Are Duckburg and Mouseton the Same to You?

[pollux]

In the German version of Disney comics, Duckburg and Mouseton are the same city - Entenhausen, which literally translated to "duck houses". This is the case in all countries where the Ehapa company publishes Disney comics, like Denmark and Finland, too. This means in foreign stories that use two different cities, both names are translated as the same - f.e. Duckburg and Mouston from American or Paperopoli and Topolinia from Italian stories both become Entenhausen in German or Ankkalinna in Finnish versions. This is done because Ehapa wanted one place for all of the Disney comicbook cosmos.

What do you think about this?

Well, I'm accustomed for it to be this way and I prefer the idea of one shared city. Unfortunately, it leads to some complications. Many European readers wonder why Donald and Mickey almost never team up or why characters from both universes don't meet each other, though they (supposedly) live in the same place. And f.e. the Mouse Entenhausen's cityscape lacks $crooge's money bin, while in Duck Entenhausen, Chief O'Hara won't appear if the Beagle Boys get arrested or such.

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Apr 10, 2018 15:54:02 GMT pollux said:

In the German version of Disney comics, Duckburg and Mouseton are the same city - Entenhausen, which literally translated to "duck houses". This is the case in all countries where the Ehapa company publishes Disney comics, like Denmark and Finland, too. This means in foreign stories that use two different cities, both names are translated as the same - f.e. Duckburg and Mouston from American or Paperopoli and Topolinia from Italian stories both become Entenhausen in German or Ankkalinna in Finnish versions. This is done because Ehapa wanted one place for all of the Disney comicbook cosmos.

What do you think about this?

Not the same city, not in the same state, and not even in the same universe if I'm being honest.
This only applies to the comics versions of these characters. They are distinct from the animated versions in my headcanon. So Cartoon-Mickey and Cartoon-Donald can live alongside Pinocchio, Dumbo and Winnie-the-Pooh in Disneyville or Toontown (or Disneyville, a subsection of Toontown) for all I care. But Comics-Mickey and Comics-Donald don't coexist.
Yes, I'm an extreme splitter on the lumper-splitter Disney comics scale.
As you say, it probably has to do with what you're exposed to when first introduced to a franchise ("imprinting"). In my case, it was mostly Western material (Barks/Strobl/Moores/Murry, etc)., where the Duck and Mouse universes were kept separate for the most part, so stories where these characters meet still strike me as odd and fan-fictiony. 

[crazycatlord]

In Portugal, at least in the stories published in the last century, Duckburg and Mouseton were also the same town - "Patopólis" (something like "city of the ducks", if you cross portuguese with ancient greek...), or at least the Mickey-town is a no-name town (that can be Patópolis or no, according to the imagination of the reader); I only read one story where they were explicitly portrait as different towns - "Alla ricerca della pietra zodiacale" (where "Ratinia" is supposed to be in the East Coast and "Patopólis" in the West Coast).

Many European readers wonder why Donald and Mickey almost never team up or why characters from both universes don't meet each other, though they (supposedly) live in the same place. And f.e. the Mouse Entenhausen's cityscape lacks $crooge's money bin, while in Duck Entenhausen, Chief O'Hara won't appear if the Beagle Boys get arrested or such.

I don't see much problem - after all, in real world, and living in a 40.000 inhabitants town, there are many people that I know but I spent years without seeing them. It is much more difficult to explain the opposite - the crossover stories, if they live in different towns, specially if the towns are in opposites sides of the USA (if we assume they are neighbor towns, in a kind of New Jersy/Newark thing, we can have two different towns but easily explain the crossovers, but this is almost the same thing as having only one town).

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Apr 10, 2018 16:25:01 GMT crazycatlord said:

I only read one story where they were explicitly portrait as different towns - "Alla ricerca della pietra zodiacale" (where "Ratinia" is supposed to be in the East Coast and "Patopólis" in the West Coast).

Was the fact that the two cities were on opposite coasts made explicit (mentioned or shown on a map)? Do you remember the name of the story?

[crazycatlord]

Apr 10, 2018 16:32:36 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Apr 10, 2018 16:25:01 GMT crazycatlord said:

I only read one story where they were explicitly portrait as different towns - "Alla ricerca della pietra zodiacale" (where "Ratinia" is supposed to be in the East Coast and "Patopólis" in the West Coast).

Was the fact that the two cities were on opposite coasts made explicit (mentioned or shown on a map)? Do you remember the name of the story?

In a map.


inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+1780-AP

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Apr 10, 2018 16:37:30 GMT crazycatlord said:

Apr 10, 2018 16:32:36 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Was the fact that the two cities were on opposite coasts made explicit (mentioned or shown on a map)? Do you remember the name of the story?

In a map.


inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+1780-AP

Ah! The Zodiac Stone story. We mentioned this map on another thread. It, however, has Mouseton in FL, rather than in the Northeast where I would have put it. 

[crazycatlord]

Apr 10, 2018 17:49:53 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Apr 10, 2018 16:37:30 GMT crazycatlord said:

In a map.


inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+1780-AP

Ah! The Zodiac Stone story. We mentioned this map on another thread. It, however, has Mouseton in FL, rather than in the Northeast where I would have put it. 

And, even more strangely, has Mickey and Goofy making a trip to... Florida.

[Ramapith]

That's right—it's internally inconsistent itself.

I prefer to follow Romano Scarpa, who showed Duckburg and Mouseton close to each other on the West Coast.

No matter what one thinks of crossovers, having the cities close to each other is the only way they seem remotely sensible (and because there ARE a fair number of crossovers, accommodating them makes sense).

[Matilda]

As most of y'all know, the Ducks are "real" to me and the Mice are not. Coming from an American childhood where the Duck stories I read and re-read were almost all written by a comics genius and the Mouse stories were...not, I have a "real" Duckburg in my head with no Mouse-associated people in it, and no "real" Mouseton in my head at all. They are for me completely separate fictional universes, and there's only one of the two that I really care about. Crossover stories are like Mouse stories: I might enjoy reading them once, but they'll never be "real" to me. That said, in the purely fictional Mouseworld, I believe that Mouseton is in the Northeast. Not necessarily New England, but the northern half of the East Coast.

[Spectrus]

"Entenhausen" actually sounds like a German town or city name - it's literally the best equivalent to the American "Duckburg". Even Egmont Mouse stories are set in "Duckburg", such as "The Werewolf of Duckburg".

[Spectrus]

In inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+2164-2 Mickey takes a car trip to Duckburg.

And in inducks.org/s.php?c=I+TL+1705-AP Scrooge does the same thing - driving on a highway to get to Mouseton.

The German translations tried to mask this (South/North Duckburg), but I do prefer the idea of two separate cities

[Minotaur]

Apr 10, 2018 16:25:01 GMT crazycatlord said:

I don't see much problem - after all, in real world, and living in a 40.000 inhabitants town, there are many people that I know but I spent years without seeing them. It is much more difficult to explain the opposite - the crossover stories, if they live in different towns, specially if the towns are in opposites sides of the USA (if we assume they are neighbor towns, in a kind of New Jersy/Newark thing, we can have two different towns but easily explain the crossovers, but this is almost the same thing as having only one town).

If Chief O'Hara really is the head of the police department, then that definitely is a solid question to ask. After all, the whole town is under his charge.

[Minotaur]

Apr 11, 2018 10:40:08 GMT Spectrus said:

In inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+2164-2 Mickey takes a car trip to Duckburg.

And in inducks.org/s.php?c=I+TL+1705-AP Scrooge does the same thing - driving on a highway to get to Mouseton.

The German translations tried to mask this (South/North Duckburg), but I do prefer the idea of two separate cities

Maybe it's like Budapest?

[LP]

To me, Duckburg and Mouseton are different, simply because they both exist. I mean, they are two places with different names, with different characters living in them.
I'm from Sweden and I grew up reading that both Mickey and Donald live in Ankeborg (Duckburg). So of course I wondered why they never met in the comics. Then I realized that the reason is that they don't really live in the same town, and everything made sense again.
Of course, Donald lived in Mouseton in the Gottfredson-stories and early Taliaferro-strips. At some point after Huey, Dewey, and Louie first visited, Donald moved to Duckburg however. (Clarabelle Cow appears during their visit, confirming that this is still Mouseton.) I don't know when they moved though.

Hey, here's a related question: are Silo Center and Mouseton the same city?

[drleevezan]

Apr 12, 2018 21:51:45 GMT LP said:

To me, Duckburg and Mouseton are different, simply because they both exist. I mean, they are two places with different names, with different characters living in them.
I'm from Sweden and I grew up reading that both Mickey and Donald live in Ankeborg (Duckburg). So of course I wondered why they never met in the comics. Then I realized that the reason is that they don't really live in the same town, and everything made sense again.
Of course, Donald lived in Mouseton in the Gottfredson-stories and early Taliaferro-strips. At some point after Huey, Dewey, and Louie first visited, Donald moved to Duckburg however. (Clarabelle Cow appears during their visit, confirming that this is still Mouseton.) I don't know when they moved though.

Hey, here's a related question: are Silo Center and Mouseton the same city?

 I believe the official explanation is that the city officials changed the name from Silo Center to Mouseton to better fit when the town became more of a city.