Plagiarism among duck comics scholars? Say it ain't so!

UPDATE: Andrae responds.

Um. I feel a little weird writing this. I, after all, am just some random grad student; Thomas Andrae is a big-shot perfesser and journal editor. But...fuckin eh, man, I don't know what else to do.

So I was reading Andrae's book Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book: Unmasking the Myth of Modernity. And when I got to a section about Magica, I thought, huh. This seems kind of familiar. So I went back and looked at Geoffrey Blum's introduction to Gladstone's Giant Comic Album Special #6, The Many Faces of Magica de Spell, and...well, you be the judge.

Blum:

Yet her assumptions are fundamentally different from those of the tycoon. Believing that wealth inheres in objects, she inverts the whole ethic that built Scrooge's hoard, and Flintheart's. Nothing pleases her more than the prospect of gain without work; in one story she even invents a way to absorb good fortune passively through sunlight. I'll get extra-rich every time I get a sunburn!" she crows. "Laziest way to make money I ever heard of!" snarls Scrooge. Appropriate to her sorcerous calling, Magica is a kind of ghoul. Having no achievements of her own (even her spells are borrowed from Circe), she seeks to assume the power and wealth of others.

[...]

More disturbing is the fact that Barks' stories seem to confirm Magica's belief. When she hurls a meteor at Scrooge, the juggernaut simply deposits a second fortune in gold and diamonds on McDuck's land, proving the power of his lucky dime.

Andrae:

However, she ascribes to a philosophy directly antithetical to Scrooge's apotheosis of work, thrift, and self-denial. Believing that wealth inheres in objects, Magica inverts the whole ethic that built Scrooge's fortune. Having no accomplishments of her own, she seeks to assume the power and wealth of others through an alchemical charm fashioned from the first dime that Scrooge earned. Nothing delights her more than garnering profit without work. For instance, in one story, "Raven Mad" she even invents a way to absorb good fortune through sunlight. "I'll get extra-rich every time I get a sunburn!" she crows. "Laziest way to make money I ever heard of!" growls Scrooge. She is a kind of vampire who seeks to live off the blood and sweat of others, amassing a fortune while earning nothing for herself through her own labor. (243)

[...]

But Barks's [sic] stories seem to confirm Magica's belief in the magical power of Scrooge's revered coin. When she hurls a molten meteor at Scrooge's money bin, it simply deposits gold and jewels on his land, making him even richer. (247)

I do not wish to make accusations lightly, but this seems pretty damning to me. I am extremely bothered by this: I can't find any other specific examples of theft in Andrae's book, but how can I assume that therefore none exist? There's an awful lot of criticism--buried in fanzines and in the extremely out-of-print Carl Barks Library--that I've never had the chance to read, and it's hard to avoid thinking the worst. And what makes this especially irksome is that there's a lot of material in Andrae's book that would be very useful for the Barks-related paper I'm kicking around in my head. But goddamn, man, now I just don't know.

Anyway, I sent Blum an email, so we'll see what he says. Perhaps I should have written to Andrae directly, but I tend to doubt that a professor would react well to being called a plagiarist by some no-account grad student.