Chapter 6B: The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff
Dates: 1890
A prequel to the Carl Barks comic Return to Pizen Bluff. Scrooge reunites with his Uncle Pothole, who has become famous thanks to his novels about his adventures saving his nephew Scrooge... but anyway, the two McDucks join forces with P.T. Barnum, Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and a Native American guy named Gokhlayeh to track down the Dalton Gang when they rob Barnum's wild west show. Before the posse bids good-bye, lamenting the impending death of The Wild West, Scrooge has them all autograph one of the show's handbills, which Matilda McDuck later pasted into her scrapbook... and which the triplets determine contains a map to the Lost Dutchman's Mine on the back. Oh, Crap!!
This chapter provides examples of:
- Battle Discretion Shot: Uncle Pothole says while watching Scrooge's brawl, "That would never get past the censors." Of course, he was getting inspiration for his dime novels from the whole fight...
- Exactly What I Aimed At: A Dalton goon mocks Scrooge when he seems to miss a shot, right before being hit by a banner loosened by Scrooge's bullet.
- Imagine Spot: When Uncle Pothole and Buffalo Bill enter an abandoned building with the Daltons hiding behind a doorway for an ambush, Dalton clones suddenly spring out from elsewhere and Pothole and Bill fight them off, with Bill's hair noticably turning darker. Cut to the Daltons still standing near the doorway with dumbfounded expressions, and back in the chaos, Uncle Pothole has suddenly become ridiculously muscular, while Buffalo Bill is decorated with honors and his hair is completely black. Everything suddenly returns to normal, where it is revealed that Pothole was just writing a dime novel draft on the fly. Especially noteworthy, since it depicts Pothole writing Marty Stu versions of himself and Bill In-Universe.
- It Will Never Catch On: Uncle Pothole's idea for a new kind of magazine with "adventures told in a series of drawings, and the dialogue written into some kinda bubbles!" is considered stupid by others.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Uncle Pothole's reaction once he learns the identity of the Native-American he's been disparaging.
- In present day, Scrooge has this reaction when he realizes that the old playbill he kept as a souvenir and is now glued to the scrapbook really IS the map to the Lost Dutchman Mine. This is a lead in to a later Don Rosa story.
- The Reveal: Scrooge knew all along, but towards the end of the story, it's revealed that Gokhlayeh is better known as Geronimo.
- Super Window Jump: By Scrooge, riding on a horse, no less, to get the drop on the Daltons.
- Twilight of the Old West: Brought up towards the end, as the heroes talk of how their era is passing, while Pothole suggesting it could live on in fiction.
- Who Would Want to Watch Us?:Scrooge: No one would be interested in reading the adventures of a rough and tumble prospector like me.
