Where did Donald's nephews first show up?

[Hector]

I read a 1938 story, the one where Gus Goose first shows up. Towards the end of that story, Donald has a phone call
(presumably from Della) and, next panel, the nephews bust into the house on their bikes.
But i thought the nephews had first appeared in another story, one year earlier. Can anybody clear my confusion?

[Monkey_Feyerabend]

In the page devoted to each character on the inducks you can find (under the image) the reference to the first appearance:
coa.inducks.org/character.php?c=HDL

In the case of HDL, it is a Sunday page of the Silly Symphonies series from 1937 :
coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=ZS+37-10-17

It is also the first appeared of HDL at all, in that the animators took inspiration from this Sunday for introducing HDL in Donald cartoons (the first one was Donald's nephews). So Taliaferro is the creator of the three duckies.

[drakeborough]

Feb 13, 2017 19:52:19 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

It is also the first appeared of HDL at all, in that the animators took inspiration from this Sunday for introducing HDL in Donald cartoons (the first one was Donald's nephews). So Taliaferro is the creator of the three duckies.

It's true that Taliaferro created them, though it would not be 100% exact to say that animators took inspiration from his first Sunday pages with HDL. That's because the first Sunday page is dated October 17, 1937, but "The Walt Disney Productions Story Dept. on February 5, 1937, sent Taliaferro a memo recognizing him as the source of the idea for the planned short, Donald's Nephews". So, Taliaferro first suggested the idea of the nephews to the animation team, and only many months later he used them in his newspaper comics.

I'm not sure of how much Taliaferro was inspired by storyboards of the upcoming animated short in his portrayal of them, but it's interesting to notice that it is Dana Coty of the animation team, rather than Taliaferro, who is credited for inventing the nephews' names (which were mentioned as early as their first Sunday page).

[Hector]

Then, why does the 1938 story with Gus Goose make it look like that was when the nephews went to live with their uncle?

[Ramapith]

Because at the end of the 1937 story, they had gone back home to their mother (to Donald's delight).

[rasterax]

Also, they don't come to live with Donald in the strip you mention (May 23, 1938), they are explicitly coming to visit for "just a few days". Although that stay ends up lasting forever. HDL's parents are mentioned once more, on September 10, when they say their prayers ("Bless Mama and Papa and Unca Donald"). That's the last time it's indicated they are just visiting, as far as I know.

[drakeborough]

Feb 14, 2017 9:57:05 GMT rasterax said:

Also, they don't come to live with Donald in the strip you mention (May 23, 1938), they are explicitly coming to visit for "just a few days". Although that stay ends up lasting forever. HDL's parents are mentioned once more, on September 10, when they say their prayers ("Bless Mama and Papa and Unca Donald"). That's the last time it's indicated they are just visiting, as far as I know.

It's correct that in the mentioned strip (May 23, 1938) they are meant to stay just a few days, but I think it's commonly accepted that something happened to their parents in those few days and so HDL were adopted by Donald.

If this is true, then by the time of the strip of September 10 they are not living with their parents anymore, even though HDL mention them in their prayers (hoping that they are found while knowing they are missing?)

In my opinion, any story dealing with the fate of Della (and her husband) should try to fit into the strip of May 23, 1938. The fact that this did not happen in the Donald Duck 80th anniversary story is one of the things I criticized about that tale, since it would have been easy to fit the astronaut plot into the continuity set by that strip.

[Ramapith]

Feb 14, 2017 11:11:24 GMT drakeborough said:

It's correct that in the mentioned strip (May 23, 1938) they are meant to stay just a few days, but I think it's commonly accepted that something happened to their parents in those few days and so HDL were adopted by Donald.

If this is true, then by the time of the strip of September 10 they are not living with their parents anymore, even though HDL mention them in their prayers (hoping that they are found while knowing they are missing?)

Commonly accepted? Whose continuity is this?
Your suggestions sound almost ominous—I'm honestly sure that the idea of the parents being in actually grim circumstances couldn't have been further from Karp's and Taliaferro's minds.

I don't think even the more nebulous idea of the parents being "lost"—i. e. that they were in some place where DD and HDL consciously knew they couldn't easily reunite with them—was part of actual canon until just a few relatively recent Rosa and Dutch stories.

[squeakyboots]

I think the nephews were created more as a means to give Donald bratty kids without making him a parent as that would imply him and Daisy are married. If that was the case, then Taliaferro probably didn't even have anything at all in mind for their parents.

There's a lot of cartoon characters from that time period who had nephews but never children of their own. The first Oswald the Lucky Rabbit short to have been produced depicted him as a father to a never ending amount of babies being delivered by storks. They had felt that this made the character seem too old and the baby rabbits were never shown again in subsequent shorts.

Goofy is the only classic Disney character to become a parent and that was decades later.

[sirredknee]

What about Old Zeke?

[hex]

I just wanted to add the entire run of 1937 Sunday pages with Donald and the boys is collected in volume 2 of IDW's Silly Symphonies collection – on sale this month. Looking forward to that book!

Also, the nephews were actually used in a few daily strips before the phone call in the May 23, 1938 strip.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Feb 14, 2017 19:31:15 GMT sirredknee said:

What about Old Zeke?

Aye, I quite agree. (And if Dickie is really Scrooge's granddaughter, then better add Scrooge as well.)

[drakeborough]

Feb 14, 2017 16:11:21 GMT Ramapith said:

Commonly accepted? Whose continuity is this?
Your suggestions sound almost ominous—I'm honestly sure that the idea of the parents being in actually grim circumstances couldn't have been further from Karp's and Taliaferro's minds.

I admit that my message was a bit confusing, since in my mind I had a clear distinction between the ideas of the original authors (Karp and Taliaferro) and the ideas of modern fans who give interpretations of those strips that fit the modern canon. Unfortunately, that distinction wasn't made clear by my choice of words, and the parenthetical note increased the confusion.

On the other hand, I am puzzled by the paragraph below, unless I am misunderstanding its content.

Feb 14, 2017 16:11:21 GMT Ramapith said:

I don't think even the more nebulous idea of the parents being "lost"—i. e. that they were in some place where DD and HDL consciously knew they couldn't easily reunite with them—was part of actual canon until just a few relatively recent Rosa and Dutch stories.

Are you implying that Donald being the legal guardian of HDL wasn't an established fact until Rosa and modern Dutch stories? I would be very surprised if this is true.

I mean, obviously Morty and Ferdie don't live with Mickey, just like April, May and June don't live with Daisy; that's why we can have Daisy saying her nieces visited her the other day, while we can't have Donald saying his nephews visited him the other day. Donald is clearly their legal guardian in Barks stories, and the same thing is also true in European stories (for example, this Italian 1975 story explicitly says Donald is their legal guardian). Did this start with Barks, or was it already established earlier? I can't answer for sure, as I have a limited knowledge of animated shorts and Taliaferro's newspaper comics, but I think it's worth noting that Donald mentions HDL as his dependences in the 1942 short The New Spirit and in a 1944 Taliaferro strip (and in the former it's even said they are adopted).

Feb 14, 2017 16:55:35 GMT squeakyboots said:

I think the nephews were created more as a means to give Donald bratty kids without making him a parent as that would imply him and Daisy are married. If that was the case, then Taliaferro probably didn't even have anything at all in mind for their parents.
[...]
Goofy is the only classic Disney character to become a parent and that was decades later.

Giving Donald three nephews rather than three sons was a good idea, since his first stories made it clear that he did not have any son, and thus having three kids appear out of nowhere and been treated as if they had always been there would have been like insulting the readers' intelligence.

For the same reason, creating Max (Goofy's son) in 1992 was (in my opinion) a really bad idea, just like it was a bad idea to keep him in later projects. Yes, I know Goofy already had a kid in some 1950's cartoons, but in that case I think it was implied he was more like an actor playing a role than him being his "nomal", usual self.