Donald Duck in comics
In America, the Donald Duck comic strip debuted on February 7, 1938, following a 1936-1937 trial run in the Silly Symphony Sunday page. The strip ran for more than 50 years, ending in 1995.[1]
The
Donald Duck also has a prominent role in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, the American flagship anthology comic first published in 1940. The most popular issues featured the Donald Duck 10-pagers written and drawn by Carl Barks, who began the run with issue #31 (April 1943).
Pre-cartoon namesake
The earliest print mention of a character called "Donald Duck" is in 1931 in the book The Adventures of Mickey Mouse, published by
A duck with the same name made another early printed appearance in Mickey Mouse Annual #3 (published 1932; the annual for 1933), a 128-page British hardback. This book included the poem Mickey's 'Hoozoo': Witswitch, and Wotswot, which listed some of Mickey's barnyard animal friends: "Donald Duck and Clara Hen, Robert Rooster, Jenny Wren...". Mickey Mouse Annual #3 was drawn entirely by Wilfred Haughton.[2]
Comic strip debut
The Donald introduced in the short film The Wise Little Hen made his printed debut in the June 1934 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine: a single-page ad depicted six comic images of Donald as part of the monthly Silly Symphony section.[3] Later that year, Donald made his newspaper debut in the comic strip adaptation of that cartoon. It was released between September 16 and December 16, 1934, in the Silly Symphony Sunday pages by Ted Osborne and Al Taliaferro.
Starting February 10, 1935, Donald appeared in the Mickey Mouse comic strip by Ted Osborne and Floyd Gottfredson, in the story "Editor-in-Grief." In the story, Mickey hires Donald as a newsboy to sell Mickey's newspaper, the Daily War-Drum. The paper is involved in a battle with a criminal gang who try to keep Donald from selling the paper, which makes him furious and even more determined. Donald is there for the happy ending at Mickey's house on May 30, and then disappears from the strip for a while.[4]
Featured character
A supporting character in Mickey's strip, Donald came to dominate the Silly Symphony strips between August 30, 1936, and December 12, 1937. At the time, Ted Osborne was credited as writer and Al Taliaferro as artist and inker. The duo turned Donald from a countryman to a city dweller. They also introduced the first members of the Duck family: Donald's identical triplet nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, who debuted on October 17, 1937. The triplets were sent to spend some time with him as guests while their father recovered at the hospital from their latest prank. Nevertheless, Donald ended up serving as their adoptive parent.
Comic book debut
At this time, the first Donald Duck stories originally created for a comic book made their appearance. In the
Disney had also licensed the Italian publishing house
In February 1940, Donald Duck made his first appearance as the main character on the cover of an American comic book in Dell Publishing's Four Color #4.[5]
Developments under Taliaferro
Back in the USA, Donald finally became the star of his own newspaper comic strip. The Donald Duck daily strip started on February 2, 1938, and the Donald Duck Sunday page began December 10, 1939. Taliaferro drew both, this time co-operating with writer Bob Karp. He continued to work at the daily strip until October 10, 1968, and at the Sunday page until February 16, 1969.
Among other innovations, Taliaferro made several additions to Donald's supporting cast.
First treasure hunt
Donald had already been familiar to the American reading public through his newspaper comic strip by 1942. Then Disney licensed Western Publishing to create original comic book stories, with Disney characters as their stars. But the first American Donald Duck story originally created for a comic book was created by Studio-employed artists: Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold, first published in October 1942. The story was written by Bob Karp, who based it on the storyboard of the unproduced Mickey Mouse short Morgan's Ghost by Harry Reeves and Homer Brightman. Karp gave Donald a starring role by removing Mickey and Goofy from the plot while also adding Donald's nephews. Then it was given to Carl Barks and Jack Hannah to illustrate.
The story places Donald and his nephews on a treasure hunt for the lost treasure of
Developments under Barks
Until this point, the development of both the animated and the comic strip version of Donald was the result of a combined effort by a number of different creators, but the comic book version of Donald was mainly developed by
Much of this scenario would resurface in the 1987 television series, DuckTales. In that cartoon, however, Donald works and lives as a sailor on an aircraft carrier, and Huey, Dewey and Louie live for a time with Uncle Scrooge.
Barks quit working at the Studio and found employment at Western Publishing with a starting pay of twelve dollars and fifty cents per page. He created his first Donald Duck ten-pager, The Victory Garden, which first published in April 1943; the basic script came from the studio, but Barks was asked to rewrite it in addition to drawing it. From then on, Barks both scripted and illustrated his stories, with few exceptions.
His production during that year seems to be at the pace he would follow for much of the following decade. Eight 10-pagers to be published in
In both cases the stories presented Donald's personality as having multiple aspects that would surface according to circumstance. Or as Barks would say later: "He was sometimes a villain, and he was often a real good guy and at all times he was just a blundering person like the average human being." Adding another note of realism was the fact that Donald could end up being either the victor or the loser in his stories. And often even his victories were hollow. This gave a sense of realism to Donald's character and the characters and situations around him. His nephews accompanied him in those stories and Barks also gave many aspects to their personalities. In some cases they acted as the mischievous brats Taliaferro had introduced, often antagonizing their uncle. In some cases they got in trouble and Donald would have to save them. But in others they proved remarkably resourceful and inventive, often helping their uncle out of a difficult situation. But most of the time, they would appear to have developed a deeper understanding of things and level of maturity than their uncle.
The first recurring character that Barks would introduce was Donald's next-door
The next two recurring characters to be introduced by Barks were much more significant. Donald's maternal uncle
In the following years both characters would become prominent members of Donald's supporting cast. In Gladstone's case, he soon started to rival his cousin in a number of personal wagers and organized contests. His incredible luck was introduced in Race to the South Seas!, first published in 1949. This story also was the first to present Donald and Gladstone trying to win Scrooge's favor in order for one of them to become his heir. The story also explains their relationship to their rich relative: Donald is the son of Scrooge's sister and Gladstone is the son of Scrooge's sister's sister-in-law. Gladstone would also rival his cousin in a treasure hunt in Luck of the North, first published in December, 1949. Gladstone soon became Donald's rival for Daisy's affections. The love-triangle of Donald, Daisy and Gladstone would become an ongoing theme for the following decades.
While Gladstone's development and establishment seemed to take about a year after his appearance, Barks continued to experiment with Scrooge's appearance and personality for the following four years. Scrooge was soon established as a recurring character and various stories cast him as a featured character alongside Donald. By 1952, Scrooge had gained a magazine of his own. From then on Barks produced most of his longer stories in Uncle Scrooge with Scrooge as their star and focusing in adventure, while his ten-pagers continued to feature Donald as their star and focused on comedy. Scrooge became the central figure of the stories while Donald and their nephews were cast as Scrooge's helpers, hired helping-hands who followed Scrooge around the world. Other contemporary creators also reflected this change of focus from Donald to Scrooge in stories. Since then the role of the central figure in new stories alternates between Donald and Scrooge.
Further developments
Hundreds of other authors have used the character — for example, the
The American artists Vic Lockman and Tony Strobl, working directly for the American comic books, created Moby Duck.
Other important artists who have worked on Donald are Freddy Milton and Daan Jippes, who made eighteen ten-pagers in the 1970s and 1980s that some claim are as good as Barks' work. More recently, both Jippes and Milton have continued to produce Duck stories on a solo basis.
Paperinik (Superduck / Duck Avenger)
It has been suggested that this section be Paperinik. (Discuss ) (June 2020) |
Paperinik | |
---|---|
Duckburg | |
Abilities |
|
Paperinik (Italian: [paperiˈnik; papeˈriːnik]),[6] also known as PK (Italy), Superduck (UK), Duck Avenger (USA),[a]) is a comic book-costumed vigilante, Donald Duck's alter ego. Donald originally created Paperinik as a dark avenger alter-identity to secretly seek revenge upon relatives such as Scrooge McDuck and Gladstone Gander, but he soon found himself fighting other menaces as a superhero. The character is an Italian invention and, though dominant in stories in which he appears, is very much absent from all others not starring him. The Italian creators (editor-in-chief Elisa Penna, writer Guido Martina, and artist Giovan Battista Carpi) introduced Paperinik in the two-part, 60-page story "Paperinik il diabolico vendicatore" ("Paperinik the diabolical avenger") published in Italy in Topolino #706–707, on June 8 and June 15, 1969. The name "Paperinik" was initially meant to reference the Italian comic book antihero Diabolik, to which Paperinik's original depictions wear similarities.
The debut story featured Donald receiving the ownership papers of Villa Rosa, an abandoned
In the early stories, Paperinik was not actually a superhero, but an
Paperinik's most important ally in his heroic identity is the inventor Gyro Gearloose, who fabricates most of his special equipment, but (in some stories) without knowing his identity. To be able to equip and support Paperinik without risk of accidentally disclosing his secret identity, Gyro has invented the Caramelle cancelline (or Car-can in short, meaning "erasing sweets"), pills which causes complete loss of memory of the most recent few hours upon ingestion: after every meeting with Paperinik, Gyro takes one of these pills as a safety precaution. They are called UhKa, short for unohda kaikki in Finnish or VergAll, short for vergiss alles in German, both meaning "forget everything". Later stories, however, disregard this particular detail.
PK
The character was renewed in (2001-2002), which started directly from where PKNA ended, with the return of Everett Ducklair to Duckburg. PK² was considerably shorter than PKNA and the story arcs revolved mostly around Ducklair's ambitions and the consequences of his past mistakes. After Ducklair shuts down Uno and forbids PK to use his inventions as well as his tower at the very beginning of the series, it keeps its core not only on PK as a superhero but also on Donald as a citizen and person, introducing more mature topics linked to the everyday life (also in relation to PK's struggles as a hero) and more realistic interactions between characters.
After PK², a reboot named PK - Pikappa (2002-2005) was published. This series aimed to rewrite and revamp Paperinik/PK's origins by keeping some few core elements from PKNA: as a matter of fact, here Donald has never even been Paperinik and he gains his secret identity after being selected and hired by the AI U.N.O. as a "guardian of the galaxy" (Donald chooses "PK" as his name when the other Guardians ask for it and he makes it up quickly reading part of a code printed on his equipment). This last series was a decent commercial success but, though having most of the cast of writers and artists from the previous two issues, was poorly received because of the clear cut from PKNA and PK² in favour of shorter, lighter, simpler and often self-contained stories, but also because of the overall lower quality of stories and illustrations.
Starting from Topolino #3058, PK received new stories resuming the PKNA continuity, beginning with PK - Might and Power: a series of four episodes written by Francesco Artibani and drawn by Lorenzo Pastrovicchio, in which the Raider and Odin Eidolon (Uno's future persona) persuade Donald after years to go back to his Duck Avenger identity, and prevent the Evronian empire from rising again. In May 2015 has been published the four-episode issue PK - The Banks of Time, which focuses on time paradoxes and marks the return of Lyla Lay; this venture is scripted by Alessandro Sisti, designed by Claudio Sciarrone and colored by Max Monteduro. These new issues, nicknamed by fans Paperinik New Era (shortened as PKNE) as they don't have a collective name, revolve around the same themes of the original magazine (albeit in a lighter manner, being now part of the Topolino comic book) evolving them from their original closing, bringing back old characters and introducing new ones, such as the ambiguous Keeper of the Omega Chamber (another AI designed by Ducklair) and Moldrock.
In the US, the origin story of Paperinik premiered in a two-part issue under the title "The Diabolical Duck Avenger" in 2015.[7]
Other media
In 2002, a
In 2008, a mobile
Paperinik was an unlockable character in a video game The Duckforce Rises in 2015.[9]
Donald's character history
According to
See also
- Donald Duck – the character in film and comics
- Huey, Dewey and Louie and The Junior Woodchucks
- Scrooge McDuck and the Clan McDuck
- Daisy Duck and the extended Duck family
- Donald Duck universe – cast, locations and themes
- List of Donald Duck universe characters
- Disney comics – comic strips and books
- Inducks – Disney comics database
- Al Taliaferro / Carl Barks / Don Rosa – comics creators
- List of Disney comics by Carl Barks / List of Disney comics by Don Rosa
- Donald Duck – comic strip / Donald Duck / WDC&S / Uncle Scrooge – comic books
- Donaldism – Disney comics fandom / Flipism – theory from a Donald Duck comic
- Mickey Mouse – comic strip / Mickey Mouse – comic book / Mickey Mouse universe
Notes
- ^ The latter used in Italy for Donald as a fictional superhero different from Paperinik.
References
- ISBN 9780472117567.
- ^ "Mickey Mouse: Mickey's 'Hoozoo' Witswitch, And Wotswot". Inducks. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
- ^ "Donald Duck" at the Grand Comics Database
- ISBN 978-1-60699-531-0.
- Comic Vine. Retrieved 24 July 2022.
- ^ "Paperinik". Dizionario di Pronuncia Italiana (in Italian). Retrieved April 7, 2019.
- ^ Donald Duck #5 and #6. IDW Publishing, 2015.
- ^ "PK Phantom Duck". www.pocketgamer.com.
- ^ Melani, Giorgio (October 28, 2015). "Il risveglio della PaperForza". Multiplayer.it (in Italian). Retrieved December 18, 2022.