Keskustelujen arkisto

At 14.57 1997-09-11, Michael Mankus wrote:
>HD&L first appeared in a Silly Symphonies Sunday on 10/17/37. If they were
>born in 1940, was this particular Donald Duck comic strip set in the
>future? Just wondering where you got when they were born.

MICHAEL:

I sort of assume that your question was to Don Rosa, but I will
nevertheless take the liberty of giving you (and the list) some of my views
on the problem of figuring the HD&L birthdate (and some other related
age-of-certain-ducks problems). The following is two rather long excerpts
from two even longer letters I wrote to Don back in 1992, in which I
(eventually) argue the 1940 birthdate.

I do, however, *not* claim to have given Don, or anyone, this idea -- this
is merely how I decided on that particular date.

All the best

/Mattias

--------- the following is an excerpt from a letter dated March 11th 1992

Stefan told me a while back, that you are planning/working on a
life-of-$crooge series, and that you want comments and criticism on this.
What strikes me as a problem, is how to get the timeline to work, with
regard to the various ages of the characters. Obviously you intend it to be
a real-time continuity, where the ducks are born (hatched), grow up and age
as if they were human (which in a sense is exactly what they are), and with
$crooge born in I think the 1860s, which is OK of course. The problem is
Donald and the kids; especially the kids. The "official" Disney Donald Duck
birthday - June 9th 1934 - is of course pure hogwash as far as a real-time
birthdate is considered, since 1934 is when he makes his first appearance,
not when he is born. As a matter of fact, I'd say one could reason that,
judging from Donald's physical appearance and general demeanor in "The Wise
Little Hen", he would at that time seem to be, say, some 15 to 18 years
old. This tallies nicely with the 1930s Al Taliaferro strips as well. Nor
is a c. 1918 birthdate a problem generation-wise as compared to $crooge, or
regarding how Donald is portrayed by Barks. Supposing it's 1918, Donald
would be 24 in "Pirate Gold" and 49 in "The Doom Diamond", which seems fair
enough to me: Barks always portrays him as an adult but never as old for
real or getting on in age.
And, as you do of course know, Barks' stories are real-time too, in
the sense that they take place in what was the current year when they were
made and/or published. But then again I think you could safely say that
Barks thought of the ducks as pretty much ageless: the times might have
been a-changin' but the ducks were not; they remained approximately the
same age throughout Barks' career. Which of course is the practical point
of view when you don't have any ambitions to create a continuity, or even
feel that you cannot, because you suppose your readership to be always
changing.
Now, to make any reasonable assumptions about the age of Huey,
Dewey and Louie is much more difficult. If we take as a starting point
their first appearence, fairly simultaneously on screen and in the
Taliaferro strip, in 1937/38, they can at that time be no younger than
five, or just possibly four, but on the other hand I don't think one has to
make'em much older than that either - say six or seven at the most, because
at that time their behaviour is certainly childish enough. Let's push the
point, and say four (although that is pushing it some), which puts their
birth in 1934 in which case they are eight in "Pirate Gold" and 33 (sic!)
in "The Doom Diamond"... Which doesn't seem quite cricket, does it? And
even if you decide that Barks is canon, period, that won't really solve the
problem either, 'cause there would still be "Pirate Gold" in 1942, and in
that story they just can't be much younger than five or six, rock-bottom.
And supposing you say they're born in '37, that makes them 15 even in 1952,
not considering the fact that you'd have to push more than one point to
make that one tick.
Sure, I'll grant you that the kids actually do seem to get somewhat
older as Barks goes along, which I think is easily enough explained by the
changes in what kind of stories he uses them for: in the mid-forties most
stories are about fights and conflicts with Donald, and childish children
work out best, but in the late forties to mid-fifties, with the continuing
change-over to travels and adventures, and also the advent of the
"resourceful Junior Woodchucks", somewhat older, even possibly adolescent,
children are more useful; and I guess it's also a little less controversial
to have a twelve-to-fifteen year old go globetrotting than a kid of six or
eight. Actually, the way they are portrayed by Barks, I'd say HD&L seems to
be eight to ten from '42 to '47, ten to twelve from '47 to ca. '52, and
twelve to fifteen from then on, but can you really have that if your
timeline is otherwise realistic? I don't know...

--------- the following is an excerpt from a letter dated April 24th 1992

About the birthdates of various characters, I think some of them should be
older, and for the following reasons (or rather, line of reason):
To start with, I don't think Huey, Dewey & Louie could have been
born as late as 1945. As you said, no matter how one slice it, their age is
a problem, but if you're gonna stop time in 1955 or thereabouts, I suggest
it would be better to have them a few years older than they look in 1955,
than to have them about before they are supposed to be born at all. If you
won't tamper anymore with Teddy Roosevelt, than giving him a black nose,
then that goes for Franklin Delano, too, and if for him for all of WWII,
which then just has to be the war that Barks refers to several times in the
forties, at which time HD&L are, well more than infants at least. And there
are quite a few references to WWII, or at least WWII phenomenae: in WDC 31
("We'll make our own Victory Garden, boys!"); in WDC 35 ("The army drafted
all our mounts under 28 years of age"); in WDC 43 ("Pre-war Bon-bons"); WDC
48 ("The store/didn't have any/linseed oil! - It's hard to get these
days/and the store won't have anymore/till friday!"); the mine in WDC 51
(although that is less conclusive evidence); WDC 56 ("It's a Jap ambush! To
arms! - I see you, you little slanteyed Nips! I'll skewer you on my bayonet
like mutton chops! - That's it! Jump into the ocean and swim back to
Japan!"), and even though this might well occur after the war was over, it
nevertheless gives credence to the existence in the Duck universe of WWII.
There might be more examples - I'm not sure if there are or not - but this
seems enough to me to argue that HD&L were around, and old enough to walk
and talk with some dexterity, during at least the latter half of WWII. All
in all, I'd say that a 1940 birthdate would look much better, since that
would at least make'em three years old in 1943. I realize there would still
be some problems, with "Pirate Gold", and with their first appearance in
1937/38, but these, by their own interior logic undated stories, might --
just might -- be explained away as dealing with things yet to come. This, I
think, is not the case with those Barks stories I've mentioned, that have
within themselves references that places them no later than 1943-45. If
born in 1940, HD&L would be fifteen in 1955, when you "stop time cold"; and
what the heck -- my youngest kid brother looked like twelve when he was
fifteen. HD&L are probably late developers, physically, a not too unusual
occurence, I dare say.

-------- end of excerpts.

**** Mattias Hallin ** Halmstad * Sweden ** <(Email removed)> ****
* *
* "Oh bury me thar! With my battered git-tar! *
************* A-screamin' my heart out fer yew!" *************

Hi. My name is Jeremy Sovereign. I have been on this list for a few months
and I enjoy reading all these discussions. I am 14 years old and live in
Illinois in the USA. Now for my question.

What do IMHO and BTW stand for?

a couple of quick random comments:

Someone asked about Barks cartoons, yes they HAVE been on tape and disc -
Dwight mentioned "An Officer and A Duck" which does have a Barks cartoon ---

On the Duck timeline, modern schloars now use "BCE" rather than "AD" (this
is done to upset traditionalists ).

I have no problem with the Cinderella mice in Grandma Duck's dresser. Why
not? If you can accept mice wearing clothes and living with a humanized
duck, why not mice who used to live with cinderella?
And hasn't Chip n Dale met with everyone from Scamp to Mad Madam Mim to
Donald and Mickey? And someone said that that's just Western
Publishing universe... but then so is Barks just part of the Western
Publishing universe...

Steven Rowe

Another TV Duck reference:

The Canadian program "Due South" has 2 detective characters named Jack
Huey and Louis Gardino. Other officers in the station often refer to Det.
Gardino as "Louie", and the pair of them as "The Duck Boys" in a teasing
matter. Unfourtunatly, Det. "Louie" died in the series recently, so the
recurring Duck reference is no more.

There's my 2 cents!
-Shaun

DON said:
>As stated in an old Barks story, $crooge named HD&L as his eventual
>heirs.

and RICH replied:
> Are you referring to the tale where U$ gave Donald, Gladstone and the
> Nephews each a thousand dollars to see what they would do with it? If I
> remember, Donald squandered it, Gladstone hid it, and the Nephews
> invested it in a treasure hunt and as a result of their faith in an old
> codger's
> dream, they multiplied thier money with their share of the treasure. To
> which U$ vowed to name them the heirs to his fortune.

As I remember it U$ did NOT name HDL as his heirs; on the contrary he
was very upset with them for beleiving in the old man. In the story
Gladstone is named U$'s heir, but if U$ changed his mind after HDL's
investment turned out to be a success, it was not shown in the story.

In Rosa's story "Nobody's Business", U$ mentions that HDL are his
heirs; if this is a reference to this Barks story, Don's interpretation
of it is different from mine.

BTW, this is my new e-mail address: (Email removed)
My old address (Email removed) still works, but you should use
the new one! (I have moved my subscription to the new address already.)

--
Fredrik Sandström

Mikko:

>It's possible that young Scrooge normally had brown hair, but the
>summer sun burned it golden yellow. That happens to me and now the
>"surface" hair is blond but all the hair beneath is (light) brown.

I'll be darned...that's exactly the way my hair behaves.

And as far as I'm concerned, you do not need to be more "politically
correct." What is truth and what is fancy (what is history and what is
myth) is a subject that needs to be openly and rationally discussed, taking
in all comers and fearing none. And one thing you can take to the bank,
Mike: the person who is offended in not necessarily the person who is
right.

Gary

****************************
"It's Bindy Gonzer's birthday!" - Churchy La Femme
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gladstone on the Web: http://www.hamlco.com/bhc/
---------------------------------------------------------------------

I've been lurking around the list for some time now. I've enjoyed all
your discussion of all things Barks, Rosa, and otherwise.

My name is Jess Winfield, I'm a playwright, a director, founding member
of a theater troupe called The Reduced Shakespeare Company, and am
presently an animation writer for Walt Disney Animated Television.

When I was six, I inherited from my sister's boyfriend several stacks of
old Disney comix. I read them all a zillion times, and recently dug
them out of storage and catalogued them. Found a few rarities in there,
including the (I'm told) hard to find "Vacation in Disneyland" among
others. Alas, they are not all in the best of shape.

I've used my love of the old comix (which I keep in my office for
reference) extensively in writing for Disney. For the past year, I've
been working on the animated series of 101 Dalmatians, and most
recently, Hercules. When Hercules, the series, begins airing in fall of
1998, some of you will recognize an homage to The Prize of Pizarro
(US#26) in an episode entitled "Hercules and the Big Kiss."

I'm going to be working to bring some of the elements and characters
from the comic world into Disney TV and home video, including any
would-be Mickey Mouse series. (I'm limited by Disney's secrecy policy,
but someone already mentioned an in-the-works Mickey Mouse series. I
neither confirm nor deny that such a thing exists, but if it did, I'd
probably be working on it!)

So here are two questions: I'm subscribing to Uncle Scrooge Adventures,
but I'd also like to fill in some of the holes in my collection of
original Scrooge comics. Where might I find people selling? And what
are the quintessential Rosa works that I should catch up on?

Jess Winfield
http://www.cinenet.net/users/jesswin/

> Someone asked about Barks cartoons, yes they HAVE been on tape
> and disc - Dwight mentioned "An Officer and A Duck" which does
> have a Barks cartoon

Also, some of the Duck Tales cartoon episodes were adapted from
Carl Barks' comic book stories. His name appears as the writer
in the credits.

Have a gr8 weekend!

Eric