Keskustelujen arkisto

Well.. Donald Stories was - from the beginning - more low level, local, neighbourhood stories. More lik a sitcom. In the Taliaferro stories he was more of a mischievous youth. Barks developed Donald into a more mature family man... and perhaps more or lessa sidekick for Scrooge. In a few italian and Danish stories Donald (and Fethry) pops up as secret agents or journalists, etc. (often with Scrooge as their employer) but not the level as Gottfredson developed Mickey into a well-known crimefighter. Most villains involved in Duck stories are adversaries for Scrooge as you noted yourself...

I think that the lack of Donald villains is because of that. Donald's popularity is based much on his status as an alter ego for the reader. Donald is one of the few Disney character's who have such a complex personality for example. Easy to identify with.
We all can have a temper. We all have low key villains (the bully at school, a neighbour, etc.), but how many of us have an international scoundrel or a criminal that would be after us? It's easier to let Mickey have that kind of attention since his proffession is the crimefighter.

And then the other part.. Donald is established as the "common man" (duck) or the readers own character to identify with. So most things that happens to Donald is either the normal life incidents or the wondrous things that isn't happening. Most readers propably want to have a rich uncle that can storm in and start an exciting adventure.

So.. I think it's a bit natural that Donald doesn't have a villain gallery as he's a character closer to home so to speak. And a middle-class suburban home at that.

// Steamboat Willie

P.S. Zapotec is usually a friend of Mickey.

Quote from user: Steamboat WillieIt's easier to let Mickey have that kind of attention since his proffession is the crimefighter.
I realize Mickey Mouse many times over the years has been portrayed in comics as a brilliant crimefighter and know-it-all detective, but... That's actually a distortion of the real Mickey. He's not supposed to be a crimefighter as such; rather, he has an adventurous spirit! (Which is why he in the early cartoons builds his own airplane and mines for gold in the Klondike.) The fact that he gets involved in solving mysteries and fighting villains isn't because he's a model citizen who has taken the job as "the world's greatest detective" -- it's because he simply can't pass up the opportunity to have an adventure.

Just ask David Gerstein.

A very interesting topic!

1/
Quote from user: WBThe Brutopian Consulate, one time villain who grew into his own via Egmont
This specific character (the Ambassador, actually) may have been featured in only one of Barks' stories ("A Cold Bargain"), but he did use Brutopian characters in others: "Crown of the Mayas" and "Swamp of No Return"-- maybe another one?
In this case, whether the exact same character is recurrent or not is not a big issue, because the point is precisely that they are all the same, formatted by the Brutopian ideology; in that sense, they are a bit as generic as the pig villain, with this difference that the latter stands for mean individuals and the former set of characters stands for an ideology, Communism.

2/
I'm not quite sure how to understand "villain" & "rogue" in your message, Jonathan.

Quote from user: WBMickey has a huge rogues gallery created by Gottfredson - large enough to rival Spiderman and Batman really - it's just that most of his villains aren't well known or are very underused in favor of Pete, Sylvester Shyster or the most famous Gottfredson one: The Phantom Blot.
Quote from user: WBScrooge doesn't have a lot of villains, but the ones he does have are mighty potent
Quote from user: WBI did think of two recurring villains whom Donald Duck could call his own
Quote from user: WBAnd by that token are there any one shot villains for Donald that I am missing or that you can think of whom I might have missed?
My problem concerns the criterion of recurrence: is is mandatory for you?
The big examples you give and focus on seem to say "yes", but your last question seems to mean "no".

While recurrence certainly adds weight to a character by dint of repetition and development, one-shot characters are certainly not the lesser; a strong case in point is The Phantom Blot: while he has been much used by many writers over the years, Gottfredson used him once only.
Recurrence is thus not a primary criterion.

3/
As you pointed out, Donald is often as much to blame as Jones in the stories.
Besides, however mean both of them can get, they are not actually evil.
Jones does qualify as a villain, anyway ("a character in a story or play who opposes the hero"-- Merriam-Webster).

Similarly, Gladstone can be viewed as a villain as well to some extent, though "villain" seems to strong a word for him-- an adversary?

4/
Donald certainly has a great gallery of memorable rogues, and Gladstone actually even designed a set of "Carl Barks Heroes and Villains" trading cards to go with their Barks Library in Color album (one card per album), several of which were "Donald Duck" villains.

a/
One villain stands out; who is actually encountered in various incarnations of what originally is a Mickey Mouse villain: Pete.
He even first appears in Donald's very first adventure (and Barks'), in a story which was quite suitably an adaptation of a script for an animated feature which was to star Mickey, Goofy and Donald.
He returns as Black Pete in "Frozen Gold"; the question is: has he changed enough (a mustache) to be considered part of the Duck Universe?
More pointedly, perhaps: is the design of a cat character exclusively Mouse-specific? I don't remember any fowl characters in Mouse stories, but you do have dog and pig characters in both universes-- why not cats?
In fact, the Bey of El Dagga, featured in Barks' first Duck adventure (both script & art), "The Mummy's Ring" is a cat, too.

Is thus Black Pete really a character borrowed from the Mouse universe? He certainly is not Mickey's Pete (or is he? it might debatable). Is it only the name that causes the confusion?

Another similar character is Blacksnake McQuirt, who looks even less like Pete (no black upper face, no black ears) and whose name is totally different.

b/
The Gneezles were quite memorable characters, and Barks developed elements from this story to write "Land Beneath the Ground" and "Lost in the Andes"-- Geoffrey Blum had an interesting essay (as always) on the subject.
The Ghost of the Grotto" is another remarkable foe.

Even though Scrooge explains Bombie the Zombie was sent to punish him, and Rosa developed this short exposition into several pages of "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck", Bombie was Donald Duck villain-- by mistake, and not for too long, but still.

c/
Quote from user: WBit has always surprised me how Donald's rogues gallery woefully pales in comparison to both his Uncle and the Mice both in terms of size and variety. This could probably be attested that Scrooge stories were always more treasure based while Mickey was more action/adventure/detective based. Donald has always been the sort of "inbetween everyman". The bulk of his stories tend to be shorter ones and his longer ones are usually simpler adventures alongside his uncle or nephews VS the plotline of the day
Discovering the Gneezles and the Plain Awfultonians, fighting a supposedly centuries-old ghost, fighting for the possession and freedom of North America, ..., hardly strike me as simpler everyman adventures featuring a gallery of mundane rogues lacking the variey of Scrooge and Mickey's.

Donald even risks being turned into dust by the rehydrated King Nevvawaza in "Ancient Persia"!
He fights claimp-jumpers in nineteenth century California and international (human!) spies in "Dangerous disguise, and defeats the "Terror of the River"!

Scrooge gave Barks lots of possibilities, and he wrote increasingly fantastic tales for him, with Donald mostly tagging along and the nephews doing all the saving, but he also did write great adventures for Donald, featuring striking villains-- some of which could but be one-shot villains, such as the "Ghost of the Grotto".

http://bobcat74.free.fr/obemoticons/obsig/obgrottob001.gif

Since Lars invoked me, I have no choice but to get into this discussion. (What does he think I am, a Poké?? er, Battle Beastie?)

Olivier, you refer to Pete as being called Black Pete in "Frozen Gold." Actually, he's called Black Pete in "Pirate Gold" (for which the Black Pete name seems to have been created by Bob Karp), goes unnamed in "The Mummy's Ring," is J. P. Diamondtubs in "Rival Boatmen," and is then actually called Foxy Pete in "Frozen Gold."
Is Foxy Pete meant to be a different character? As a kid, I presumed he was, as he's significantly slimmer than the usual Pete. But right around the same time, Barks used Pete in Mickey's "Riddle of the Red Hat," and there Pete is slimmer, too.

Some level of inconsistency is actually in keeping with Disney and Gottfredson, where Pete took on various aliases at different times. In cartoons from the late 1930s and early 1940s, he adopts the aliases of Tiny Tom and Sylvester Macaroni, though production materials make clear that he was still seen as Pete by the story crew.
In various Gottfredson stories he is referred to as Looey the Leg, Slug Nichols, Peter, and Pierre, though in all cases Mickey personally recognizes him as "Pegleg Pete!" Here it's clearer that the various looks and designs are intended as a criminal's aliases.
As far back as 1928, in Disney's Oswald Rabbit cartoon OZZIE OF THE MOUNTED, a wanted poster refers to "Pegleg Pete, AKA Putrid Pete, Kid Pete, etc."??and when we actually see Pete later in the cartoon, he has no pegleg. Someone wanted to have fun with the character's inconsistencies even that early on.

Back to Barks, though, and the question of Pete being a genuine part of the Duck world: in Barks' much later "Inventors' Contest," a Gyro story, he uses "Black Pete," named as such, as Gyro's rival??and the design is reminiscent of "Frozen Gold." If Barks didn't feel that Pete fit in the Ducks' world, why casually toss him into a story during his most mature period as a writer/artist?

Interested to hear everyone's opinions.

Before I run for it??re: Mickey, yep: as I see it (feel free to disagree) Mickey isn't a born hero, do-gooder or genius crimefighter; the first two are out of character with his personality and the last with his level of experience. Mickey is inclined to take freelance detective work as a result of his adventurous nature, but he doesn't consciously go looking for trouble or to right wrongs for the heck of it, either: note Gottfredson's "Bar-None Ranch," where from the story's start there is little mystery to what's going on and Pete has already been identified as the villain. With no mystery or thrill to attract Mickey??merely the raw danger of a potential conflict with his known enemy??Mickey initially wants nothing to do with the situation. It's only when it directly threatens Minnie and Clarabelle that Mickey gets worried and dashes to become involved.
I perceive Mickey as a creative thinker with a moderately short attention span. Because routine quickly gets old for him, he looks for chances to do new and interesting things. Solving crimes or investigating mysterious circumstances fall into that category, but that's different from saying "I'm a hero (and millionaire playboy): what cowardly, superstitious criminal am I going to seek out and catch today?"

Quote from user: OlivierI believe there is also a Pete-like character in one of the frog contests.
Yes! I'd forgotten that one. I seem to recollect he had an alias there (McViper?), but don't have the book here to refer to.Quote:The early Mickey and Donald are very similar characters, actually: the main difference is that Mickey is the eternal happy-go-lucky, optimistic, ever-laughing little guy
For the first few years he is??until about, say, 1933. Then he gets slightly better control of himself.

It's interesting: when I first wrote Mickey for Egmont, I used the happy-go-lucky, earliest characterization??running around the place singing, shouting "Whoopee!" when things went to his liking. More recently, some others have used that characterization too. The others and I have generally drawn back, though, in part because too much happy-go-lucky attitude can come across as naive or childish. And a naive, childish Mouse isn't someone readers can identify with so well in our modern world.
You might say I like a boyish Mickey, but not a foolish Mickey. I can thank my sometime boss, Creative Director Byron Erickson, for instructing me on the difference back when I was young and impressionable. (-:

Some fans in Germany refer to the earliest characterization of Mickey as "Kaschperl-Micky" ("Punch-Mickey," as in Punch and Judy), particularly in connection with modern efforts to recapture that style. Unfortunately, the trend seems to be to connect "Punch-Mickey" with the wearing of his red shorts, even though a clear majority of stories with the shorts do feature a more thoughtful version of the character.
I grew up with a different stereotype: that Mickey in long pants had to be boring, because most stories I read as a kid showed him as a dull Mr. Perfect on the job and a flat, generic homeowner outside of it.

Quote from user: cacouAnother great Donald villain not mention yet in this thread is Bottaro's Rebo, Saturn's dictator from http://coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL++230-BP
...Who was actually referenced in a recent TNT story. Yeah, David Gerstein and I refuse to let *any* character stay forgotten. :)

(Note, by the way, that Rebo wasn't created by Bottaro. Read more at http://www.lucianobottaro.it/char/disney/rebo.htm . Of course there's the possibility I've totally misunderstood the article -- I don't read Italian -- and have therefore now made a huge moron of myself. In that case, please ignore this paragraph. :) )

Quote from user: Lars Jensen(Note, by the way, that Rebo wasn't created by Bottaro. Read more at http://www.lucianobottaro.it/char/disney/rebo.htm . Of course there's the possibility I've totally misunderstood the article -- I don't read Italian -- and have therefore now made a huge moron of myself. In that case, please ignore this paragraph. :-)
I don't think you've made a moron of yourself. :)
Bottaro and Chendi borrowed the name and look of a villain from the italian comic Saturno contra la terra(Saturn vs. the Earth). As far as I understand from the website you are referring to, and from this NHH article, the Disney Rebo we know is very loosely based on the original Rebo, in a way somewhat similar to how Paperinik is loosely based on a bunch of other superhero characters.

Btw; Nice to see Zantaf again, in yours and Ferioli's story the other day.