Tales of Derring Do Bad and Good Luck Tales

May 18, 2021 2:54 PM

He came to believe that, if he had enough money, he would be able to focus on his art. He decided to turn to a life of crime, but didn’t want to risk the violence of a stickup. [SL New Yorker] As Germany reunited, Arno Funke, an unsuccessful cartoonist, started to bomb department stores (at night to avoid injury) and leave ransom notes signed Scrooge McDuck.
posted by jeather (17 comments total)

Archive version
posted by chavenet at 3:10 PM on May 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

I hate to say "reminds me that Hitler wanted to become an artist too," but um.... AND THEN, IRONICALLY, THIS WHOLE LIFE OF CRIME LEADS HIM TO GET HIS DREAM JOB?!?!?

On a related note, I just went through this workshop on your talents at work--of course, my talents aren't really anything that apply to a boring day job--and reading this made me think, "He didn't have any talent at cartooning but his talent was BOMBS?!!?" Oy vey.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:11 PM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

I just can't believe that the plan "throw a bag of money off the train" worked.
posted by jeather at 3:25 PM on May 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

Fun read. Surprised that Volkswagen's diesel folks didn't offer him a consulting job. Still, I'm happy at the way his story turned out.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:39 PM on May 18, 2021

This is fascinating. I'm also curious if he watched High and Low. But, maybe throwing money from a train isn't hard to invent independently. One might imagine the contemporary version, with encrypted communication and consumer drones.

Officers tended to see criminal psychology as hocus-pocus, Brockmann told me, . . .

I'd love to see reliable evidence that they're wrong. I'm not sure tracing phone calls counts as even anecdotal success. "We made a very general set of assumptions that had no positive impact on solving the case" seems to be how every criminal psych profile story ends. Except when they waste resources and hurt innocent people because they've gotten it wrong.
posted by eotvos at 4:37 PM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

How rich is Scrooge McDuck?

Never rich enough.
posted by cenoxo at 4:47 PM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Some things I saw as a tourist in Germany: tilt & turn windows, pink fire-trucks, and Scrooge McDuck comic-books everywhere. The Scrooge McDuck comic books were like whut?.
posted by ovvl at 4:52 PM on May 18, 2021

It wasn't really clear to me if he ever got any substantial payments after the first big score.

It sort of seems like he must have a personality disorder given that he blew up a bomb in an occupied store.
posted by Pembquist at 6:16 PM on May 18, 2021

It's a shame that he couldn't just stop after a few times & live off the money. Always go to therapy BEFORE embarking on a life of crime.
posted by bleep at 6:43 PM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

In school, he was mischievous. Because of his sense of humor, a kindergarten teacher called him “Micky Maus.”

This is not the supervillain secret origin that I was expecting.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:33 PM on May 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

Funke grabbed the package and scampered to safety. When he opened it, he saw that only four thousand marks were real; the rest was Mickey Mouse money.

Rethinking my criminal scheme in the persona of Mr. Moneybags.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:39 PM on May 18, 2021

Some things I saw as a tourist in Germany: tilt & turn windows, pink fire-trucks, and Scrooge McDuck comic-books everywhere. The Scrooge McDuck comic books were like whut?.

In Sweden, watching Donald Duck cartoons is a beloved Christmas tradition.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 11:37 PM on May 18, 2021

This would make a good movie. Spielbergian.
posted by hoodrich at 8:33 AM on May 19, 2021

Scrooge McDuck: bomber, cartoonist, extortionist, folk hero?

What an amazing story.
posted by doctornemo at 10:47 AM on May 19, 2021

Also, not only was he a crazy clever inventor, but must have been nimble and fast as heck. Time and again he just dodged and outran cops on foot?
posted by doctornemo at 10:47 AM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

The Genius of Carl Barks and 'The Second-Richest Duck'
posted by elkevelvet at 11:30 AM on May 19, 2021

Then there's this notable quote: "Among the most avid followers of Dagobert’s hunt were some of the roughly five hundred members of donald—the acronym for the “German Organization of Non-Commercial Devotees of Pure Donaldism”—a group dedicated to the study of Carl Barks’s Donald Duck comics. “The most important thing to know about German Donaldism is that we are not just fans but we take Duckburg seriously and investigate it with a scientific approach,” Susanne Luber, the organization’s current president, told me. Before now, the Donaldists had busied themselves debating how much Scrooge McDuck was worth, or why male ducks typically walk barefoot in Duckburg while female ducks wear heels."
posted by storybored at 6:09 PM on May 22, 2021 [1 favorite]