Duck family (Disney)
The Duck family is a fictional family of cartoon ducks related to Disney character Donald Duck. The family is also related to the Coot, Goose, and Gander families, as well as the Scottish Clan McDuck. Besides Donald, the best-known members of the Duck family are Huey, Dewey, and Louie, Donald's triplet nephews.
Members of the Duck family appear most extensively in Donald Duck comics. In 1993, American comics author Don Rosa published a Duck Family Tree that established the characters' relationships in his stories. He also created a fictional timeline for when certain characters were born. Other comics authors both before and after have shown variations in the family.
Development
In the early 1950s Carl Barks was in his second decade of creating comic book stories starring Donald Duck and his various relatives. He had personally created several of the latter, such as Scrooge McDuck and Gladstone Gander. To better define their relations, Barks created a family tree, wherein he added several previously unknown relatives to fill in the gaps. Barks never intended to publish this family tree and created it only for personal reference.The first public attempt at a coherent biography of the Ducks was published in 1974. An Informal Biography of Scrooge McDuck by science fiction author Jack Chalker used names and events in the Barks stories to create a life story for Scrooge. It provided the basis for a Scrooge McDuck biography included in The People's Almanac.
In 1981, Barks was well into his retirement, but his stories remained popular and had gained him unexpected fame. He had given several interviews and answered questions about his personal views on the characters and their stories. Among other subjects, Barks described his early version of the family tree. Rough sketches of the tree were published in a number of fanzines and were appreciated by fans for the authoritative background information this provided. At this point, Mark Worden decided to create a drawing of Barks' Duck Family Tree, including portraits of the characters mentioned. Otherwise, Worden made few changes, most notably adding Daisy Duck as Donald's main love interest. His illustrated version of the tree was first published in several fanzines and later in The Carl Barks Library.
In 1987, Don Rosa, a long-time fan of Barks and personal friend of Mark Worden, started creating his own stories featuring Scrooge McDuck and his kin. Rosa's stories contained numerous references to Barks' stories and introduced original background information. After several years, Rosa gained a large international fanbase of his own. In the early 1990s, Egmont, offered him an ambitious assignment — to create the definitive version of Scrooge's biography and a family tree accompanying it. This was supposed to decisively put an end to decades of seeming contradictions between stories by different authors, which had caused confusion to readers. The project was to become the award-winning, The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, a chronology of epic proportions that spawned numerous other timeline stories, collected in a companion volume. Rosa's Duck Family Tree accompanying the series was first published in Norway on July 3, 1993.
In the process of working on Scrooge's biography, Rosa studied Barks' old stories mentioning his past. Then he added several ideas of his own. Among them were biographical information for Scrooge's supporting cast, as well as designing characters in the family that had only been mentioned by Barks, such as Donald's sister Della and Scrooge's parents, sisters and uncles.
Family tree by Carl Barks
The family tree below shows the Goose and Duck portions of Donald's family tree according to Carl Barks. The chart is based on a 1950s sketch made by Barks for personal use, which was later illustrated by artist Mark Worden in 1981.Family tree by Don Rosa
In 1993, Don Rosa published his version of the Duck family tree as part of his 12-part comics series The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. The most significant change was Rosa's expansion of the family tree to include the Coot relatives. Rosa also added Goostave Gander as the father of Gladstone, and made Luke Goose the father of Gus, rather than his uncle.The chart below is Rosa's tree, which shows relationships within the [|Coot family] and Duck family.
Ancestors
Andold "Wild Duck" Temerary
Andold "Wild Duck" was created by Gaudenzio Capelli and Marco Rota and appears in stories set in the Middle Ages. His first appearance was in "Paperino e il piccolo Krack", published in Almanacco Topolino #228. He is a lookalike and ancestor to Donald Duck. Andold was a commander who protected the shores of Caledonia from Vikings. He has a girlfriend named Aydis who looks like Daisy Duck, and he also has five soldiers, two of them are named Little Bo and Big Brutus.Andold wears a helmet, topped with a miniature decoration representing his own face. As a comical touch, the decoration's facial expression always matches Andold's own, changing between panels if necessary.
In the first Andold story, Donald dreams about Andold, in the second, Huey, Dewey, and Louie are reading a book about his adventures. In later Andold stories, the modern-day Ducks do not appear. All Andold Wild Duck stories are illustrated by Marco Rota, most of them are also written by him.
The first Andold comic to be published in English was Donald Duck... and his fierce ancestor... Andold Wild Duck by Rota, published in a December 1993 edition of Donald Duck Adventures with cover illustration by Don Rosa featuring Andold.
The names Andold and Aydis are anagrams of Donald and Daisy.
Pintail Duck
Pintail Duck was a 16th-century Duck relative and the first early ancestor to appear in the comics. Pintail served in the Royal Navy as the boatswain aboard HMS Falcon Rover. The Falcon Rover raided Spanish targets in the Caribbean Sea between 1563 and 1564 when the ship was sunk. Pintail was friends with the ship's first mate, Malcom "Matey" McDuck, who was a mutual ancestor of Donald and Scrooge.Don de Pato
Don de Pato was a 16th-century Spanish ancestor of Donald through both the Coot family and Clan McDuck, first appearing in the 1965 comic The Golden Galleon written by Carl Fallberg with art by Tony Strobl. He was a member of the Spanish Armada.In the TV series Legend of the Three Caballeros, he appears under the name Don Dugo, as one of the members of the original Three Caballeros, along with the ancestors of José Carioca and Panchito Pistoles.
Seth Duck
Seth Duck was an ancestor of Donald's, considered a hero after warning Duckburg of an impending Native American attack. His statue exists in Duckburg's Park. He appeared in the 1967 comic The Clock Plot by Vic Lockman and Tony Strobl.First generation
Humperdink Duck
Humperdink Duck is the earliest known contemporary Duck family member. He is the husband of Elvira Coot, known to the family as "Grandma Duck", and the father of Quackmore, Eider, and Daphne Duck. Humperdink is father-in-law to Scrooge's sister Hortense who married his son Quackmore. He is Donald's paternal grandfather and the maternal great-grandfather of Huey, Dewey, and Louie, through their mother Della. Humperdink worked as a farmer in rural Duckburg. Don Rosa gave the character relevant appearances in two stories, "The Invader Of Fort Duckburg", a chapter of the saga The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, and "The Sign Of The Triple Distelfink". In the family, he was known as "Pa Duck", and later as "Grandpa Duck".Humperdink's life before having a family was never shown in the comics. Don Rosa speculated that the Duck family originated from England, but it is unknown if Humperdink is an immigrant.
In the story "The Good Old Daze" by Tony Strobl, Grandpa Duck appears in a flashback scene taking care of little Donald along with Grandma, where he is portrayed as a dedicated but rigorous grandfather. Grandpa Duck's real name was not revealed in this story, but in an untitled story from 1951, an old lover of Grandma called Humperdink has a cameo appearance. Don Rosa considered that this character became Donald's paternal grandfather. In "The Good Old Daze", artist Tony Strobl drew Grandpa Duck with a long beard and some hair, while Rosa has depicted him with a short beard and a full head of hair. In the Danish story The Good Neighbors, by writer Lars Jensen and artist Flemming Andersen, Strobl's version of Grandpa Duck appears in a flashback scene that is told by his wife Grandma Duck. He also appears unnamed in the 1955 film No Hunting, in which he posthumously inspires Donald to take part in hunting season.
Grandma Duck
Elvira "Grandma" Duck is Donald's paternal grandmother and the Duck family matriarch. In most stories, she is simply referred to as "Grandma Duck". She was introduced to the Disney comic universe by Al Taliaferro and Bob Karp in the Donald Duck newspaper comic strip, first in a picture on the wall in the August 11, 1940, Sunday page, and then as a full-fledged character in the strip on Monday, September 27, 1943. Taliaferro found inspiration for her in his own mother-in-law, Donnie M. Wheaton. Depending on the writer, Grandma Duck has had various given names over the years. In a story by Riley Thomson from 1950, she was named "Elviry" and in a story from 1953 she was given the name "Abigail". Don Rosa later gave her the name "Elvira" in his comic books series The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.According to artist/writer Don Rosa, Grandma was born around 1855. In the comic strips by Taliaferro and Karp, it is mentioned that in her youth she was a pioneer in the American migration to the west, riding a covered wagon and participating in many Indian Wars. Later, she married Humperdink Duck, and they had three children named Quackmore, Daphne and Eider. Grandma Duck helped to raise her great-grandsons, Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck. In most comic book stories, as well as other media that handles Donald Duck's childhood, it was Grandma Duck who filled the role of Donald's caretaker.
Grandma made her animated debut in the 1960 Wonderful World of Color episode This is Your Life, Donald Duck, where she was voiced by June Foray. The episode depicted her great difficulty in raising Donald, a strong-willed and ill-tempered duckling from the moment he was hatched. She also made a brief appearance in Sport Goofy in Soccermania she was now voiced by Russi Taylor, a non-speaking cameo in Mickey's Christmas Carol, and can be spotted in the background of the DuckTales episode Horse Scents.