Anyone else who dislikes Grandma Duck?

[Hector]

She's such a Mary Sue. She's so Mary Sue that it hurts. At stories i've read...
-She opens Scrooge's supposedly impregnable bank door using a hair pin.
-She wins a baking contest for 20 or so years in a row (and, in the end of the story, she wins it again).
-Her diary becomes a best seller when Donald turns it into a book.
-She can infallibly predict the weather, judging from how her bones feel (Barkses story).

[deb]

Of course I don't dislike Grandma Duck. Grandma Duck is one of the most genuinely likeable members of the Duck Family. She embodies sort of an old-fashioned country wisdom, which I can see modern readers disliking her for, honestly. Both Grandma and Scrooge are throwbacks to a time gone by.

[jumbojr]

She's just not interesting.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

I agree, jumbojr. Much like Gladstone, I think Grandma is an interesting character to have in the background, but she gets annoying when the spotlight is on her.

[Baar Baar Jinx]

The "Mary Sue" aspect of Grandma Duck alluded to above seems to be limited to a handful of obscure stories. For the most part, her role seems to be that of a wise old motherly figure, a sober counterbalance to the eccentric, histrionic patriarch of the clan (Scrooge). Her old-fashionedness is sometimes a source of humor, but for the most part she plays the straight man. I don't think she deserves a frequent starring role, but I certainly don't hate her. It's a shame we didn't see her on DuckTales (except for an unnamed cameo) or Quack Pack (a show begging for her to make an appearance); I hope we see her on the DuckTales reboot.

[Hector]

Those stories are just examples. She was a Mary Sue at almost all the stories i've read.

[sirtao]

Try Silvia Ziche's stories, then.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

That's a good point. Though few Ziche stories would be available to American, non-Italian-speaking readers.

[sirtao]

Frankly, I'm surprised so few Disney readers bothered to learn Italian.

It's even the perfect excuse to read comics!

(I am actually learning Portuguese... at some point I'll have to import some Brazilian Disney comics, too. Luckily, I'm just opening a comic book store!)

[RobbK1]

Jul 27, 2016 21:54:33 GMT Hector said:

Those stories are just examples. She was a Mary Sue at almost all the stories I've read.

I am working on a story using Grandma and Gus Goose in a framed, historical flashback story for Dutch Disney comics, based on an old Dutch (West Frisian) folktale.  Gus is gluttonous like the selfish/gluttonous boy in the folktale, and the story is revealed by Grandma telling the story of Gus' and her ancestor and his parents.  In the flashback (basically following the plot of the folktale), Gus plays the boy, Grandma plays the boy's mother, and his father is played by a Duck that looks like the duck character, who played Grandpa Duck, in a couple Tony Strobl drawn stories.

I DO agree that Grandma is not a very good character to be the lead character in a lot of stories.  But, I'm glad she's around to be used when such a character is needed.  She's a good one to use for this folktale story.  I hope that our editors will go along with my idea of also including in its publication issue, an information page about the folktale and its related history.  Maybe they'll even have a special printing of it in Frisian language (the second official language of The Netherlands).  In the past, we've already had a few special Dutch Weekly editions with special stories about Friesland.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Wait, Grandma Duck's ancestor was also an ancestor of Gus Goose? So the Goose and Coot family were always linked?

[RobbK1]

Aug 2, 2016 14:47:52 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Wait, Grandma Duck's ancestor was also an ancestor of Gus Goose? So the Goose and Coot family were always linked?

It may APPEAR that way in this frame story.  But THAT supposition isn't necessarily true.  Grandma WILL tell Gus the story about his ancient ancestor.  But she will NOT say that one of HER ancestors was Gus' ancestor's mother.  It is only that the young man's mother in the story, will look very much like Grandma Duck (e.g. Grandma Duck will be "playing the part" of the young man's mother, just as she plays the part of a "surrogate mother" to Gus in the present days).  Nobody should start altering the Duck and Goose family trees to place a line of Ducks intersecting with a line of Geese back in the 1400s.  But, I wouldn't mind them adding Gus Goose's ancestor from that period, and his parents.  It's just that his mother probably wasn't from The Duck clan back then.