Nephews

[Donald D. Markstein]

>Different character or not?  Of course they are *supposed* to be
>exactly like one another, but if you look through several episodes
>where they do different things and you know which one does what, maybe
>you could find some unintentional (on the part of the writers)
>different character traits anyway?
>  
>

An unknown number, probably dozens, of different writers, over a period 
of decades, who don't even know each other, somehow managed to 
coordinate their stories so that different character traits, amazingly 
subtle and yet discernable to the studious reader, appear consistently 
among the "different" nephews? And they did this without even intending to?

I don't think so.

I've been reading Duck stories with nephews in them for more than half a 
century, and reading them seriously enough and repeatedly enough that I 
could quote fairly large sections of Barks, and I've never seen any such 
thing. What's more, until the 1980s, I never saw any consistency in the 
way they were colored. But perhaps that's because I've never looked, 
because as far as I've ever been able to tell, the three are absolutely 
interchangeable.

Now, I can't claim to be one of the Master Planners of the Disney 
Universe. In fact, most of my writing of Nephews is merely to re-dialog 
European stories for American consumption -- at Egmont, where I write 
full stories, I mostly do Mickey Mouse. However, even the minor Duck 
work I do qualifies me to use the next paragraph's first five words as 
an introduction.

SPEAKING AS A DUCK WRITER, I don't distinguish among them at all. If a 
nephew speaks in one of the stories I work on, I attribute the balloon 
to "Nephew". If two nephews speak in the same panel, I attribute the 
ballons to "Nephew 1" and "Nephew 2", in normal reading order. I don't 
recall all three nephews speaking in the same panel, but I'm sure you 
can guess how I'd attribute the balloons if they ever did. In fact, even 
if Phooey, the phantom fourth Nephew who is seen occasionally when 
stories aren't proofread carefully enough, were to show up, I'd simply 
call him "Nephew 4". (After pointing him out to editors, of course.)

Let someone else decide what color their caps are. Whatever he does, 
he'll be consistent, because as far as I've ever seen, there is no 
difference whatsoever from one nephew to another.

Didn't Don Rosa once do a story about what incredibly minute differences 
you have to perceive to tell them apart? Differences like one of them 
has a mosquito bite over his eye, or one has a couple of feathers out of 
place? If any reader, anywhere, could see a real difference among them, 
that was the time to share it with the rest of us.

Quack, Don