The hero and his companion

Søren Krarup Olesen raptus at stofanet.dk
Sun Mar 11 15:27:40 CET 2001


There has been some discussion going on about annoying, irritating
characters, and among those Fethry was mentioned on the indexer's
mailing list, and I can't help commenting this...

---

About Fethry himself, I've always felt that he was the one to bring
chaos into the otherwise so stabil universe of the ducks; Scrooge luring
an unlucky Donald to follow him unpayed on treasure trips, HDL always
solving problems etc. etc.

Fethry "operates" differently. Unlike Donald, who usually has som sort
of "mental reservations", Fethry just wishes to please people and do
his job right. The means by which Fethry (tries to) accomplish his
goals are wild, free and only limited by author's fantasy. The reason is
simple; he doesn't expect to inherit Scrooge's fortune, he doesn't have
a girlfriend to depend on and vice versa (and no competitors like
Gladstone), no nephews who need at least a minimum of care, iow. he is
utterly free! Anyone knows, where Fethry actually lives!?

Fethry is IMO indispensable in the duck universe, since he brings both
new ideas and disturbance into the scene. Imagine a Mickey without
Goofy's unpredictability; what dull and monotonous stories we would
have had. It's a bit like Tintin; the best stories IMO came out when
Haddock was introduced, who is somewhat an "unreliable" character as
well. Who is Asterix anyway without Obelix etc...

I love characters who break the balance. BTW, I wonder why Fethry
suddenly (mid 60s) changed from having a relative normal hairstyle to
having a...well...long untrimmed hippie hair... isn't Fethry basically a
hippie in the original sense? ;-)

Søren



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