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Description
Well the time has come people ... time to talk about the duck himself : Donald Fauntelroy Duck ! [link]
Donald is one of the 2 greatest, richest cartoon creations of all time, but like any character he has his own set of rules and his own limitations. In his best stories, whether adventures or comedies , Donald was always best as himself. The waterfowl works better as a constant thrown in multiple scenarii, the surroundings change but Donald does not . Of course his personality is so multi-layered that he can be many things , even total paradoxes, and remain himself .
Let us dig into the Don's designs (or at least those I find extremely influential on my way to view the duck ), music maestro ! [link] :

PROTO-DONALD

This character is just maybe where the idea for a duck friend for Mickey started to blossom , in 1931 . Of course it will be drawn 1 year later but is nothing but a prototype and , as such , has very little to do with the refined version ...

LITTLE SAILOR DUCK

With Clarence Nash' hiring (God bless him) in 1933, the studios knew they got their duck voice. They did so after hearing Mr Nash doing the Mary had a little lamb with a duck voice in the radio . So there we have our early Duck , the embryonic Donald ,created by animator Dick Lundy and starring in "The Wise Little Hen", "Mickey's grand opera" and "The Band Concert" .He has some of the traits that will be expanded later: he is a bit of a slacker (like the duck in the wise hen story ), a mischievous trickster and temperemental average Joe .In the cartoons, Mickey Mouse would gradually become a role model for children and Disney wanted a character that could portray some of the more negative character traits he could no longer bestow on Mickey (which of course is a different story in the comics ...).

EXPANSION AND COMIC STRIP (TALIAFERRO )

In 1936 . Donald will be the star of his own comic strip courtesy of Al TAliaferro . He was the most popular character in the Silly Symphonies written by Taliaferro and Ted Osborne , so they thought of giving him his own series . This comic strip will also contain the seeds of the future mythology that will be expanded around the character in his printed world : The nephews , Gus Goose , Daisy (before being put in the cartoon). The new added trait would be a slight parental responsibility and a varying maturity in his behavior. Donald, just like in this period's cartoons, can be the trickster and the fall guy .

The DON'S GOLDEN ANIMATED AGE

With WWII , the popularity of aggressive characters bloomed . Walt did not want the animated Mickey to be a propaganda character (once again , as opposed to Floyd's who fought Nazis in the comics ...) , but Donald was the ideal character for that .
This period not only marks some of Donald's best propaganda cartoons , but also him being an ambassador of sort for south-american countries. This will lead to the creation of Jose Carioca , then Panchito Pistoles thus forming the 3 caballeros (These movies do add another trait; his curiosity and a certain interest towards foreign countries... and their ladies ). Within the 40's Donald would have some of the most brilliant cartoon shorts animation , courtesy of director Jack King (though one should note Lundey and Kinney's efforts too) under gag scripts by Barks and Hannah . King's Donald is what you could call the apex of Donald in animation: He was varied, polyvalent , could succeed or fail depending on the situation he set for himself and can be extremely sympathetic (especially in his best cartoon "Donald's dream voice")).Not only that , but Jack King had hands down the best Daisy ( if you don't believe me, check out "Donald's Dilemma" or "Mr Duck steps out"..)
Unfortunately , by the 50's , the end for Donald's animated career came knocking.
Jack Hannah's early work was pretty promising (Donald's Off Day, Clown of the Jungle,Crazy over Daisy...) but he was also responsible for the creations of Chip n' Dale, as well as other vermins for the sake of making Donald's life miserable. In fact Hannah stated in multiple interviews that he didn't believe Donald was deep enough, how much his voice irritated him, and so on.But the only thing the later cartoons achieved for me was to make us wish seeing Donald ripping the heads of the little pricks with his bare hands because , seriously, the joke wore out very fucking quick !
However , like for the Looney tunes nowadays , salvation would come from the 9th art ...

BARKS THE SPIRITUAL FATHER

In 1942, Western Publishing began creating original comic-book stories about Donald and other Disney characters. Bob Karp worked on the earliest of these, a story called Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold.This story (on which Barks worked on with Hannah ...) will introduce the treasure hunter trait is Donald's personality .
THIS IS WHERE LEGEND WAS MADE ! What would assure the duck's perennity for decades to come !

It should be noted Barks did not create a new Donald. He just extended the traits that the cartoons already showed and upped Donald's story range. He also accentuated the realism to Donald's character and the situations around him . His mutations made him more real, not less, because they made him more like us: we also remain fundamentally the same despite what may be tremendous changes in our surroundings and our habits.
Barks stated : "I broadened his character out very much. Instead of making just a quarrelsome little guy out of him, I made a sympathetic character. 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. ”
The range of Donald became tremendous in these stories. The shorter ones would usually focus on Donald's everyday life and on comedy (thus having him becoming more temperemental like in the cartoons ), while the longer ones were usually adventures set in exotic locales (where he becomes more foolhardy and adventurous.)

Barks placed Donald in the city of Duckburg, which he populated with a host of memorable characters, including Gladstone Gander (1948), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Uncle Scrooge McDuck (1947), Magica de Spell (1961), Flintheart Glomgold (1956), The Beagle Boys (1951), April, May and June (1953), Neighbor Jones (1944) and John D. Rockerduck (1961). When Donald's uncle Scrooge's popularity grew, Barks concentrated his major efforts on the Scrooge stories, and Donald's appearances became more focused on comedy or he was recast as Scrooge's reluctant helper, following his rich uncle around the globe (but he never quite lost his edge ... ).

Also in case anyone wonders ; YES I read the comics with Nash's voice in mind and NO, the cartoon and comics duck are the exact same guy (whoever says otherwise is saying absolute crap , and it is insulting to all of those I've cited above ... ) ! It all depends on the setting once again ...

ROSA'S PSYCHODRAMA

A lot of writers have used Donald in a very close way to Carl Barks (actually whenever I talk about comics Donald now , all his traits find their roots in Barks's refinement of the character). Don Rosa is , rightfully , seen as one the best duck writers and one that did not lose much time in going from good to downright EXCELLENT . (Even though I absolutely HATE the bigots that bash on other talented Disney writers just to say that Barks and Rosa are the only good duck writers . That is an absolute fallacy and I will show you soon why ...).

As for Rosa's treatment of Donald himself, he incorporates what has been set in Barks 's stuff ( for short stories : Donald has a bigger temper , for adventures : he is bolder ) but adds in his own spin. I for one absolutely LOVE the slapstick done in Rosa's style ! The expressions he gives to Donald are downright priceless: From the broad anger to the subtlest grimace, everything clicks right for! And of course you have the moments where you feel both sad and laugh at what is happening on panel .... and that is the key of great comedy
However , if there is one thing that Don Rosa does masterfully well with Donald , it's the sympathy . True , the cartoons had that , Barks did that in a more implicit way and Martina occasionally uses that , but in Rosa's case he has in his bet stuff a Donald who life has constantly spat on . Like any trooper , Donald has his breakdown moments and those give us some of his finest tales : "The Duck who never was" , "The Magnificent Seven (Minus Four) Caballeros!" and "Super Snooper Strikes". So to make a long story short , with Don Rosa you'd believe a duck can make you cry ... or at the very least make you teary .

UNDERAPPRECIATED DUCK DAZE

YES , I know a lot of fans will say they prefer Duck tales or say "Booouuuuh it ain't like the comics ..."....
Well SCREW THAT ! Yes , it 's true that I wish we'd have animated features based on Barksian adventures among other things , but Quack Pack deserves to be appreciated on its own terms . It is its own animal and has to be seen as such . Quack Pack doesn't care and has the flippant attitude of: "Hey. It's a cartoon. That means we can do ANYTHING WE WANT! BWAHAHAHA!", but since I am here to talk about Donald , I really find his treatment here just as underrated as the show itself.
Having rewatched the show recently , I could not help but notice that Donald's multi-layered aspect come to the front more than once . Behind all the whackiness he is put through , he is mostly a frantic , impatient , and (rightfully) suspicious, but still very loving parent. In fact it really makes up to the way his career got sabotaged in cartoons by the late 50's , so it's nice to see a middle-aged version of the Jack King's design.
And like the comics you have a constant battle between maturity and immaturity with an intact Donald that can shift between protagonist and antagonist depending on the episode ... And I am grateful for it because it'd be the last time (barring Fantasia 2000) to see a properly multi-layered Donald on-screen . So tell those purist to get off their high horses and enjoy the Show !

FROM YOUR AVERAGE JOE TO SUPERHERO...

This will be the longest part , and yes I am cheating a bit . Because it is time to talk about the way the italian masters handled the Don and boy did they do a wonderful job with him ! Yes their Donald is the same guy as Barks's but the aspects they focus on lead to different stories . If you ever are new to Disney comics, MARK MY WORDS : Martina,Bruno Concina,Gianfranco Cordara , Rodolfo Cimmino, Carpi, Scarpa, De Vita, Rota and Cavazzano among many deserve a fuckload of praise !So never dismiss them ! NEVER !
But to properly understand Paperinik (well both versions ) we have to start with the great Guido Martina :
Guido Martina is a scholar, gifted with a great imagination and a true knack for dark humor.He loved writing about aggressive characters , making Donald one of his favorite characters . He masters 2 types of tales : The "What If"s that are Great literary parodies, where Duckburg is placed in a new setting or becomes the recreation of literary works , thus combining the art of comics and the art of writing . The other kind he excells at are the social battles : Martina's Scrooge is the character as an exploiter that loves using his position to make Donald work for him (which is an aspect Barks stopped using by the 60's... Don Rosa On the other hand did that a lot more than you'd expect , While Donald is either the symbol of the average Joe OR a colossal slacker ... and the best part : Martina KNOWS HOW TO MAKE IT HILARIOUS ! Like Barks , he knew how to make the characters appealing while unashamedly showing their flaws !
And along Elisa Penna and Giovan Battista Carpi, he introduced Paperinik in the two-part, 60-page story "Paperinik il diabolico vendicatore" ("Paperinik the Diabolical Avenger") published on June 8 and June 15, 1969. I know THIS version as Fantomiald : It was mostly a way for Donald to get revenge on Scrooge and Gladstone, but would later take on criminals through his own illegal means . His most important ally in his (anti-)heroic identity is Gyro Gearloose, who fabricates most of his special equipment, but in some stories, without knowing his identity.

The other Paperinik , would come later as a testbed for a generation of new authors to create a blend of the "classical" Disney comics and the American superhero comic books. THAT one I know as Powerduck , and yes I am aware that there are 3 series so here is my thought on each one :
- PKNA : The longest and most well-crafted one (I am currently collecting and reading it ...)
- PK2: The direct sequel to PKNA (I need to finish PKNA before that...)
- PK Pikappa: The reboot or simplified one ...Yet is still have a lot of it epicness intact ! If anything I would choose THIS one If I ever had to make an animated adaptation of it...
And within this series, we discover a side of Donald that was hinted at earlier in Barks's comics : his adventurous side would grow into a heroic one , and a serious one at that !But this is what makes Donald so great : he is still himself , but is varied enough to play in comical or tragic stories and do it well in both cases .
Throughout the 3 series' run, the themes were : the relationship between man and robot or what makes humanity "human"; the struggle between logic and ethics ; the essence of true love; the difference between mankind and other alien races; what makes a true superhero; and the importance of History and past historical events.
This is exactly why the Disney studios astonish me. For years, they've turned out a fuckload of bad movies, all the while literally sitting on storyboards for what could give us MASTERPIECES OF ANIMATION ! (You name it Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Gottfredson's Mickey outwits the Phantom Blot , Dragon Lords by Erickson and Giorgio Cavazzano , Barks 's A Christmas for Shacktown AND THIS among other things ). Seriously look at this [link]

So there it is , my love letter towards the greatest Disney character ever created period. A character that got me into drawing for the first time and that I will still keep drawing ... Tune in next time folks , as I said , there were 2 of the greatest cartoon creations of all time SO we will get to the ESSENCE of animation itself and GOD of all anti-heroes ... you know full well who I am talking about , don't you ?

Description
Well the time has come people ... time to talk about the duck himself : Donald Fauntelroy Duck ! [link]
Donald is one of the 2 greatest, richest cartoon creations of all time, but like any character he has his own set of rules and his own limitations. In his best stories, whether adventures or comedies , Donald was always best as himself. The waterfowl works better as a constant thrown in multiple scenarii, the surroundings change but Donald does not . Of course his personality is so multi-layered that he can be many things , even total paradoxes, and remain himself .
Let us dig into the Don's designs (or at least those I find extremely influential on my way to view the duck ), music maestro ! [link] :

PROTO-DONALD

This character is just maybe where the idea for a duck friend for Mickey started to blossom , in 1931 . Of course it will be drawn 1 year later but is nothing but a prototype and , as such , has very little to do with the refined version ...

LITTLE SAILOR DUCK

With Clarence Nash' hiring (God bless him) in 1933, the studios knew they got their duck voice. They did so after hearing Mr Nash doing the Mary had a little lamb with a duck voice in the radio . So there we have our early Duck , the embryonic Donald ,created by animator Dick Lundy and starring in "The Wise Little Hen", "Mickey's grand opera" and "The Band Concert" .He has some of the traits that will be expanded later: he is a bit of a slacker (like the duck in the wise hen story ), a mischievous trickster and temperemental average Joe .In the cartoons, Mickey Mouse would gradually become a role model for children and Disney wanted a character that could portray some of the more negative character traits he could no longer bestow on Mickey (which of course is a different story in the comics ...).

EXPANSION AND COMIC STRIP (TALIAFERRO )

In 1936 . Donald will be the star of his own comic strip courtesy of Al TAliaferro . He was the most popular character in the Silly Symphonies written by Taliaferro and Ted Osborne , so they thought of giving him his own series . This comic strip will also contain the seeds of the future mythology that will be expanded around the character in his printed world : The nephews , Gus Goose , Daisy (before being put in the cartoon). The new added trait would be a slight parental responsibility and a varying maturity in his behavior. Donald, just like in this period's cartoons, can be the trickster and the fall guy .

The DON'S GOLDEN ANIMATED AGE

With WWII , the popularity of aggressive characters bloomed . Walt did not want the animated Mickey to be a propaganda character (once again , as opposed to Floyd's who fought Nazis in the comics ...) , but Donald was the ideal character for that .
This period not only marks some of Donald's best propaganda cartoons , but also him being an ambassador of sort for south-american countries. This will lead to the creation of Jose Carioca , then Panchito Pistoles thus forming the 3 caballeros (These movies do add another trait; his curiosity and a certain interest towards foreign countries... and their ladies ). Within the 40's Donald would have some of the most brilliant cartoon shorts animation , courtesy of director Jack King (though one should note Lundey and Kinney's efforts too) under gag scripts by Barks and Hannah . King's Donald is what you could call the apex of Donald in animation: He was varied, polyvalent , could succeed or fail depending on the situation he set for himself and can be extremely sympathetic (especially in his best cartoon "Donald's dream voice")).Not only that , but Jack King had hands down the best Daisy ( if you don't believe me, check out "Donald's Dilemma" or "Mr Duck steps out"..)
Unfortunately , by the 50's , the end for Donald's animated career came knocking.
Jack Hannah's early work was pretty promising (Donald's Off Day, Clown of the Jungle,Crazy over Daisy...) but he was also responsible for the creations of Chip n' Dale, as well as other vermins for the sake of making Donald's life miserable. In fact Hannah stated in multiple interviews that he didn't believe Donald was deep enough, how much his voice irritated him, and so on.But the only thing the later cartoons achieved for me was to make us wish seeing Donald ripping the heads of the little pricks with his bare hands because , seriously, the joke wore out very fucking quick !
However , like for the Looney tunes nowadays , salvation would come from the 9th art ...

BARKS THE SPIRITUAL FATHER

In 1942, Western Publishing began creating original comic-book stories about Donald and other Disney characters. Bob Karp worked on the earliest of these, a story called Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold.This story (on which Barks worked on with Hannah ...) will introduce the treasure hunter trait is Donald's personality .
THIS IS WHERE LEGEND WAS MADE ! What would assure the duck's perennity for decades to come !

It should be noted Barks did not create a new Donald. He just extended the traits that the cartoons already showed and upped Donald's story range. He also accentuated the realism to Donald's character and the situations around him . His mutations made him more real, not less, because they made him more like us: we also remain fundamentally the same despite what may be tremendous changes in our surroundings and our habits.
Barks stated : "I broadened his character out very much. Instead of making just a quarrelsome little guy out of him, I made a sympathetic character. 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. ”
The range of Donald became tremendous in these stories. The shorter ones would usually focus on Donald's everyday life and on comedy (thus having him becoming more temperemental like in the cartoons ), while the longer ones were usually adventures set in exotic locales (where he becomes more foolhardy and adventurous.)

Barks placed Donald in the city of Duckburg, which he populated with a host of memorable characters, including Gladstone Gander (1948), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Uncle Scrooge McDuck (1947), Magica de Spell (1961), Flintheart Glomgold (1956), The Beagle Boys (1951), April, May and June (1953), Neighbor Jones (1944) and John D. Rockerduck (1961). When Donald's uncle Scrooge's popularity grew, Barks concentrated his major efforts on the Scrooge stories, and Donald's appearances became more focused on comedy or he was recast as Scrooge's reluctant helper, following his rich uncle around the globe (but he never quite lost his edge ... ).

Also in case anyone wonders ; YES I read the comics with Nash's voice in mind and NO, the cartoon and comics duck are the exact same guy (whoever says otherwise is saying absolute crap , and it is insulting to all of those I've cited above ... ) ! It all depends on the setting once again ...

ROSA'S PSYCHODRAMA

A lot of writers have used Donald in a very close way to Carl Barks (actually whenever I talk about comics Donald now , all his traits find their roots in Barks's refinement of the character). Don Rosa is , rightfully , seen as one the best duck writers and one that did not lose much time in going from good to downright EXCELLENT . (Even though I absolutely HATE the bigots that bash on other talented Disney writers just to say that Barks and Rosa are the only good duck writers . That is an absolute fallacy and I will show you soon why ...).

As for Rosa's treatment of Donald himself, he incorporates what has been set in Barks 's stuff ( for short stories : Donald has a bigger temper , for adventures : he is bolder ) but adds in his own spin. I for one absolutely LOVE the slapstick done in Rosa's style ! The expressions he gives to Donald are downright priceless: From the broad anger to the subtlest grimace, everything clicks right for! And of course you have the moments where you feel both sad and laugh at what is happening on panel .... and that is the key of great comedy
However , if there is one thing that Don Rosa does masterfully well with Donald , it's the sympathy . True , the cartoons had that , Barks did that in a more implicit way and Martina occasionally uses that , but in Rosa's case he has in his bet stuff a Donald who life has constantly spat on . Like any trooper , Donald has his breakdown moments and those give us some of his finest tales : "The Duck who never was" , "The Magnificent Seven (Minus Four) Caballeros!" and "Super Snooper Strikes". So to make a long story short , with Don Rosa you'd believe a duck can make you cry ... or at the very least make you teary .

UNDERAPPRECIATED DUCK DAZE

YES , I know a lot of fans will say they prefer Duck tales or say "Booouuuuh it ain't like the comics ..."....
Well SCREW THAT ! Yes , it 's true that I wish we'd have animated features based on Barksian adventures among other things , but Quack Pack deserves to be appreciated on its own terms . It is its own animal and has to be seen as such . Quack Pack doesn't care and has the flippant attitude of: "Hey. It's a cartoon. That means we can do ANYTHING WE WANT! BWAHAHAHA!", but since I am here to talk about Donald , I really find his treatment here just as underrated as the show itself.
Having rewatched the show recently , I could not help but notice that Donald's multi-layered aspect come to the front more than once . Behind all the whackiness he is put through , he is mostly a frantic , impatient , and (rightfully) suspicious, but still very loving parent. In fact it really makes up to the way his career got sabotaged in cartoons by the late 50's , so it's nice to see a middle-aged version of the Jack King's design.
And like the comics you have a constant battle between maturity and immaturity with an intact Donald that can shift between protagonist and antagonist depending on the episode ... And I am grateful for it because it'd be the last time (barring Fantasia 2000) to see a properly multi-layered Donald on-screen . So tell those purist to get off their high horses and enjoy the Show !

FROM YOUR AVERAGE JOE TO SUPERHERO...

This will be the longest part , and yes I am cheating a bit . Because it is time to talk about the way the italian masters handled the Don and boy did they do a wonderful job with him ! Yes their Donald is the same guy as Barks's but the aspects they focus on lead to different stories . If you ever are new to Disney comics, MARK MY WORDS : Martina,Bruno Concina,Gianfranco Cordara , Rodolfo Cimmino, Carpi, Scarpa, De Vita, Rota and Cavazzano among many deserve a fuckload of praise !So never dismiss them ! NEVER !
But to properly understand Paperinik (well both versions ) we have to start with the great Guido Martina :
Guido Martina is a scholar, gifted with a great imagination and a true knack for dark humor.He loved writing about aggressive characters , making Donald one of his favorite characters . He masters 2 types of tales : The "What If"s that are Great literary parodies, where Duckburg is placed in a new setting or becomes the recreation of literary works , thus combining the art of comics and the art of writing . The other kind he excells at are the social battles : Martina's Scrooge is the character as an exploiter that loves using his position to make Donald work for him (which is an aspect Barks stopped using by the 60's... Don Rosa On the other hand did that a lot more than you'd expect , While Donald is either the symbol of the average Joe OR a colossal slacker ... and the best part : Martina KNOWS HOW TO MAKE IT HILARIOUS ! Like Barks , he knew how to make the characters appealing while unashamedly showing their flaws !
And along Elisa Penna and Giovan Battista Carpi, he introduced Paperinik in the two-part, 60-page story "Paperinik il diabolico vendicatore" ("Paperinik the Diabolical Avenger") published on June 8 and June 15, 1969. I know THIS version as Fantomiald : It was mostly a way for Donald to get revenge on Scrooge and Gladstone, but would later take on criminals through his own illegal means . His most important ally in his (anti-)heroic identity is Gyro Gearloose, who fabricates most of his special equipment, but in some stories, without knowing his identity.

The other Paperinik , would come later as a testbed for a generation of new authors to create a blend of the "classical" Disney comics and the American superhero comic books. THAT one I know as Powerduck , and yes I am aware that there are 3 series so here is my thought on each one :
- PKNA : The longest and most well-crafted one (I am currently collecting and reading it ...)
- PK2: The direct sequel to PKNA (I need to finish PKNA before that...)
- PK Pikappa: The reboot or simplified one ...Yet is still have a lot of it epicness intact ! If anything I would choose THIS one If I ever had to make an animated adaptation of it...
And within this series, we discover a side of Donald that was hinted at earlier in Barks's comics : his adventurous side would grow into a heroic one , and a serious one at that !But this is what makes Donald so great : he is still himself , but is varied enough to play in comical or tragic stories and do it well in both cases .
Throughout the 3 series' run, the themes were : the relationship between man and robot or what makes humanity "human"; the struggle between logic and ethics ; the essence of true love; the difference between mankind and other alien races; what makes a true superhero; and the importance of History and past historical events.
This is exactly why the Disney studios astonish me. For years, they've turned out a fuckload of bad movies, all the while literally sitting on storyboards for what could give us MASTERPIECES OF ANIMATION ! (You name it Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Gottfredson's Mickey outwits the Phantom Blot , Dragon Lords by Erickson and Giorgio Cavazzano , Barks 's A Christmas for Shacktown AND THIS among other things ). Seriously look at this [link]

So there it is , my love letter towards the greatest Disney character ever created period. A character that got me into drawing for the first time and that I will still keep drawing ... Tune in next time folks , as I said , there were 2 of the greatest cartoon creations of all time SO we will get to the ESSENCE of animation itself and GOD of all anti-heroes ... you know full well who I am talking about , don't you ?