George Geef and Junior, Goofy and Max, Donald's son

[drakeborough]

We can use this new thread to stop the OT in the discussion in the thread Elroy, Ellsworth, Pluto, Goofy, what's an animal and what's a person. Before continuing the discussion, I'll copy here the relevant messages.

Jun 25, 2017 11:49:35 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Jun 25, 2017 8:22:07 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

"Do not wear clothes"? What about Rescue Rangers? If not to the comics, then at least the Chaos God storyline established that show was canon to the DuckTales/Darkwing Duck mythos.

I think, like the classic cartoons, the Disney Afternoon properties that star characters from the Duck and Mouse universes (DuckTales '87, Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers, Goof Troop and Quack Pack) all have to be considered a separate universe. Otherwise, how can you reconcile Scrooge going "back to the Klondike" when Donald is in the navy, Pete and Goofy having sons, or Donald living in a "Duckburg" inhabited by humans? It works both ways; for example, Donald Duck could never appear in an episode of CDRR. Max Goof is possibly the only element from the Disney Afternoon that has carried over somewhat to the comics universe, although not to any great extent, I believe.

Jun 25, 2017 13:08:26 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 25, 2017 11:49:35 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

I think, like the classic cartoons, the Disney Afternoon properties that star characters from the Duck and Mouse universes (DuckTales '87, Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers, Goof Troop and Quack Pack) all have to be considered a separate universe. Otherwise, how can you reconcile Scrooge going "back to the Klondike" when Donald is in the navy, Pete and Goofy having sons, or Donald living in a "Duckburg" inhabited by humans?

I agree with almost everything you said here, however I think there are other things that make Quack Pack non-canon to the comics rather then the presence of humans. After all, you and I both see all of Duckburg inhabitants (including Donald and his relatives) as actually being humans that just happen to be often drawn with animal features as part of a charicature, so I don't think there's anything wrong if the "lens" that gives them their animal features is sometimes turned off, as long as this only happens to the extras and not to Donald or any character with an established design: after all, there are many precedents of humans as extras in both animation and comics taking place in the Duck and Mouse Universe.

That said, I would use dognoses rather than humans if I were an artist of Disney comics.

Jun 25, 2017 11:49:35 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

It works both ways; for example, Donald Duck could never appear in an episode of CDRR. Max Goof is possibly the only element from the Disney Afternoon that has carried over somewhat to the comics universe, although not to any great extent, I believe.

I wouldn't say that Max was carried to the standard Mouse comic universe. He appears in 40 comics (though anothe Inducks page oddly lists only 39 stories), and 37 of them are set in the Goof Troop universe. As for the other 3 stories: the first stars Goofy and is apparently set in the normal universe, and Max' appearance is so odd that Inducks put an exclamation mark after his name in the list of characters, the second is an adaptation of Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas, and the third (in which Max only has a cameo) is set in the Darkwing Duck universe, which is a Disney Afternoon show, not to mention that it is connected to DuckTales rather than to the classic comics.

As far as the standard Mouse universe goes, Goofy has no son (minus the single example that I listed above) and he is definitely a bachelor and not a vidower. Because of that, I find it annoying when someone tries to indicate various female characters from the Mouse comic universe as the possible mother of Max. It's only the animation that (unfortunately) kept Max even after the Goof Troop show and movies ended, though it seems that they removed it from most recent productions, which is a good thing.

Jun 25, 2017 17:09:30 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Jun 25, 2017 13:08:26 GMT drakeborough said:

As far as the standard Mouse universe goes, Goofy has no son (minus the single example that I listed above) and he is definitely a bachelor and not a vidower. Because of that, I find it annoying when someone tries to indicate various female characters from the Mouse comic universe as the possible mother of Max. It's only the animation that (unfortunately) kept Max even after the Goof Troop show and movies ended, though it seems that they removed it from most recent productions, which is a good thing.

You are mistaken on one account, though: Goofy having a son was not made up for Goof Troop. In the 50's and 60's, it was a recurring element of his theatrical cartoons that he was married and had a young son, who was only ever called "Junior" (most people think Max is that 'Junior' all grown up, suggestig Goof Troop takes place a few years after those theatrical cartoons).


On an other note enitrely, in my view of continuity, it's easy to reconcile Max with Goofy's apparent son-lessness: House of Mouse, generally agreed to take place a few years after An Extremely Goofy Movie (the chronologically last work set in the Goof Troop series), shows Max having a job as a doorman. Indeed, from Goof Troop to A Goofy Movie to An Extremely Goofy Movie to House of Mouse, Max is seen steadily aging from a twelve-year-old to an adult, a unique case in Classic Disney paraphernalia, I believe. At any rate, it's easy to assume that Gottfredson stories took place when Goofy was still single, and that recent stories that have him single again take place when Max is already an independant young man.

Jun 25, 2017 20:46:03 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 25, 2017 17:09:30 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

You are mistaken on one account, though: Goofy having a son was not made up for Goof Troop. In the 50's and 60's, it was a recurring element of his theatrical cartoons that he was married and had a young son, who was only ever called "Junior"

Actually, I'd say that a recurring element of Goofy's theatrical cartoons in the 50's and 60's is that... they didn't feature Goofy at all! Disney often regards their characters as actors playing roles (in animation more than in comics), and this idea was heavily used in the Goofy cartoons of the time, in which at first we were introduced to a world in which everyone is a Goofy lookalike (none of which was the "real" one), and then the series focused on one of them, George Geef, who could do things that Goofy cannot.

The fact that George is not Goofy is indicated by many clues: the fact that we were introduced to him through the device of a world populated by Goofy lookalikes, the fact that his appearance was gradually changed until he was noticeably different from Goofy, the fact that he has a different name, the fact that his life and personality were often different from Goofy's, etc. So, if George Geef is not Goofy, then it is true that, prior to Goof Troop, Goofy was always portrayed as being a bachelor who had no children. Because of that, it was annoying to see what was intended to be the real Goofy suddenly being a father of a pre-teen, effectively creating a schism between animation and comics, as the differences here were far bigger than whatever change DuckTales made from the Uncle Scroge comics.

By the way, this is in my opinion the real reason why we often see nephews/nieces in the Duck and Mouse universe rather than sons and daughter. I don't think it's a matter of censorship as many people say, it's just that when you have unpteen stories establishing that a character has no children you can't have a grown child appearing out of nowhere in the character's (unpteen+1)th story as if the child has always been there. Or, you could do it (and, in the case of Goof Troop, they did it), but it would violate everything about the established continuity, possibly disappointing readers/viewers who feel their intelligence has been insulted. That's why giving a character a nephew/niece is often the only way to create stories in which he/she interacts with a kid.

Jun 25, 2017 17:09:30 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

(most people think Max is that 'Junior' all grown up, suggestig Goof Troop takes place a few years after those theatrical cartoons).


On an other note enitrely, in my view of continuity, it's easy to reconcile Max with Goofy's apparent son-lessness: House of Mouse, generally agreed to take place a few years after An Extremely Goofy Movie (the chronologically last work set in the Goof Troop series), shows Max having a job as a doorman. Indeed, from Goof Troop to A Goofy Movie to An Extremely Goofy Movie to House of Mouse, Max is seen steadily aging from a twelve-year-old to an adult, a unique case in Classic Disney paraphernalia, I believe. At any rate, it's easy to assume that Gottfredson stories took place when Goofy was still single, and that recent stories that have him single again take place when Max is already an independant young man.

I really admire, and I am not ironic, the cleverness of your explanations with which you always try to find a way to tie everything (in this case, Max' existence) together in a single continuity: I am really amused by it. I guess you also have an explanation for Pete's wife and children, and for why they live in Spoonerville rather than Mouseton, and I can image what it may be.

That said, I am not really convinced by these arguments: for example, why didn't HDL age between Goofy not being a father yet and Max being almost an adult (I am not sure if working as a doorman necessarily means you are an adult)?

My explanation is simply that Goof Troop is non-canon to the Mouse universe comics, and in my headcanon Max doesn't exist.

Jun 27, 2017 21:50:33 GMT RobbK1 said:

a few cartoon shorts had Goofy having a wife and a son (both of whom were unnamed (I think they used "Mrs. Goofy" once.

Jun 28, 2017 8:58:04 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Jun 27, 2017 21:50:33 GMT RobbK1 said:

A few cartoon shorts had Goofy having a wife and a son (both of whom were unnamed (I think they used "Mrs. Goofy" once).

We discussed those already, and drakeborough's reading is that those definitely fall in the "the characters are playing a role" category, where the Goofy we see is just one Goofy lookalike in a world full of Goofy lookalikes, and not actually the Goofy we're used to seeing. Mind you, I disagree, but the point is, this argument won't convince him.

Jun 28, 2017 10:16:16 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 27, 2017 21:50:33 GMT RobbK1 said:

a few cartoon shorts had Goofy having a wife and a son (both of whom were unnamed (I think they used "Mrs. Goofy" once.

Actually, the wife was known as "Mrs. Geef", since she wasn't really Goofy's wife but rather the wife of a Goofy lookalike named "George Geef". And the son was named "Junior". We already discussed this on this very thread, but the subject was quickly dropped because it was OT; maybe we could open a separate thread about it.

Jun 28, 2017 10:19:27 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Jun 28, 2017 10:16:16 GMT drakeborough said:

Actually, the wife was known as "Mrs. Geef", since she wasn't really Goofy's wife but rather the wife of a Goofy lookalike named "George Geef". And the son was named "Junior". We already discussed this on this very thread, but the subject was quickly dropped because it was OT; maybe we could open a separate thread about it. 

Yeah, maybe we should do another thread. To be honest, after seeing the cartoons, I simply thought of George Geef as the "real name" of Goofy. After all, "Goofy" is probably just a nickname…

Jun 28, 2017 10:45:22 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 28, 2017 8:58:04 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

We discussed those already, and drakeborough's reading is that those definitely fall in the "the characters are playing a role" category, where the Goofy we see is just one Goofy lookalike in a world full of Goofy lookalikes, and not actually the Goofy we're used to seeing. Mind you, I disagree, but the point is, this argument won't convince him.

I am curious about something: I can understand why you would accept Goof Troop and derivates, and Max' character in general, as being part of your headcanon. But what is your objection to the idea of George Geef not being the real Goofy? I think the producers of these shorts made the idea clear in many ways, including giving him a different name.

Jun 28, 2017 11:01:29 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 28, 2017 10:19:27 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Yeah, maybe we should do another thread. To be honest, after seeing the cartoons, I simply thought of George Geef as the "real name" of Goofy. After all, "Goofy" is probably just a nickname…

It seems that our messages are overlapping, as by the time I finish writing a message with a question you have already published a message that coincidentally contains the answer. Good to see that the you liked the idea of opening another thread.

As for Goofy's name: "Goofy" started as a nickname of "Dippy Dawg", so if the producers of Goofy cartoons of the 50's and 60's wanted a full name they could have used that. No, I think "George Geef" wasn't meant to be Goofy real name but just one of the many clues to the audience that we weren't supposed to think of him as the real Goofy but rather as just a Goofy lookalike. I guess that finding an interview to the producers, or reviews from animation historians, would help clarify the issue.

Jun 28, 2017 12:11:44 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Jun 27, 2017 21:50:33 GMT RobbK1 said:

a few cartoon shorts had Goofy having a wife and a son (both of whom were unnamed (I think they used "Mrs. Goofy" once.

Donald had a son too, in one 1959 cartoon, "How to Have an Accident at Work". You could argue he's playing an actor here, and Daisy and one of the nephews are playing his wife and son, respectively, but it's not clear what the producers really intended, since he's called "Mr. Duck".

Perhaps we can move some of these messages to a thread about the portrayal of Duck and Mouse characters in the cartoons?

[Orora]

So... according to your headcanons...

Is Junior from the George Geef cartoons the same character as Max?

Is Mrs Geef human or a very humanized dognose? Is Mrs Geef Glory-Bee?

I like to think so.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 28, 2017 13:54:22 GMT Orora said:

So... according to your headcanons...

Is Junior from the George Geef cartoons the same character as Max?

Is Mrs Geef human or a very humanized dognose? Is Mrs Geef Glory-Bee?

I like to think so.

In my headcanon, George Geef is Goofy (possibly with the name 'Geef' to be replaced by 'Goof', which is often suggested as Goofy's family name), and Junior and Max are indeed one and the same.  (Indeed, the folks on the Disney Wiki think so as well). On the other hand, I reject Mrs Goof being Glory-Bee, as it would make no sense in my view of chronology since the comic showing Goofy and Glory's "first meeting" was written after cartoons in which Goofy was already married. On the other hand, the at-the-moment-unreachable website Disney's HooZoo suggested identifying the wife with "Penny", a dognose girl who was shown as a childhood sweetheart of Goofy's in a series of children's book.

[drakeborough]

Jun 28, 2017 12:11:44 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Jun 27, 2017 21:50:33 GMT RobbK1 said:

a few cartoon shorts had Goofy having a wife and a son (both of whom were unnamed (I think they used "Mrs. Goofy" once.

Donald had a son too, in one 1959 cartoon, "How to Have an Accident at Work". You could argue he's playing an actor here, and Daisy and one of the nephews are playing his wife and son, respectively, but it's not clear what the producers really intended, since he's called "Mr. Duck".

Despite the "Mr. Duck", I think it's obvious that in this short the characters are actors playing a role, with Daisy portraying Donald's wife and one of his nephews playing their son: there are plenty of shorts which clarify that, even in animation, Donald is not married and has no kids. I guess that giving him another surname would have avoided a possible confusion, but at least they didn't call him "Donald Duck".

The situation is similar to the short "Donald's Diary" (1954), in which Huey, Dewey and Louie play the role of "Daisy"'s three brothers. Of course, recognizing a costumed story is harder in animation than in comics, since animation often keeps the characters' names, while comics tend to change them (but in both cases there are exceptions).

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 28, 2017 14:50:23 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 28, 2017 12:11:44 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Donald had a son too, in one 1959 cartoon, "How to Have an Accident at Work". You could argue he's playing an actor here, and Daisy and one of the nephews are playing his wife and son, respectively, but it's not clear what the producers really intended, since he's called "Mr. Duck".

Despite the "Mr. Duck", I think it's obvious that in this short the characters are actors playing a role, with Daisy portraying Donald's wife and one of his nephews playing their son: there are plenty of shorts which clarify that, even in animation, Donald is not married and has no kids. I guess that giving him another surname would have avoided a possible confusion, but at least they didn't call him "Donald Duck".

The situation is similar to the short "Donald's Diary" (1954), in which Huey, Dewey and Louie play the role of "Daisy"'s three brothers. Of course, recognizing a costumed story is harder in animation than in comics, since animation often keeps the characters' names, while comics tend to change them (but in both cases there are exceptions).

Donald's Diary is a borderline case, though, because This is your life, Donald Duck (the special, not the comic), though taking into account the "Donald as actor" theory, shows that particular story to be real. Incidentally, Gilles Maurice thinks so as well, including the three HDL-like brothers in his Duck Family Tree. 

Also, on the subject of Donald's son in How to Have an Accident at Work… I'm all for ignoring that info and going along with you, but he was reused in Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse of all things for their "Donald's 80th Birthday" episode, in an oddly animal-like design (which, incidentally, would be worthy of discussion on the 'What's an animal and what's a person' thread):



In case you're wondering, the character is called Donald Junior in the episode and he's explicitly mentioned to be Donald's son. Which is just weird, because he never appeared again since and it's also clear that Donald and Daisy aren't married in this series' canon… but Mickey and Co. don't seem surprised by Junior's existence. What the WAK.

[drakeborough]

Jun 28, 2017 13:54:22 GMT Orora said:

So... according to your headcanons...

Is Junior from the George Geef cartoons the same character as Max?

Is Mrs Geef human or a very humanized dognose? Is Mrs Geef Glory-Bee?

I like to think so.

I think that the George Geef persona was meant to be a separate character from Goofy, a simple lookalike, or an alter ego if you wish.

Goof Troop is simply one big mistake, since they clearly presented it as a show about the real Goofy, and yet they threw away everything we know about the Mouse continuity for no reason, including giving him a son. The real Goofy is a bachelor, and never had a son in either the comics or the cartoons (George Geef doesn't count because he was just a Goofy lookalike).

The comic wisely never picked up the character of Max and continued to follow the traditional continuity in which Goofy has no son; the animation unfortunately kept Max in some later products unrelated to Goof Troop, but it seems that they have removed him from more recent productions, which is a good thing. As far as I am concerned, the whole Goof Troop franchise and Max himself are non-canon, and the question about who is the mother of Max is meaningless. And even if the question had any sense, the answer wouldn't definitely be a character from the comics.

Jun 28, 2017 14:19:13 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

In my headcanon, George Geef is Goofy (possibly with the name 'Geef' to be replaced by 'Goof', which is often suggested as Goofy's family name), and Junior and Max are indeed one and the same.

I think the idea of "Goof" as Goofy's surname originated with Goof Troop. Also, how do you explain the fact that in your headcanon Goofy's son has two different names and even looks so much different in his appearances?

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 28, 2017 15:38:03 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 28, 2017 13:54:22 GMT Orora said:

So... according to your headcanons...

Is Junior from the George Geef cartoons the same character as Max?

Is Mrs Geef human or a very humanized dognose? Is Mrs Geef Glory-Bee?

I like to think so.

I think that the George Geef persona was meant to be a separate character from Goofy, a simple lookalike, or an alter ego if you wish.

Goof Troop is simply one big mistake, since they clearly presented it as a show about the real Goofy, and yet they threw away everything we know about the Mouse continuity for no reason, including giving him a son. The real Goofy is a bachelor, and never had a son in either the comics or the cartoons (George Geef doesn't count because he was just a Goofy lookalike).

The comic wisely never picked up the character of Max and continued to follow the traditional continuity in which Goofy has no son; the animation unfortunately kept Max in some later products unrelated to Goof Troop, but it seems that they have removed him from more recent productions, which is a good thing. As far as I am concerned, the whole Goof Troop franchise and Max himself are non-canon, and the question about who is the mother of Max is meaningless. And even if the question had any sense, the answer wouldn't definitely be a character from the comics.

Jun 28, 2017 14:19:13 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

In my headcanon, George Geef is Goofy (possibly with the name 'Geef' to be replaced by 'Goof', which is often suggested as Goofy's family name), and Junior and Max are indeed one and the same.

I think the idea of "Goof" as Goofy's surname originated with Goof Troop. Also, how do you explain the fact that in your headcanon Goofy's son has two different names and even looks so much different in his appearances?

"If the question had any sense" is putting a bit oddly. Even if you disregard its canonical ties to either the classic cartoons or the comics, Goof Troop can work as a self-contained franchise set in its own unvierse, and, inside this continuity, the quesiton of who the mysterious Mrs Goof might have been is a valid question.

On the difference in appearance… I just thought of it as a design change, except one that didn't carry over to the comics. "George Geef" is no more different from standard Goofy than standard Goofy was from "Dippy Dawg", and grew especially similar to the old Goofy in his last cartoons. 

As for the "two different names", do you mean Dippy Dawg Versus George Geef, or Goof Vs Geef? In the former case, I see 'Dippy Dawg' as simply another (vaguely insulting) nickname he had, like Goofy. I don't think about it much, as the oldest cartoons and strips, while theoretically canon in my headcanon, don't matter much to me. In the latter case, it's similar to your "screening out" the times Donald calls himself a duck rather than a man. I mentally hear Goof when they say Geef. I have a secondary idea where it's gag that Goofy can't spell his own last name consistently, and this resulted in him being known as "Geef" for a while, but it's just a pet theory.

[drakeborough]

Jun 28, 2017 15:13:10 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Donald's Diary is a borderline case, though, because This is your life, Donald Duck (the special, not the comic), though taking into account the "Donald as actor" theory, shows that particular story to be real. Incidentally, Gilles Maurice thinks so as well, including the three HDL-like brothers in his Duck Family Tree.

Well, every time there is a frame story that ties together some old cartoons the frame has to present the stories as real (even when they aren't) or the frame itself would be pointless. By the way, it's really strange how the producers of This is your life, Donald Duck picked this particular short to illustrate the character of Daisy and her relationship with Donald.

Jun 28, 2017 15:13:10 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Also, on the subject of Donald's son in How to Have an Accident at Work… I'm all for ignoring that info and going along with you, but he was reused in Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse of all things for their "Donald's 80th Birthday" episode, in an oddly animal-like design (which, incidentally, would be worthy of discussion on the 'What's an animal and what's a person' thread):



In case you're wondering, the character is called Donald Junior in the episode and he's explicitly mentioned to be Donald's son. Which is just weird, because he never appeared again since and it's also clear that Donald and Daisy aren't married in this series' canon… but Mickey and Co. don't seem surprised by Junior's existence. What the WAK.

WHAAAT?!?! A Donald Junior that comes out of nowhere and is introduced as Donald's son even though eight decades of cartoons and comics have established that Donald has no son, just for the sake of a throwaway episode? For me, he is definitely non-canon as well, and hopefully will be quickly forgotten by everyone if he hasn't already.

I don't think he was inspired by How to Have an Accident at Work, since he looks like a miniature Donald (minus the body) rather than one of Donald's nephews.

His non-anthropomorphic body design reminds me of a Guido Martina story in which the parents of Donald's alter ego are real ducks, which is really creepy.

[Scroogerello]

Jun 28, 2017 15:38:03 GMT drakeborough said:

Goof Troop is simply one big mistake, since they clearly presented it as a show about the real Goofy, and yet they threw away everything we know about the Mouse continuity for no reason, including giving him a son. The real Goofy is a bachelor, and never had a son in either the comics or the cartoons .

He did actually, in at least two comics that I know of (one classic comic, and a more recent example in an installment of "A Goofy Look At...", based on the classic "How to..." Goofy cartoons)

coa.inducks.org/character.php?c1=date&c=Goofy%20Junior&view=4
coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=H+23013&search=%20%20Max

Also, the 1957 "Disneyland" episode "The Adventure Story", shows the "regular" Goofy with the son from the George Geef cartoons.

[Scroogerello]

"How to Have an Accident at Work" and "Donald's Diary" are just examples of how, in the Donald Duck cartoon shorts, the continuity was still malleable, and the characters were timeless; they could be aged up or down depending on what fit the episode (there was even a short where the nephews were already old enough to drive a car!). I actually liked that sort of floating continuity. Anyway, the whole business with the characters in the short being "actors" was clearly not the intention of the shorts. Also, the child in the cartoon is Donald's son, not one of the nephews. He was presumably voiced by Kevin Corcoran, who also voiced Goofy jr. in some of the classic Goofy cartoons, whereas the nephews were voiced by Clarence Nash in all of their appearances in the classic shorts.

BTW, Donald Jr. from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is not actually DD's son.

[Baar Baar Jinx]

In my headcanon, the animated works (be they classic shorts, Disney Afternoon shows, the awful-looking new Mickey Mouse cartoons, or even the upcoming DuckTales '17 series) are alternate universe to the comic Duck and Mouse universes. There is absolutely no way to reconcile the two. Just as we have a clearly delineated Comics-Donald and Cartoon-Donald, we have comic and cartoon versions of all of them.  So Comics-Goofy is a never-married bachelor, and Cartoon-Goofy has had one or possibly two different families, sometimes goes by the name Geef, sometimes has ears and sometimes doesn't, etc.  Cartoon versions of these characters are generally not beholden to continuity the way the comics versions are, and I'm fine with that. It's hard enough to incorporate all the different continuities within the comics; to attempt to add the animated features into the mix is impractical.

(BTW, Donald saying, "Aw phooey on all that unnecessary equipment" in "How to Have an Accident at Work" is hilarious somehow.)

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 28, 2017 15:59:51 GMT Scroogerello said:

Jun 28, 2017 15:38:03 GMT drakeborough said:

Goof Troop is simply one big mistake, since they clearly presented it as a show about the real Goofy, and yet they threw away everything we know about the Mouse continuity for no reason, including giving him a son. The real Goofy is a bachelor, and never had a son in either the comics or the cartoons .

He did actually, in at least two comics that I know of (one classic comic, and a more recent example in an installment of "A Goofy Look At...", based on the classic "How to..." Goofy cartoons)

coa.inducks.org/character.php?c1=date&c=Goofy%20Junior&view=4
coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=H+23013&search=%20%20Max

Also, the 1957 "Disneyland" episode "The Adventure Story", shows the "regular" Goofy with the son from the George Geef cartoons.

This. 

[The KKM]

Yeah, as Scroogerello mentions, Donald Jr. from Clubhouse is never outright established as his son. Donald just pops up with a duckling, Goofy proposes naming him Donald Jr. since they look alike, and the closest we get to there being an outright relation is Donald saying Donald Jr. will grow up to be just like him.

Of course, how much attention we should be paying to a kindergartener show in the first place is debatable.

[drakeborough]

Jun 28, 2017 15:55:04 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

"If the question had any sense" is putting a bit oddly. Even if you disregard its canonical ties to either the classic cartoons or the comics, Goof Troop can work as a self-contained franchise set in its own unvierse, and, inside this continuity, the quesiton of who the mysterious Mrs Goof might have been is a valid question.

Well, in that case I'll reword it to say that the question makes sense if we regard the Goof Troop franchise as a separate continuity. However, that would imply that characters from the comics are ruled out as the possible mothers of Max, which means that any debate about her loses most of its candidates.

Jun 28, 2017 15:55:04 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

On the difference in appearance… I just thought of it as a design change, except one that didn't carry over to the comics. "George Geef" is no more different from standard Goofy than standard Goofy was from "Dippy Dawg", and grew especially similar to the old Goofy in his last cartoons. 

As for the "two different names", do you mean Dippy Dawg Versus George Geef, or Goof Vs Geef? In the former case, I see 'Dippy Dawg' as simply another (vaguely insulting) nickname he had, like Goofy. I don't think about it much, as the oldest cartoons and strips, while theoretically canon in my headcanon, don't matter much to me. In the latter case, it's similar to your "screening out" the times Donald calls himself a duck rather than a man. I mentally hear Goof when they say Geef. I have a secondary idea where it's gag that Goofy can't spell his own last name consistently, and this resulted in him being known as "Geef" for a while, but it's just a pet theory.

For the "two different names", I was actually referring to Junior and Max, who you see as being the same characters despite the different names and different designs.

Jun 28, 2017 15:59:51 GMT Scroogerello said:

Jun 28, 2017 15:38:03 GMT drakeborough said:

Goof Troop is simply one big mistake, since they clearly presented it as a show about the real Goofy, and yet they threw away everything we know about the Mouse continuity for no reason, including giving him a son. The real Goofy is a bachelor, and never had a son in either the comics or the cartoons .

He did actually, in at least two comics that I know of (one classic comic, and a more recent example in an installment of "A Goofy Look At...", based on the classic "How to..." Goofy cartoons)

coa.inducks.org/character.php?c1=date&c=Goofy%20Junior&view=4
coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=H+23013&search=%20%20Max

What I meant is that Goofy doesn't have a son in the comics, except the ones that I mentioned in a previous post (which I have copied at the start of this thread):

I wouldn't say that Max was carried to the standard Mouse comic universe. He appears in 40 comics (though anothe Inducks page oddly lists only 39 stories), and 37 of them are set in the Goof Troop universe. As for the other 3 stories: the first stars Goofy and is apparently set in the normal universe, and Max' appearance is so odd that Inducks put an exclamation mark after his name in the list of characters, the second is an adaptation of Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas, and the third (in which Max only has a cameo) is set in the Darkwing Duck universe, which is a Disney Afternoon show, not to mention that it is connected to DuckTales rather than to the classic comics.

One of the stories I mentioned in the paragraph above (the one with the exclamation mark in its Inducks page) is the one in your second link, which I just noticed was recently published in the USA in an IDW issue of Mickey Mouse.

I didn't now about the story in your first link, which is a 1957 comic by Lockman/Strobl featuring "Goofy Junior". How weird: Gilbert had been created only three years before, and yet they introduced character who looks like Gilbert (since they both are a miniature version of Goofy) but presented him as Goofy's son for no apparent reason, despite the fact that no son of Goofy showed up in another W-coded story before or after that. What was Lockman's goal? I could understand if he tried to mimick the George Geef cartoons while imagining that George is actually Goofy, but why does Goofy Junior looks nothing like Junior from the animation? Well, maybe Lockman wanted him to look like Junior but Strobl wasn't familiar with the character. Anyway, I see that in this page he is wrongly indexed as Gilbert.

Jun 28, 2017 15:59:51 GMT Scroogerello said:

Also, the 1957 "Disneyland" episode "The Adventure Story", shows the "regular" Goofy with the son from the George Geef cartoons.

This doesn't suprise me since, as I said, whenever they show the regular characters in frame stories they also describe the charaters from the showcased cartoons as actually being the same regular characters even when they are not. In fact, a more straightforward example would be a VHS in which Goofy and Max are watching some cartoons of George Geef and Junior, with Max commenting that the kid is him when he was younger (I guess Scrooge MacDuck would enjoy those scenes).

Jun 28, 2017 16:14:56 GMT Scroogerello said:

"How to Have an Accident at Work" and "Donald's Diary" are just examples of how, in the Donald Duck cartoon shorts, the continuity was still malleable, and the characters were timeless; they could be aged up or down depending on what fit the episode (there was even a short where the nephews were already old enough to drive a car!). I actually liked that sort of floating continuity. Anyway, the whole business with the characters in the short being "actors" was clearly not the intention of the shorts. Also, the child in the cartoon is Donald's son, not one of the nephews. He was presumably voiced by Kevin Corcoran, who also voiced Goofy jr. in some of the classic Goofy cartoons, whereas the nephews were voiced by Clarence Nash in all of their appearances in the classic shorts.

Which is the short in which the nephews drive a car?

Anyway, although I don't like the concept of characters as actors, it's a matter of fact that Disney used this concept since its early days, at first with press statements, and then also with info in the short themselves (like Donald saying he is an actor in the 1942 short The New Spirit).

The concept of "playing a role" also exists in the comics, in which the characters sometimes are in a complete different location and time, but still look and behave like the standard characters. This may happen in parody stories, but also in normal stories (usually known as costumed stories). The difference is that animation usually keeps their names (with a few exceptions) while comics usually change them (with a few exceptions), so it's easier to recognize a costumed stories in comics than in animation, which may be hard when the setting is virtually the same.

Plus, there is at least one example of the nephews not being voiced by Clarence Nash in the classic shorts: Donald's Fire Survival Plan (1965), in which they have normal voices. And even if the son is not an existing character (like Junior, who was a new character), the one playing Donald's wife is definitely Daisy.

Jun 28, 2017 16:28:23 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

In my headcanon, the animated works (be they classic shorts, Disney Afternoon shows, the awful-looking new Mickey Mouse cartoons, or even the upcoming DuckTales '17 series) are alternate universe to the comic Duck and Mouse universes. There is absolutely no way to reconcile the two.

I agree with this.

Jun 28, 2017 17:35:35 GMT The KKM said:

Yeah, as Scroogerello mentions, Donald Jr. from Clubhouse is never outright established as his son. Donald just pops up with a duckling, Goofy proposes naming him Donald Jr. since they look alike, and the closest we get to there being an outright relation is Donald saying Donald Jr. will grow up to be just like him.

So, he is not really Donald's son? That's a good thing.

Jun 28, 2017 17:35:35 GMT The KKM said:

Of course, how much attention we should be paying to a kindergartener show in the first place is debatable.

The sad thing is that a kindergartener show can sabotage comics with the same characters, despite the fact that said comics that are much more mature than the show.

Since we all said our opinions on the matter, I guess a good idea would be bringing some external opinions, like reviews of the shorts in either books of websites. I have seen an Italian website which offers some food for thought, but I will not have time to translate these texts until tomorrow. For the time being, I'll post here a text David Gerstein wrote in a 1993 DCML message, apparently supporting the idea that George Geef was Goofy playing a role:

I know full well about "Bellhop Donald" and the Goofy sit-com shorts of the 1950s-60s. Pete's "son" in "Canvas Back Duck" (1954) was in fact his boxing trainer, wearing a little kid _mask_; underneath, he was a cigar-chewing dog who only ACTED like a little prig to lure Donald into the ring with his 'uncle'. (Uncle, not father; but in reality, neither...!) However, Pete's son did appear in "Bellhop Donald," you're right. However, he seems no relation to PJ as he's an obnoxious little devil who you'd love to see spanked (and who gets that done, by Donald, at the short's conclusion!). As for the Goofy sit-com cartoons, Goofy played a 'role' in them: Mr. George G. Geef, as was indicated many times. By that time, most of Goofy's cartoons were situations in which he played roles and acted only marginally like himself (the most obvious example of the latter being 1950's "Motor Mania," in which neither aspect of his split personality (Mr. Walker/Mr. Wheeler) talked or acted like the real Goof).

Also, in 2003 a DCML user wrote this:

If you look at some of the Goofy cartoons where he's in a domestic situation or where he has an office job, you'll find he's referred to as George Geef. I like to think of this as Goofy's real name with "Goofy" being his stage name.

The above text was commented by Don Rosa:

That's the opposite of Disney's position. Disney thinks it's cute to pretend like their classic characters are actors who are playing roles in the animated cartoons they appear in, and that would seem evident since they are almost always (slightly or drastically) different characters in the old films, and clearly actors-in-roles in recent features like "Mickey's Christmas Carol" and "The Prince and the Pauper". And this is another reason why the comic book versions (the non-Disney versions) of these characters, where they are *true* characters in their own rights, are much more appealing and interesting to me.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 28, 2017 20:10:49 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 28, 2017 15:55:04 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

"If the question had any sense" is putting a bit oddly. Even if you disregard its canonical ties to either the classic cartoons or the comics, Goof Troop can work as a self-contained franchise set in its own unvierse, and, inside this continuity, the quesiton of who the mysterious Mrs Goof might have been is a valid question.

Well, in that case I'll reword it to say that the question makes sense if we regard the Goof Troop franchise as a separate continuity. However, that would imply that characters from the comics are ruled out as the possible mothers of Max, which means that any debate about her loses most of its candidates.

Jun 28, 2017 15:55:04 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

On the difference in appearance… I just thought of it as a design change, except one that didn't carry over to the comics. "George Geef" is no more different from standard Goofy than standard Goofy was from "Dippy Dawg", and grew especially similar to the old Goofy in his last cartoons. 

As for the "two different names", do you mean Dippy Dawg Versus George Geef, or Goof Vs Geef? In the former case, I see 'Dippy Dawg' as simply another (vaguely insulting) nickname he had, like Goofy. I don't think about it much, as the oldest cartoons and strips, while theoretically canon in my headcanon, don't matter much to me. In the latter case, it's similar to your "screening out" the times Donald calls himself a duck rather than a man. I mentally hear Goof when they say Geef. I have a secondary idea where it's gag that Goofy can't spell his own last name consistently, and this resulted in him being known as "Geef" for a while, but it's just a pet theory.

For the "two different names", I was actually referring to Junior and Max, who you see as being the same characters despite the different names and different designs. (1)

I didn't now about the story in your first link, which is a 1957 comic by Lockman/Strobl featuring "Goofy Junior". How weird: Gilbert had been created only three years before, and yet they introduced character who looks like Gilbert (since they both are a miniature version of Goofy) but presented him as Goofy's son for no apparent reason, despite the fact that no son of Goofy showed up in another W-coded story before or after that. What was Lockman's goal? I could understand if he tried to mimick the George Geef cartoons while imagining that George is actually Goofy, but why does Goofy Junior looks nothing like Junior from the animation? Well, maybe Lockman wanted him to look like Junior but Strobl wasn't familiar with the character. Anyway, I see that in this page he is wrongly indexed as Gilbert.(2)

Jun 28, 2017 15:59:51 GMT Scroogerello said:

Also, the 1957 "Disneyland" episode "The Adventure Story", shows the "regular" Goofy with the son from the George Geef cartoons.

This doesn't suprise me since, as I said, whenever they show the regular characters in frame stories they also describe the charaters from the showcased cartoons as actually being the same regular characters even when they are not. In fact, a more straightforward example would be a VHS in which Goofy and Max are watching some cartoons of George Geef and Junior, with Max commenting that the kid is him when he was younger (I guess Scrooge MacDuck would enjoy those scenes).(3)

Jun 28, 2017 16:14:56 GMT Scroogerello said:

"How to Have an Accident at Work" and "Donald's Diary" are just examples of how, in the Donald Duck cartoon shorts, the continuity was still malleable, and the characters were timeless; they could be aged up or down depending on what fit the episode (there was even a short where the nephews were already old enough to drive a car!). I actually liked that sort of floating continuity. Anyway, the whole business with the characters in the short being "actors" was clearly not the intention of the shorts. Also, the child in the cartoon is Donald's son, not one of the nephews. He was presumably voiced by Kevin Corcoran, who also voiced Goofy jr. in some of the classic Goofy cartoons, whereas the nephews were voiced by Clarence Nash in all of their appearances in the classic shorts.

Which is the short in which the nephews drive a car?

Anyway, although I don't like the concept of characters as actors, it's a matter of fact that Disney used this concept since its early days, at first with press statements, and then also with info in the short themselves (like Donald saying he is an actor in the 1942 short The New Spirit).

The concept of "playing a role" also exists in the comics, in which the characters sometimes are in a complete different location and time, but still look and behave like the standard characters. This may happen in parody stories, but also in normal stories (usually known as costumed stories). The difference is that animation usually keeps their names (with a few exceptions) while comics usually change them (with a few exceptions), so it's easier to recognize a costumed stories in comics than in animation, which may be hard when the setting is virtually the same.

Plus, there is at least one example of the nephews not being voiced by Clarence Nash in the classic shorts: Donald's Fire Survival Plan (1965), in which they have normal voices. And even if the son is not an existing character (like Junior, who was a new character), the one playing Donald's wife is definitely Daisy.

Jun 28, 2017 16:28:23 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

In my headcanon, the animated works (be they classic shorts, Disney Afternoon shows, the awful-looking new Mickey Mouse cartoons, or even the upcoming DuckTales '17 series) are alternate universe to the comic Duck and Mouse universes. There is absolutely no way to reconcile the two.

I agree with this.

Jun 28, 2017 17:35:35 GMT The KKM said:

Yeah, as Scroogerello mentions, Donald Jr. from Clubhouse is never outright established as his son. Donald just pops up with a duckling, Goofy proposes naming him Donald Jr. since they look alike, and the closest we get to there being an outright relation is Donald saying Donald Jr. will grow up to be just like him.

So, he is not really Donald's son? That's a good thing.

Jun 28, 2017 17:35:35 GMT The KKM said:

Of course, how much attention we should be paying to a kindergartener show in the first place is debatable.

The sad thing is that a kindergartener show can sabotage comics with the same characters, despite the fact that said comics that are much more mature than the show.

Since we all said our opinions on the matter, I guess a good idea would be bringing some external opinions, like reviews of the shorts in either books of websites. I have seen an Italian website which offers some food for thought, but I will not have time to translate these texts until tomorrow. For the time being, I'll post here a text David Gerstein wrote in a 1993 DCML message, apparently supporting the idea that George Geef was Goofy playing a role:

I know full well about "Bellhop Donald" and the Goofy sit-com shorts of the 1950s-60s. Pete's "son" in "Canvas Back Duck" (1954) was in fact his boxing trainer, wearing a little kid _mask_; underneath, he was a cigar-chewing dog who only ACTED like a little prig to lure Donald into the ring with his 'uncle'. (Uncle, not father; but in reality, neither...!) However, Pete's son did appear in "Bellhop Donald," you're right. However, he seems no relation to PJ as he's an obnoxious little devil who you'd love to see spanked (and who gets that done, by Donald, at the short's conclusion!). As for the Goofy sit-com cartoons, Goofy played a 'role' in them: Mr. George G. Geef (4), as was indicated many times. By that time, most of Goofy's cartoons were situations in which he played roles and acted only marginally like himself (the most obvious example of the latter being 1950's "Motor Mania," in which neither aspect of his split personality (Mr. Walker/Mr. Wheeler) talked or acted like the real Goof).

Also, in 2003 a DCML user wrote this:

If you look at some of the Goofy cartoons where he's in a domestic situation or where he has an office job, you'll find he's referred to as George Geef. I like to think of this as Goofy's real name with "Goofy" being his stage name.

The above text was commented by Don Rosa:

That's the opposite of Disney's position. Disney thinks it's cute to pretend like their classic characters are actors who are playing roles in the animated cartoons they appear in, and that would seem evident since they are almost always (slightly or drastically) different characters in the old films, and clearly actors-in-roles in recent features like "Mickey's Christmas Carol" and "The Prince and the Pauper". And this is another reason why the comic book versions (the non-Disney versions) of these characters, where they are *true* characters in their own rights, are much more appealing and interesting to me.

(1) Oh! Well, obviously, "Junior" is not a real first name at all — it's a nickname. Goofy could just as well call his son "sonny boy". 

(2) The comic is an adaptation (in the same loose sense as Scrooge McDuck and Money and This is your life, Donald Duck) of the TV special of the same name, and we already established that this special showed Goofy with Junior from the George Geef cartoons, so it's easy to imagine Lockman writing Junior into his script because of that, and a confused Strobl who didn't watch the special assuming a "Goofy Junior" is probably some kind of miniature Goofy like Gilbert.

(3) Indeed I would.

(4) I'd forgotten he had a middle-name beginning with "G", but now that I'm reminded of it, it was once an idea of mine that the G stood for "Goofy", plain and simple. Not sure how I feel about that idea anymore, but there you have it.