Huey, Dewey, and Louie: colours and ranks

Per Starback starback at Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE
Thu May 20 00:53:37 CEST 1993


Colours
~~~~~~~

Don Rosa:
> If there ever was a one-page gag which involved HD&L having colored
> hats or sweaters which corresponded to the DUCKTALES color schemes,
> it was pure coincidence. Prior to DUCKTALES, there was NO designation
> of what color what nephew wore.

Well, if you make notes of what colours they have whenever they are
named, you will find that the Dell comics weren't coloured in a
consistent way.  That much is obvious.

But I wouldn't want to dismiss the idea that the colourists, or at
least some of them, despite that had some views on this topic.  Of
course there were some things that were known to all colourists, like
for instance the fact that HD&L had different cap colours and that
those colours were red, blue, and green.  I don't know if knowledge
like that was ever written down somewhere or just something you
learnt from looking at others' colouring work, but I don't see
anything stopping those colourists from having such notions, and if
they did, it would probably show in an instance such as the one Rich
mentioned (sweaters with the boys' initials on them) as that is a case
where the colourists quickly can see who is who without having to
actually read the stories, something that they evidently not had the
time to do in their work.

To get any further on this question I guess one would have to either
speak to some of the actual old-time colourists or count instances of
the nephews having different colours and see if one can find any
tendencies in that data.  BTW: even though confronted with
contradictory data my views when I was little was that they actually
were coloured in just that way: Huey red, Dewey blue, Louie green.
Divine inspiration? :-)

Ranks
~~~~~

Don Rosa:
> Ranks in the Junior Woodchucks are so ever-changing that I don't
> think HD&L have the same rank in any two stories.

But they do!

In WDC 125 they become five-star generals.
In WDC 132 they call each other generals and get promoted to ten-star
generals.
In WDC 137 they still are ten-star generals.
In WDC 150 they become hightails, which then is their rank for the
rest of the stories, something which often is referred to.

All those other titles, like "rear admirals of the arctic snows" are
no ranks but just titles that you can have or not, whatever your rank
is.  At least I think that is pretty clear.
--       "
Per Starback, Uppsala, Sweden.  email: starback at student.docs.uu.se
 "Life is but a gamble!  Let flipism chart your ramble!"



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