Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Sept 10, 2016 9:02:59 GMT
Hmm. I don't think there's much point in saying flatly "Donald's nephews were dropped off in 1937." Because of the date of the cartoon? That's hardly canon-deciding, for most comics readers or creators. If you want it to be canon for you, that's fine, of course, to each their own. Rosa would place the timing to allow the boys to be boys in the 50's, and he chooses not to stretch out their lives to superhuman lengths. Others would backdate the abandonment/adoption of the boys from the present day, so that it happened in some nonspecified time several years before the present, a continually rolling date. That allows the boys to be boys in 2016. Then they use "cartoon time" (a subcategory of "cartoon physics") to allow Scrooge to have made his fortune in the Yukon, and just don't worry about fitting that all together.
I have wondered whether Geradts' story just has Donald having the secret to elongated life, or whether others around him have it as well. Has he outlived Neighbor Jones? Do the rest of Donald's family and circle of friends also live superhumanly long lives? While everyone else they know gets old around them? I can't imagine how this can work, whether it's just Donald who lives superlong or whether it's Donald and his family (and Daisy?). It can't be that everyone in Duckburg lives such prolonged lives, because Donald is getting media attention for his extended youth. But there's no sense trying to work this out, especially since I can't read the story!
To your question: from what I have heard, I gather that the story makes no mention of HDL's father, including not saying whether or not Della was married to him. She's a single mother, that's all there is to it.
The father is still running away, and Della realised she couldn't handle them EVEN WITH her husband, so feared the nightmare of trying to do that alone. So, she dumped them on her juvenile brother, and went on to join her husband, hiding together in a long-forgotten cave, somewhere in The 3rd World, crossing their fingers that Donald won't find them. Ironically, Barks turned those boys into the most adult-like and responsible members of The Duck Family (at least those who were brave enough to remain in Duckburg). Too bad their parents probably never found out how well-behaved and responsible their "hellion" progeny turned out a soon after their "abandonment" as kindergarten! But, that's comic books for you!
What also interests me is that the fact that Barks bases this version on the cartoon does prove he didn't see the DD cartoons and the DD comics as different continuities.