Although, according to a Fethry story by Al Hubbard and Dick Kinney ( inducks.org/story.php?c=S+64136 ), Fethry is also "distantly related" to Donald, and therefore, like Whitewater, not a first cousin of Donald's.
Now that's interesting, I wasn't aware of that before. I've always happily adopted the idea of Fethry being Donald's first cousin into my headcanon, but this revelation by Hubbard/Kinney, Fethry's creators, is making me seriously rethink that position.
Calm down folks, that panel is clearly from an American publication of the story.Some recent versions of stories by Hubbard and Kinney in the US are mostly translated from Italian versions, not based on the original scripts, often lost. So the translator may have changed it to make look Fethry as a distant cousin.
Can someone check a version from another language of the story, I am curious now.
Some recent versions of stories by Hubbard and Kinney in the US are mostly translated from Italian versions, not based on the original scripts, often lost.
This is the first I've heard of this; I have no reason to disbelieve it but can someone involved in the translations confirm?
Much to my chagrin, I actually own the IDW issue in which the English version of the story in question appeared but never noticed the "distantly related" comment; it's something I should have been struck by and remembered.
In Van Schuijlenburg's tree Donald and Feltry have the same great great granpa. Degrees between cousins can be calculated by counting links as in this graph:
If Donald and Fethry/Whitewater share a set of great-great-grandparents on Van Schuijlenburg's tree, that makes them third cousins. I remember Lars Jensen (who I believe is the only author to use Whitewater besides Barks) once did a story where he specified the relationship between Donald and Whitewater by making Whitewater a nephew of Douglas McDuck, i.e. a second cousin of Donald.
It's complicated Donald and Fethry are third cousins, but only with the system removals, with the system degrees are cousins of the fifth degree, in two system are used both in quas all the nations, but which of the two is used in the common jargon varies, if count the generations you are using the removals system that is used in medicine (consanguinity, genetics ...), if you count the degrees of separation you use the system degrees that is used in the jurisprudence (inheritance, custody of minors ...), to make matters worse some countries have special counting systems, or in common speaking they use a mix.
Some recent versions of stories by Hubbard and Kinney in the US are mostly translated from Italian versions, not based on the original scripts, often lost.
This is the first I've heard of this; I have no reason to disbelieve it but can someone involved in the translations confirm?
Much to my chagrin, I actually own the IDW issue in which the English version of the story in question appeared but never noticed the "distantly related" comment; it's something I should have been struck by and remembered.
In an Italian volume on Fethry half page of an American version is shown right next to the original storyboard by Kinney. And the two English dialogues are not exactly the same. So they re-dialogued them, even when they knew the original lines by Kinney. Now, how much they changed the dialogues is something I do no know. Unfortunately I do not own the story we are talking about to check. I would not be surprised if Kinney himself considered Fethry a distant cousin. In the end he came from outside Duckburg in his first story. But I will notice that in some other stories by Kinney and Hubbard is clearly intended that Fethry is a nephew of Scrooge more or less as Donald. This things are always totally random, since this stories were conceived to be read as narrative microcosm, without any notion of continuity and things like that.
This is the first I've heard of this; I have no reason to disbelieve it but can someone involved in the translations confirm?
Much to my chagrin, I actually own the IDW issue in which the English version of the story in question appeared but never noticed the "distantly related" comment; it's something I should have been struck by and remembered.
In an Italian volume on Fethry half page of an American version is shown right next to the original storyboard by Kinney. And the two English dialogues are not exactly the same. So they re-dialogued them, even when they knew the original lines by Kinney.
Are you sure this is so, rather than the text having changed between Kinney's storyboard and the final Hubbard version? For instance, I recall that Kinney wrote Tabby as a female cat for several stories, but the letterer, seeing that Hubbard drew a male cat instead, consistently switched "she" for "he" whenever required. If they allowed themselves that liberty, they might have made other edits to the dialogue then.
Now that's interesting, I wasn't aware of that before. I've always happily adopted the idea of Fethry being Donald's first cousin into my headcanon, but this revelation by Hubbard/Kinney, Fethry's creators, is making me seriously rethink that position.
Calm down folks, that panel is clearly from an American publication of the story.Some recent versions of stories by Hubbard and Kinney in the US are mostly translated from Italian versions, not based on the original scripts, often lost. So the translator may have changed it to make look Fethry as a distant cousin.
Can someone check a version from another language of the story, I am curious now.
I've supervised almost all of the American Kinney/Hubbard publications in modern times, for Gemstone, Boom, and IDW—and the vast majority were absolutely based on the original scripts, which have an above average survival rate for Fethry stories.
The story in question here (S 64136, "Suds In Your Eye"), as published in IDW's DONALD DUCK 378, was actually one step beyond that: my team used the original lettering done for an Australian edition in 1967, which matched the original script precisely. "Distantly related" was in the original.
For the record, the only S-coded Fethry where we followed a path as you describe—retranslating because the original script was largely lost—was S 68055, "You Can Take the Guy Out of the Country, But..." where several pages were missing from the surviving English version.
In an Italian volume on Fethry half page of an American version is shown right next to the original storyboard by Kinney. And the two English dialogues are not exactly the same. So they re-dialogued them, even when they knew the original lines by Kinney. Now, how much they changed the dialogues is something I do no know.
Long ago, various S-code contributors told me that management had required the S-code dialogues to be very simple, for easy translation; that authors struggled to stay simple even when they would have preferred not to; and that sometimes, editors modified the results to make the results even simpler. This made for blander English, so we were encouraged by Disney—in the early 2000s—to pep the stories up a bit in spots where they seemed bland.
I was hesitant to alter Kinney a lot, because he's great! We did slightly tighten up dialogue, or add bits of slang, when what was there seemed unusually stiff and wooden by Kinney's standards (a typical sign of 1960s forced simplification). We also added sound effects where the Burbank scripts conspicuously used none, even in scenes of noisy impact where space was left for a sound effect in the art.
To avoid confusing new readers—because the Gemstone comics were meant as all-ages publications first—we did standardize a few elements where Kinney was inconsistent: his earliest stories at times call Duckburg "Duckville," name the hillbilly "Hog Haid" Moe, and make Tabby a female cat. Kinney's scripts start referencing a male Tabby in late 1964 and Hard Haid in 1965; I'm presuming because by then, Kinney had noticed Hubbard drawing Moe as a human ("Hog Haid" suggests a pigface) and Tabby as an obvious tomcat.
Okay, so it seems Fethry is indeed another distant cousin of Donald! However, I remember seeing this panel from another story, where Donald specifically mentions his uncle as Fethry's father (or at least the one who taught him to read).
Can Fethry still be a distant cousin to Donald, even though Donald's uncle is his father? Is this a contradiction?
I know "cousin" is a vague term, and can refer to first cousin, second cousin, etc. Is the same true for "uncle"?
(Just for the record, I also agree that Whitewater shouldn't be Donald's first cousin, and I also prefer Donald and Cornelius to not be related.)
I know "cousin" is a vague term, and can refer to first cousin, second cousin, etc. Is the same true for "uncle"?
"Uncle" is an extremely versatile term; like "cousin", it can be used to refer to many different relationships (and in some cultures, to older men who are completely unrelated to you!). Alas, with the presence of "distant relative" in the original script confirmed, it's now clear to me that Fethry can't continue to be Eider's son in my headcanon after all. Too bad, I really liked the idea.
Well, Fethry can still be Eider's son, right? As you said, uncle doesn't have to mean mother's/father's brother. We just need to place Eider (and Fethry) elsewhere on the tree.
Post by Monkey_Feyerabend on Jan 2, 2019 21:27:11 GMT
Well, as you can have a distant cousin, you can also have a distant uncle.
Thanks to Gerstein for the explanation. But it remains that there is a difference in a page that I saw between a US version and the script. I left a few hours ago the country where I have that volume, so I cannot be more precise now. Maybe it was just some minor changes in the line.
Well, okay, wait. We've seen Eider as Donald's father's brother in a story, and not just heard of their relation in reference material. So I guess that's a deal breaker for some people.
Post by Monkey_Feyerabend on Jan 2, 2019 21:29:10 GMT
It is unfortunate that Rosa did not have this information back in the 90's. I am sure he would have been more than happy to put FD far away from Barks's canonic ducks in his tree.
It is unfortunate that Rosa did not have this information back in the 90's. I am sure he would have been more than happy to put FD far away from Barks's canonic ducks in his tree.
That's true! I wonder if Egmont would have let him do that though, even with the evidence to back it up
Post by Monkey_Feyerabend on Jan 2, 2019 21:48:42 GMT
As concerns Cornelius, I do approve the idea of him being related to Donald. It makes so much sense on a meta-level: Duckburg exists in fiction because of the existence of a fictional character named Donald Duck. So making the fictional founder of the city an ancestor of Donald is a nice idea. I suspect that's the reason why Rosa and others before him went for it. (If I am not mistaken, Rosa stated something of the kind in his explanation of the tree from WDCS that someone posted here in the past.)