost Library.
Later on Scrooge comments on how depressed he is about not getting the books he has traveled all over the globe for, until the boys remind him that he would have had to turn the library over to Alexandria. Scrooge gets excited about how much money he saved on the fine he would have had to pay otherwise for 100,000 library scrolls each overdue for 2,000 years, and Donald complains about the noise drowning out the TV, muttering "Cripes! They're still going on about their stupid library! As if messing with books was as interesting as watching TV! Hah! That'll be the day!"
Historical accuracy
The story contains at least one potential historical error: It apparently claims that Alexander the Great intended AlexandriaAlexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
to be the capital of his empire. Actually, he built it to be the capital of Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
but not of the entire empire. Babylon
Babylon
Babylon was an Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...
was the capital of Alexander's empire, even though Alexandria became the capital of the diadochi
Diadochi
The Diadochi were the rival generals, family and friends of Alexander the Great who fought for the control of Alexander's empire after his death in 323 BC...
c Ptolemaic Kingdom
Ptolemaic Kingdom
The Ptolemaic Kingdom in and around Egypt began following Alexander the Great's conquest in 332 BC and ended with the death of Cleopatra VII and the Roman conquest in 30 BC. It was founded when Ptolemy I Soter declared himself Pharaoh of Egypt, creating a powerful Hellenistic state stretching from...
under Alexander's immediate successor Ptolemy I Soter
Ptolemy I Soter
Ptolemy I Soter I , also known as Ptolemy Lagides, c. 367 BC – c. 283 BC, was a Macedonian general under Alexander the Great, who became ruler of Egypt and founder of both the Ptolemaic Kingdom and the Ptolemaic Dynasty...
.
The exact quote found in Guardians of the Lost Library, "The city was founded by Alexander the Great in the fourth century B. C. to be the capital of his empire!" is a bit ambiguous, meaning either that it was Alexander's direct personal intention or that it was about to happen independently of whatever Alexander had intended.
Disney reference
Scrooge makes a reference to Mickey Mouse Comics not being published anymore. That was true during the time this story was first published but it was mainly used as an inside joke.Duckburg genealogy
The names Fulton Gearloose and Clinton Coot were first used in this story but it was not revealed that they were the fathers of Gyro Gearloose and Grandma Duck.Other stories by Don Rosa
Guardians of the Lost Library was later referenced in Part 10: The Invader of Fort DuckburgThe Invader of Fort Duckburg
The Invader of Fort Duckburg is a Scrooge McDuck comic by Don Rosa. It is the tenth of the original 12 chapters in the series The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. The story takes place in 1902.-Plot:...
(1994), of Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck
The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck
The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is a comic book story by Don Rosa about Scrooge McDuck. Originally, the story had twelve chapters totalling 212 pages...
where in 1902 the first three Junior Woodchucks (seen as ripe old men half a century later at the beginning of Guardians of the Lost Library) are expelled from their former headquarter, the ruins of Fort Drakeborough recently bought by Scrooge. As the boyscouts walk down Kill Mole Hill, along with some JWC pennants they carry a large, old volume with the Iris Emblem of the Guardians of the Lost Library with them. In order to reclaim the Fort, they appeal to "higher authority" by wire, which turns out as an all-ears U. S. President Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
(Attorney General William Henry Moody
William Henry Moody
William Henry Moody was an American politician and jurist, who held positions in all three branches of the Government of the United States.-Biography:...
: "They say a billionaire from Scotland has seized a military installation on the coast!" - Roosevelt: "Great jumping Jehoshaphat! The three dangers that I campaign strongest against - big business, foreign interference, and military threats to our shores - all rolled into one! Egad!"), who decides to mobilize the entire US Army and Navy against Fort Drakeborough. After an enduring battle fought pretty much against Scrooge alone, eventually the President's troops fold against the infamous temper of Scrooge's sister Hortense.
As the condensed book passed on by the last survivor of Drakeborough and found by Clinton Coot is the framework for the first edition of the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook, in Rosa's later story The Lost Charts of Columbus
The Lost Charts of Columbus
The Lost Charts of Columbus is the sequel of The Golden Helmet. It was created by Don Rosa and originally published in Donald Duck Adventures #43.-Plot:...
(1995), the Junior Woodchucks intend to raise funds for excavations at the site of Cleopatra's hidden library in Egypt before it was brought to Byzantium. So they organize a raffle and Gladstone Gander wins a fishing trip to Canada, where he recovers The Golden Helmet
The Golden Helmet
The Golden Helmet is a Donald Duck comic strip story written by Carl Barks in July 1952. Donald and his nephews go on a treasure hunt for a mythical helmet that apparently gives the possessor legal claim of North America.- Plot :...
from Barks's eponymous story, allowing Azure Blue to resume his plans of owning North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. Above-mentioned ancient Phoenician accounts of the Americas having inspired Lorenzo de Medici and Christopher Columbus in Guardians of the Lost Library are revisited in this story as well.
Publication history
Guardians of the Lost Library was first published in Uncle Scrooge AdventuresUncle Scrooge Adventures
Uncle Scrooge Adventures is a comic book published by Gladstone Publishing under license from the Walt Disney Company. It features the adventures of Scrooge McDuck and his nephews...
#27, July, 1994. Compared to European prints, this original English-language edition was of a poor quality where on a number of pages the CMYK printing plates had been misaligned resulting in more than obvious color fringing.
The story was eventually re-published at a higher printing quality in Gemstone
Gemstone Publishing
Gemstone Publishing is a U.S. company that publishes comic books and collectors' guides. The company was formed by Diamond Comic Distributors President and Chief Executive Officer Stephen A. Geppi. Gemstone published licensed Disney comic books from June 2003 until November 2008. The company has...
's 60 Years of Uncle $crooge celebratory edition Uncle Scrooge #383, November, 2008 (which turned out to be Gemstone's ultimate Disney comic publication, as Boom! Kids was about to take over publishing Disney's classic characters starting September, 2009). Again, original art by Rosa was used for the cover, however the artwork used for the 2008 reprint had been initially made by Rosa not specifically as cover art but as part of a series of collectibles related to his stories that had been originally published by French Disney publisher Picsou Magazine
Picsou Magazine
Picsou Magazine is a French magazine featuring characters from The Scrooge McDuck universe, as Picsou is the French name of Scrooge McDuck. It is published by Hachette, which has a license from the Walt Disney Company for producing and distributing Disney comics in France.In every magazine, the...
in 2004. While the 2008 reprint featured a superior printing quality and the 2008 cover was shaded as usual with North American Disney comics, with the reprinted story itself Gemstone replaced Gladstone Publishing
Gladstone Publishing
Gladstone Publishing was an American company that published Disney comics from 1986 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1998. The company had its origins as a subsidiary of "Another Rainbow", a company formed by Bruce Hamilton and Russ Cochran to publish the Carl Barks Library and produce limited edition...
's 1994 finer-graded colorization featuring many soft gradients with Egmont's European solid-hue color scheme.