Don's Duck Family Tree

[Per Starback]

It's published in Sweden now, in the first issue of the Donald Duck
weekly this new year.  I don't buy new Swedish comic books very often,
but I did an exception in this case.  It's a pull-out poster and only
half of the portraits are there.  The rest of them are white spots
where you are supposed to put the rest of them yourself as they come
as stickers in the upcoming issues.  ("Collect them all!")
Too bad it wasn't published all at the same time, but it looks nice
anyway.  Pretty easy to find the D.U.C.K. too!

Don is not credited, and the accompanying text says that there are
several views on the relationship between the ducks, and that this
tree presents one comic book artist's version of the family tree "to a
great extent using Carl Barks's own ideas and sketches".  They haven't
bothered to try to explain why this tree doesn't correspond to how the
characters always have been related in the Swedish text.  (Donald
being HDL's paternal uncle and Scrooge being Donald's paternal uncle,
not maternal.)

When Mattias earlier said that he had some unspecified minor critique
(did you ever get back to that, Mattias?) of the tree, Don wrote

> whatever it is, I'm blameless! That was strictly Barks or others,
> and all I did was create some faces to link grandparents to
> grandchildren or uncles to nephews or such. I did make Grandma Duck a
> Coot, but I think that was rather good, especially as it gave her a
> spot in the "Life" series. I wanted to make Ludwig Von Drake the
> husband of $crooge's sister Matilda, but I was vetoed by everyone...
> likewise, I don't regard Fethry as a "real" character, but they told
> me to stick him in there since he's sooooo popular in Europe.

and you've mentioned before that you ignored Barks's note that
Gladstone was adopted by Matilda and her (ignored) husband Goosetave
Gander.  (I guess that means you changed Luke the Goose's name to be
Luke Gander?  I can't check as the names of course are translated.)

But there yet one more change, isn't it?  In Barks's notes from the
fifties Gus Goose is a nephew of that Luke (and thus not really
related to the ducks at all), but in your tree he has a completely
different position.  What's your reasoning behind that?
--       "
Per Starback, Uppsala, Sweden.  email: starback at minsk.docs.uu.se
 "Life is but a gamble!  Let flipism chart your ramble!"