I'm fairly positive Silo Center and Mouseville were each used once, the latter in the Phantom Blot story.
Home Town was used more than once. I have to check to remember which stories it appeared in though.
Mouseville was used twice, also in the "Mysterious Dr. X" storyline (see drakeborough's post on this thread from September 23). I think Home Town was only used once, but in any case, it's far too generic to be taken seriously; it's almost as if Gottfredson was trolling us.
Home Town was used both in-story (more than one story if my memory serves) and in a promotional artwork by Gottfredson.
If I had to pick a different official name for Mickey's home town though I'd probably go with "Home Town", which seems to have been the name that was used the most in Gottfredson's stories.
Do you happen to know how many times each name was used in Gottfredson's work? I'd be curious to see both when and how often the various names were used. Then again, maybe we should open another thread for that purpose.
That was something I was planning to ask for a long time. At the moment, in Gottfredson's work I can remember two uses of Silo Center, two uses of Hometown, and two uses of Mouseville.
Silo Center is used in the 1931 story Fireman Mickey, as we can see characters riding the "Silo Center Special" in the strip from 19 November:
The name also appears in the 1955 story Dr. X, in which we can see a newspaper titled "The Mouseville MONITOR" in the strips dated 8 and 9 February:
I don't know much about the Mickey Mouse strips created by people other than Gottfredson, but I saw that in the Sunday page of 12 March 1967, written by Roy Williams and drawn by Manuel Gonzales, the town is called Ourtown. I don't have a high-quality image, but the super-small Inducks scan still allowed me to read the name.
Home Town [...] [is] far too generic to be taken seriously; it's almost as if Gottfredson was trolling us.
I totally agree with this. To quote what David Gerstein wrote on the DCML back in January 1994:
"Originally, Mickey's home town in the Gottfredson strip was seldom identified. Occasionally it was just referred to as "Hometown" or "Homeville," but that always struck me as just being a cop-out. In "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot," the name Mouseville is given, and that seems ideal."
A cop-out indeed, though "Ourtown" from the Williams/Gonzales Sunday page that I mentioned above is much worse. It's no wonder that the French and Italian translations of that page used Mickeyville and Topolinia instead.
By the way, did Gottfredson ever use Homeville in addition to Hometown? The quote above and some other websites claim so, but the only use of Homeville that I can think of is in this Brightman/Taliaferro strip of 3 September 1938. Which is a strange use in itself if it's meant to be the town where Donald lives, since during the Taliaferro run Donald's city was usually identified as Hollywood.
EDIT: I see that there are three American cities/villages/census-designated places which are actually called Hometown:
Home Town was used both in-story (more than one story if my memory serves) and in a promotional artwork by Gottfredson.
Indeed, the name Hometown was used more than once like I showed above, but I am curious about the promotional artwork you mentioned. Do you have a link that shows it?
Last Edit: Oct 3, 2019 14:29:16 GMT by drakeborough
Home Town [...] [is] far too generic to be taken seriously; it's almost as if Gottfredson was trolling us.
I totally agree with this. To quote what David Gerstein wrote on the DCML back in January 1994:
"Originally, Mickey's home town in the Gottfredson strip was seldom identified. Occasionally it was just referred to as "Hometown" or "Homeville," but that always struck me as just being a cop-out. In "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot," the name Mouseville is given, and that seems ideal."
A cop-out indeed, though "Ourtown" from the Williams/Gonzales Sunday page that I mentioned above is much worse. It's no wonder that the French and Italian translations of that page used Mickeyville and Topolinia instead.
By the way, did Gottfredson ever use Homeville in addition to Hometown? The quote above and some other websites claim so, but the only use of Homeville that I can think of is in this Brightman/Taliaferro strip of 3 September 1938. Which is a strange use in itself if it's meant to be the town where Donald lives, since during the Taliaferro run Donald's city was usually identified as Hollywood.
EDIT: I see that there are three American cities/villages/census-designated places which are actually called Hometown:
They are such weird names that I didn't think they could be used in real life.
Thank you for all of this information! It means a lot to me that you took the time to compile all of that information! If we were to see all the sources you mentioned as canonical to one other, it seems that Silo Center is where Clarabelle Cow, Horace Horsecollar, Pop Weezil, and others live, while Hometown is where Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck live. Hometown could be a renamed Silo Center, or it could be a community that borders or is only a short distance from Silo Center. It seems to me that the best hunch is that Mouseville is a renamed Silo Center, though I guess it could theoretically be a different city.
Also, I think the town in the Taliaferro strip you linked is actually named "Hickville", if I'm reading it correctly. It doesn't necessarily has to be Donald's town, either. It's just simply where Donald is heading to in order to get gas.
No matter what I say or do, know that Jesus loves you.
Thank you for all of this information! It means a lot to me that you took the time to compile all of that information!
It was a pleasure. Sooner or later someone had to do it, and since I couldn't find such a list online, I tried doing it myself with all the info I have gathered from various sources. But it's possible my list is incomplete.
I am particularly interested in the Gottfredson promotional art mentioned by Dr Ivo G Bombastus which supposedly mentions Hometown, but also on the various remakes of the original Phantom Blot story. Mouseville does appear in the Wright/Moores version:
However, I don't remember seeing it in the Murry version that I glanced of a few years ago, and it also seems to be absent from the Whitney/Hoover version which is entirely available on Inducks.
Another question would be if anyone has reused the name Silo Center beside Gerstein and Kausler doing it in the Oswald story Just Like Magic:
Also, I think the town in the Taliaferro strip you linked is actually named "Hickville", if I'm reading it correctly. It doesn't necessarily has to be Donald's town, either. It's just simply where Donald is heading to in order to get gas.
Oops... I linked the wrong strip. I guess I can blame Inducks scans for being so painfully small that they are barely readable, though I could have payed a bit more attention. Anyway, here is the HQ version of that 8 March 1938 Brightman/Taliaferro strip:
It says Hickville indeed, and like you said it doesn't necessarily has to be Donald's town. The same thing can be said about Centerville in the 17 March 1939 Karp/Taliaferro strip:
When the strip first appeared, it was titled "There's No Place Like Home", suggesting that Homeville is indeed Donald's town for the purpose of this strip:
Of course, it may be that the title was added by the producers rather than the creators of the strip, in which case it's possible that Homeville is just another town, even though on a meta level it's hard to say why would a creator use such a name unless they want the reader to think that the name refers to Donald's town.
If the name refers to Donald's city, there is of course the question of why it isn't identified as Hollywood as in other strips. Then again, at the moment I can think of only two strips that use the name Hollywood, which I guess it's too little to form a pattern, especially as the second wouldn't occur until 1944.
Thank you once again for all of the useful information, drakeborough ! That Homeville use is very interesting, as it almost certainly does seem to be intended to be where Donald lives. It seems that Donald's been given many homes over the years. There's Duckburg, of course. There's also Duckville, as we've already discussed. Homeville, Hometown, and Hollywood round out our homes for Donald Duck beginning in "Ho". Burbank is hinted to be Donald's place of residence in that nightmare story by Barks, as I believe the story has him, while dreaming, saying that he wants to go back home to Burbank, if I recall correctly. Donald has a trophy declaring him hockey champion of Duck Swamp in the 1939 short, The Hockey Champ. Finally, I think the Donald Duckling series says he was raised by Grandma in Quacktown, though I can't say for sure.
I had actually never noticed that the HDL debut strip had Donald living in Hollywood. Thanks for pointing that out! I know that, in addition to it being used at least twice in strips, Hollywood was also used as Donald's place of residency in The New Spirit (which also states that he is an actor and that he has adopted HDL) and Donald's Penguin. Donald is also seen in Hollywood in The Autograph Hound, though it's unclear if he lives there or is just visiting.
To bring this conversation closer to the original topic of this thread, Mickey, too, is a Hollywood resident based on at least one animated source, Mickey's Kangaroo, which is the animated counterpart to Hoppy the Kangaroo, I believe. He also lives in Hollywood in Mickey's Elephant. Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip shows him traveling from Burbank to Pomona, implying that he is from Burbank, though I don't suppose he has to live there for the short to make sense.
Then of course, there's Toontown, everyone's home according to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Toontown Online.
No matter what I say or do, know that Jesus loves you.
Burbank is hinted to be Donald's place of residence in that nightmare story by Barks, as I believe the story has him, while dreaming, saying that he wants to go back home to Burbank, if I recall correctly.
In "Maharajah Donald" (and possibly some other early Barks stories) Donald actually lives in Burbank, so it wasn't just a nightmare. So perhaps Donald was born and grew up in Quacktown (when Hortense, Matilda, and Quackmore welcome Scrooge back to Duckburg in Chapter XI of Life of Scrooge, they may have been visiting the city), moved to Burbank when he was a young man and just returned from the Navy, adopted HD&L there, and then moved to Duckburg just before meeting Scrooge on Bear Mountain? Quacktown may be a suburb of Duckburg (like New Quackmore seems to be in Legend of the Three Caballeros). Is Grandma's farm said to be in Quacktown in the Donald Duckling series? That would contradict Rosa.
Burbank is hinted to be Donald's place of residence in that nightmare story by Barks, as I believe the story has him, while dreaming, saying that he wants to go back home to Burbank, if I recall correctly.
In "Maharajah Donald" (and possibly some other early Barks stories) Donald actually lives in Burbank, so it wasn't just a nightmare. So perhaps Donald was born and grew up in Quacktown (when Hortense, Matilda, and Quackmore welcome Scrooge back to Duckburg in Chapter XI of Life of Scrooge, they may have been visiting the city), moved to Burbank when he was a young man and just returned from the Navy, adopted HD&L there, and then moved to Duckburg just before meeting Scrooge on Bear Mountain? Quacktown may be a suburb of Duckburg (like New Quackmore seems to be in Legend of the Three Cabarellos). Is Grandma's farm said to be in Quacktown in the Donald Duckling series? That would contradict Rosa.
I like this line of thinking, though I'd prefer for Donald to have served in the United Army Air Forces in order to work with wartime Donald Duck shorts such as Donald Gets Drafted and The Vanishing Private. I'd also like to include Hometown, Hollywood, and maybe even Homeville in my personal headcanon, though I can't give specifics on when exactly Donald would have lived in each place.
No matter what I say or do, know that Jesus loves you.
I like this line of thinking, though I'd prefer for Donald to have served in the United Army Air Forces in order to work with wartime Donald Duck shorts such as Donald Gets Drafted and The Vanishing Private. I'd also like to include Hometown, Hollywood, and maybe even Homeville in my personal headcanon, though I can't give specifics on when exactly Donald would have lived in each place.
Well, Burbank and Hollywood are fairly close to one another, so Donald may have moved from one home to another over a few years while living in the area (although he must have lived in Hollywood first since that's where Della sent HD&L; Donald and the boys later lived together in Burbank). Eureka, California (i.e., Duckburg, Calisota) is pretty far away from Burbank, so I'm not sure why Donald would move there before he met Scrooge in 1947 (in my headcanon, Hortense had just died, which prompted Scrooge to reach out to her surviving family that Christmas). Hortense, Donald and HD&L must have all been living in Burbank when Hortense died.
As for Donald and the Navy, we had a whole discussion on that on another thread without a clear resolution; Donald has some kind of a relationship with the sea, but it's never been made explicit anywhere except DuckTales '87 (whose timeline of course cannot mesh with the comic-verse).
In "Maharajah Donald" (and possibly some other early Barks stories) Donald actually lives in Burbank, so it wasn't just a nightmare. So perhaps Donald was born and grew up in Quacktown (when Hortense, Matilda, and Quackmore welcome Scrooge back to Duckburg in Chapter XI of Life of Scrooge, they may have been visiting the city), moved to Burbank when he was a young man and just returned from the Navy, adopted HD&L there, and then moved to Duckburg just before meeting Scrooge on Bear Mountain? Quacktown may be a suburb of Duckburg (like New Quackmore seems to be in Legend of the Three Cabarellos). Is Grandma's farm said to be in Quacktown in the Donald Duckling series? That would contradict Rosa.
I like this line of thinking, though I'd prefer for Donald to have served in the United Army Air Forces in order to work with wartime Donald Duck shorts such as Donald Gets Drafted and The Vanishing Private. I'd also like to include Hometown, Hollywood, and maybe even Homeville in my personal headcanon, though I can't give specifics on when exactly Donald would have lived in each place.
He presumably lived in Hollywood durign the time when he worked as an actor for Walt Disney Productions in comedy shorts, as per the comic version of This Is Your Life, Donald Duck. I think possibly the best way to handle Hometown/Homeville is that Silo Center temporarily renamed itself that before it turned into Mouseton for good.
I think the Donald Duckling series says he was raised by Grandma in Quacktown, though I can't say for sure.
Quack Town, spelled as two separate words, is the name of the town in which Grandma's farm is located according to Italian stories. I believe that the name was first used in an early Donald Duckling story in the late 1990s, possibly the first one which was not a 1-pager, though it has since been used also in stories taking place in the present. Even before the Donald Duckling series started, though, Italian stories were already placing Grandma's farm outside of Duckburg.
I had actually never noticed that the HDL debut strip had Donald living in Hollywood. Thanks for pointing that out! I know that, in addition to it being used at least twice in strips, Hollywood was also used as Donald's place of residency in The New Spirit (which also states that he is an actor and that he has adopted HDL) and Donald's Penguin. Donald is also seen in Hollywood in The Autograph Hound, though it's unclear if he lives there or is just visiting.
Hollywood is also Donald's place of residency in the 1938 short Donald's Nephews:
The 1941 biographical book "The Life of Donald Duck" supposedly mentions Hollywood in the narration. At the very least, it mentions it when it shows an edited version of the letter above:
Also, the 1966 French book "Donald cherche fortune", which is the translation of a book from another country which I don't know, has another version of the postcard, still mentioning Hollywood:
Once again, I can't say if the name is also used in the rest of the book.
To bring this conversation closer to the original topic of this thread, Mickey, too, is a Hollywood resident based on at least one animated source, Mickey's Kangaroo, which is the animated counterpart to Hoppy the Kangaroo, I believe. He also lives in Hollywood in Mickey's Elephant. Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip shows him traveling from Burbank to Pomona, implying that he is from Burbank, though I don't suppose he has to live there for the short to make sense.
Early Disney press releases and magazines also placed Mickey in Hollywood, despite the fact that back then he was still shown in a rural place that didn't resemble Hollywood at all. I don't know if they said that about Donald as well.
Then of course, there's Toontown, everyone's home according to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Toontown Online.
Disney really tried to spam Toontown everywhere back then. I seem to recall that at one point they changed Duckburg into Toontown in Florida's "Walt Disney World Resort", even changing the sign of Cornelius Coot's statue so that he was referred to as the founder of Mickey's Toontown Fair. Plus, Disney asked for Mickey's city to be called Toontown rather than Mouseton in comics, but fortunatly it didn't happen.
I have also heard that Toontown is mentioned in the House of Mouse's episode "Clarabelle's Big Secret", in which Clarabelle says she's "tattling the tales of Toontown!", while she is later called "Toontown's biggest blabbermouth". I haven't verified this yet, though.
An alternate name for the city of both Donald and Mickey, and possibly other characters from other Disney universes, is Disneyville, which is about as lame as Hometown and Ourtown. The name appears in some old books, like the 1939 storybook "School Days in Disneyville", 1949's "Mystery in Disneyville", 1954's coloring book "Disneyville", a French book titled "Le Theatre de Disneyville" of which I don't know the year, and other books which I haven't researched yet. Some sources have 1939 as the year of "Mystery in Disneyville" rather than 1949, and I don't know which one is right. Of course, it's possible that more than one book has the same title, or that the book was reprinted with an updated date.
Some pictures:
I haven't checked it, but I have heard that the British Eega Beeva & Mickey Mouse comic The Reluctant Pirate, drawn/painted by Ronald Neilson and serialised between 30 August 1952 and 28 February 1953, mentions Disneyville as Mickey's city. If true, I wonder if it's the only British story to do that or if there are other examples.
Also, issue 146 of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories (November 1952), the same one in which Barks' Omelet 10-pager first appeared, has a two-page text story which mentions Disneyville as Mickey's city:
The name "Big Pete" is interesting in its own right, just like Captain O'Hara in the next page.
Disneyville has a modern mention in the 2000 videogame "Mickey Saves the Day 3D Adventure", and a map of it includes various characters's houses, based on the recent tv shows.
I wonder if there is any truth in what the letter writer from Mickey Mouse #235 wrote, when he said that Disneyville is the real-life former name of Disneyland:
Burbank is hinted to be Donald's place of residence in that nightmare story by Barks, as I believe the story has him, while dreaming, saying that he wants to go back home to Burbank, if I recall correctly.
In "Maharajah Donald" (and possibly some other early Barks stories) Donald actually lives in Burbank, so it wasn't just a nightmare.
There is also a third Barks story in which Donald lives in Burbank: "Lost in the Andes!"
I'd prefer for Donald to have served in the United Army Air Forces in order to work with wartime Donald Duck shorts such as Donald Gets Drafted and The Vanishing Private. I'd also like to include Hometown, Hollywood, and maybe even Homeville in my personal headcanon, though I can't give specifics on when exactly Donald would have lived in each place.
In my headcanon, Donald was never an actor. Also, I'm with Rosa in ignoring these early alternate names for Donald's city as simply being early installment weirdness. I like to think that he has always lived in Duckburg.
Last Edit: Oct 6, 2019 17:45:19 GMT by drakeborough
Early Disney press releases and magazines also placed Mickey in Hollywood, despite the fact that back then he was still shown in a rural place that didn't resemble Hollywood at all. I don't know if they said that about Donald as well.
I would assume this was part and parcel of the fascinating but quickly-dropped idea of Walt's that Mickey Mouse was the animated equivalent of W.C. Fields or Laurel & Hardy — Mickey was an "actor" who played variations of a single screen persona in various shorts, but with none of the shorts depicting the 'real' life of Mickey, even if the features of his screen persona are broadly assumed to be shared by the "real" Mickey. There were two layers of fictionality at play; when press releases had Walt pretend to talk about Mickey as an acquaintance of his, the Mickey he's talking about isn't a Mickey who lived through Steamboat Willie, but rather a Mickey who starred in it.
Is Grandma's farm said to be in Quacktown in the Donald Duckling series? That would contradict Rosa.
Would it? How?
If that's what you're referring to, yes, in The Invader of Fort Duckburg Grandma's farm is shown to be very near Killmotor Hill, but obviously this simply cannot be the same farm seen in present-day stories. The obvious assumption is at some point beween 1902 and the present day, she sold the farm near Killmotor and moved to another one of the farms of which, as the heir of Cornelius Coot, she is the owner. That second farm being in Quack Town/Quacktown. (As for the why of Grandma moving between 1902 and the 1920's, Duckburg's development into a bustling metropolis centered around McDuck operations (and thus, presumably, the Money Bin) would have ended up stranding her farm in the middle of the city centre, hardly an enviable position.)
Is there an instance of Rosa talking about the present-day farm as being in Duckburg that I'm forgetting? Even if there is, your own suggestion that Quacktown is a neighborhood of Duckburg rather than an independent city (at least in the present day; perhaps it wasn't always so) would take care of that neatly.
I like this line of thinking, though I'd prefer for Donald to have served in the United Army Air Forces in order to work with wartime Donald Duck shorts such as Donald Gets Drafted and The Vanishing Private. I'd also like to include Hometown, Hollywood, and maybe even Homeville in my personal headcanon, though I can't give specifics on when exactly Donald would have lived in each place.
He presumably lived in Hollywood durign the time when he worked as an actor for Walt Disney Productions in comedy shorts, as per the comic version of This Is Your Life, Donald Duck. I think possibly the best way to handle Hometown/Homeville is that Silo Center temporarily renamed itself that before it turned into Mouseton for good.
I wouldn't be surprised if it has happened before, but a city changing its name from Silo Center to Hometown to Homeville to Mouseville to Mouseton within such a short period of time seems a little bit hard to believe. I'd rather see them all as neighboring towns. Some of them may not even been actual towns, just communities or neighborhoods.
I had actually never noticed that the HDL debut strip had Donald living in Hollywood. Thanks for pointing that out! I know that, in addition to it being used at least twice in strips, Hollywood was also used as Donald's place of residency in The New Spirit (which also states that he is an actor and that he has adopted HDL) and Donald's Penguin. Donald is also seen in Hollywood in The Autograph Hound, though it's unclear if he lives there or is just visiting.
Hollywood is also Donald's place of residency in the 1938 short Donald's Nephews:
The 1941 biographical book "The Life of Donald Duck" supposedly mentions Hollywood in the narration. At the very least, it mentions it when it shows an edited version of the letter above:
Also, the 1966 French book "Donald cherche fortune", which is the translation of a book from another country which I don't know, has another version of the postcard, still mentioning Hollywood:
Once again, I can't say if the name is also used in the rest of the book.
Then of course, there's Toontown, everyone's home according to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Toontown Online.
Disney really tried to spam Toontown everywhere back then. I seem to recall that at one point they changed Duckburg into Toontown in Florida's "Walt Disney World Resort", even changing the sign of Cornelius Coot's statue so that he was referred to as the founder of Mickey's Toontown Fair. Plus, Disney asked for Mickey's city to be called Toontown rather than Mouseton in comics, but fortunatly it didn't happen.
I have also heard that Toontown is mentioned in the House of Mouse's episode "Clarabelle's Big Secret", in which Clarabelle says she's "tattling the tales of Toontown!", while she is later called "Toontown's biggest blabbermouth". I haven't verified this yet, though.
I just now noticed that the letter from Donald's Nephews has a stamp on it that seems be some sort of Revolutionary War-era duck or something of the sort. Interesting.
I just checked "Clarabelle's Big Secret", and it does in fact mention Toontown twice.
Once again, drakeborough, thank you so much for all of this information. I believe you're doing a service to the fandom by collecting and sharing all of this!
No matter what I say or do, know that Jesus loves you.
He presumably lived in Hollywood durign the time when he worked as an actor for Walt Disney Productions in comedy shorts, as per the comic version of This Is Your Life, Donald Duck. I think possibly the best way to handle Hometown/Homeville is that Silo Center temporarily renamed itself that before it turned into Mouseton for good.
I wouldn't be surprised if it has happened before, but a city changing its name from Silo Center to Hometown to Homeville to Mouseville to Mouseton within such a short period of time seems a little bit hard to believe. I'd rather see them all as neighboring towns. Some of them may not even been actual towns, just communities or neighborhoods.
Neighborhoods do work as well for Hometown/Homeville, perhaps. At any rate, my thinking was that we mentally conflate "Hometown" and "Homeville", and "Mouseton" and "Mouseville", as being varying accounts about the same thing. The city was never named Mouseville separate from Mouseton or Homeville separate from Hometown. So it's only "Silo Center —> (oops we sound like hillbillies) —> Hometown —> (wait that doesn't sound very professional does it? people won't take us seriously. wait wait hang on) —> Mouseton".
It's an alternate version of Earth with different geography.
In their fantasy world version of the US, Duckburg is located in Calisota on the West Coast, and Mouseton is a coastal city in the North East.
So ... Mouseton, Guillard County, Pennecticut?
Eureka, California, the real-life equivalent of Duckburg (per Rosa) is indeed a coastal city. However, has Mouseton been shown to be one? Unless one means "coastal" in a broader sense (as it's used politically).
In her letter to Mickey, Mrs. Churchmouse says she lives on the "waterfront", and she doesn't say anything about living in a different town, indicating that Mickey's city does have a waterfront. This can be seen in Mickey Mouse Sails for Treasure Island. The Sacred Jewel also implies that Mickey's city is on the coast, as Mickey and Minnie are seen walking through town, and Mickey and Nathaniel Churchmouse later walk from there to a harbor where Churchmouse's ship is docked at.
No matter what I say or do, know that Jesus loves you.
In her letter to Mickey, Mrs. Churchmouse says she lives on the "waterfront", and she doesn't say anything about living in a different town, indicating that Mickey's city does have a waterfront. This can be seen in Mickey Mouse Sails for Treasure Island. The Sacred Jewel also implies that Mickey's city is on the coast, as Mickey and Minnie are seen walking through town, and Mickey and Nathaniel Churchmouse later walk from there to a harbor where Churchmouse's ship is docked at.
If we're moving out of Gottfredson, tons of stories show Mouseton having docks.