Review by Frank Plowright

There’s an unusually unappealing design to this volume. Stripping three panels across the cover, however well drawn, rather than selecting and enhancing a single illustration as has previously been the case isn’t easy on the eye. It’s not a mistake made again.

‘Crown of the Mayas’ begins with Scrooge McDuck being told he can’t join the Archaeologist’s Club as he may have located plenty of treasures, but he’s never discovered historical ruins. They, and he, seem to have short memories as they’ll let him in should he discover artefacts, which he has done several times in the past. In case you’re wondering why he’d want to join, Carl Barks has that covered: he wants to sell them excavation tools. Not long thereafter he’s taking his nephews on a trip to Yucatan.

Compared to the travelogues of old, Barks has the treasures located a little too easily, but he’s working with a shorter page allocation than previously, and the focus becomes protecting the discoveries from memorable villains Slyviper and Foulcrook. They’re conmen without conscience masquerading as gentlemen, and Barks gives them appropriate dialogue in which they constantly address each other by name. What really shines, though, is the art. The individual panels might not make for a good cover design, but as part of the story they’re impeccably composed. Barks also supplies gloriously attractive scenery, and smart visual jokes, such as the crooks replacing the broken rotor on their helicopter with a pair of shovels.

Barks wasn’t one for looking back to Scrooge’s youth, but ‘Invisible Intruder’ does so, with opening pages showing the infant Scrooge sleeping in a chest drawer dreaming of a bigger and more comfortable bed. In the present day he has the biggest bed of all, so large people have to walk across it to present him with documents, but he’s still not comfortable as he can feel someone walking on it at night. This isn’t Barks at his best, and indeed is him drawing a script supplied by Vic Lockman. The revelation is as slim as the supporting detective, and the art really simple. On the other hand, if it needed to be rushed for the drawing of the opening story it’s a fair trade-off.

Both stories appear in the later Fantagraphics hardcover collection Lost Beneath the Sea.