Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Aug 17, 2023 12:26:26 GMT
Definitely a good person (but then, if you're coming to this from the DT17 side of things, it's important to bear in mind that comics!Magica is generally depicted as significantly less evil than her 2017-Continuum counterpart).
Gosalyn in the remake does not need a parent, because she lived on the street for a while. And such a life makes a person grow up much faster. (…) The new version is more proud. Over time, she relented, but took more help out of necessity. It is unlikely that she will want to be adopted.
I don't even what to say. No thirteen-year-old actually has no need of a stable home and a guardian. Some might be able to adapt to living on the streets on their own but this is not a healthy situation for them and they still need a home as much as anybody; if they have convinced themselves otherwise this is something they will need to work on over time.
FOWL’s end goal was also depicted as the elimination of all “adventurers”, just as HYDRA’s big plan in Winter Soldier was the extermination of heroes like Bruce Banner and Dr. Strange along with anyone else who could pose a threat to the organization. Making Bradford’s obsession with orderliness and security, at the expense of freedom, the driving force behind FOWL, as opposed to the eccentric destructiveness of the FOWL high command on the original Darkwing show, was also a direct borrowing from Winter Soldier; in that movie, the villain Arnim Zola rants about how “HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom”; Robert Redford’s HYDRA villain in Winter Soldier also gives a little speech about ending disorder and war through ruthless utilitarianism: “I can bring order to the lives of seven billion people by sacrificing twenty million.” This is an example of one of my overarching objections to New Ducktales—the showrunners’ trend-chasing tendency to say “hey, this recent thing was successful/popular; let’s copy it, regardless of how well it meshes with the source material."
Hm. I will grant you some probable degree of influence, but I still think you're making too much of it. The ultimate villain having a burning hatred of Adventure as a concept, and a master-plan to eliminate it and the Strange in general, seems like an obvious thing for a modern writers' room to come up with as an antagonist for the DT17 Ducks, once they'd decided that the show was primarily themed around Adventure and that Scrooge in particular would be an Adventurer above all else. Perhaps too obvious, you might say, but either way you get there just by asking what the direct ideological/symbolic opposite of this version of Scrooge might look like, and how to spin that into an arc antagonist. In the face of this, the fact that HYDRA claim to be bringing order to an overly chaotic world seems… incidental at best. Besides, like *checks notes* the concept of a mole/sleeper-agent high up among the supposed good guys, that is such a generic thing. Of course the vaguely fascistic villains claim to be bringing order to the world. They all do. The Master, Darth Vader, you name it. "Order pursued as a utilitarian-style Greater Good, and extending to a reactionary hatred of the goodies' quirkiness and eccentricities" is possibly the most generic motivation for a large-scale villain or villainous group, aside from naked powerlust or arbitrary sadistic malice.
(I would contrast this to the Phantom Blot's gauntlet, which was a silly bit of naked trend-chasing, and never really worked.)
The new Darkwing’s investment in the Darkwing persona is fannish rather than proprietorial, basically eliminating the egotistical side of his character—and making relics of the old Darkwing’s egoism, like his resentment of Gizmoduck, feel weirdly unmotivated.
I better grasp what you mean, but I still don't really see it. It does seem egotistical. Showing up Gizmoduck is one of the deciding factors in him deciding to become Darkwing, after all, right alongside more noble motivations ("I am better than Gizmoduck…"), and Moonvasion got fairly classic-Darkwing-esque mileage out of him being upset that nobody knows about him or take him seriously. Just because he did not invent the persona, doesn't mean he isn't still comically grandiose and self-absorbed in his insistence that people take seriously his ludicrous life decision to Be Darkwing Duck In Real Life.
There is, perhaps, something to the fact that this is only part of why this Drake becomes a superhero, as opposed to the classic version seeming to more directly be in it mainly for the glory alone. I think adding more genuine nobility to his decision was probably the right move in a show like this which, despite its elastic, fantastical setting, also tends to shoot for more ""realistic"" emotional complexity than the '87 DuckTales and its Darkwing; but perhaps they put a little bit too much of that, and too little gloryhounding. I can agree with that. Still, I don't think the gloryhounding was at all absent from the character.
The original Gosalyn was just as sarcastic, just as overdramatic, and just as fond of being the center of attention as Drake himself was, which not only made Drake’s efforts to play parent amusingly difficult, but also frequently served to puncture his ego. The new Gosalyn was depicted as serious and essentially mature, as well as being a preternaturally skillful archer; she hardly seemed to need a parental figure, and it’s difficult to imagine much humor, or character insight, being mined from her interactions with the new Drake.
And this — I'm not that big a fan of DT17!Gosalyn, but the principal "misstep", in my view, seems to be that she's written as indeed too serious. There's not enough basic humour to her demeanour and behaviour; she's a basically straight rendition of a young girl forced to grow up too fast by the (not-quite-)murder of her guardian, and attempting to expose the man who did it. You say she "hardly seems to need a parental figure", but she's, what, fourteen? Younger? Of course she needs a parental figure. The fact that she's bottling everything up and insisting on brooding self-reliance is unhealthy, and I think clearly intended to read as such.
And by that same token, it's very easy to picture character-based directions for a dramatic backbone of the adopter/adoptee dynamic to develop. DT17!Gosalyn in Let's Get Dangerous is primarily shown as trying to do everything by herself, communicating poorly and refusing to ask for help. Whereas Drake, due to his unhealthy commitment to the idea of Being Darkwing Duck, spends part of the special bummed out by the fact that there's no crime for him to thwart. So what we have here is a kid who resents having to ask for help/admit that she's not 100% self-reliant, moving in with a guy with a massive hero complex. (But who in turn has the same stubborn "I can do this on my own in my own ridiculous way" problem — and so cannot easily break down Gosalyn's defences without admitting his own faults, and would thus be reluctant to try. Or else come out comically oblivious to his own flaws; either works depending on the ratio of genuine character drama vs. comedy you're looking for.)
Of course, what she isn't, in all of this, is anywhere as fun as the original Gosalyn. But the character stuff, it's very much there, at least as seeds which could easily be developed in a Darkwing spin-off (and, IMO, would have been to one degree or another if such a show had got off the ground).
Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Jul 7, 2023 17:09:49 GMT
I will be the first one to agree that there were superhero influences in many plot elements — and I'll definitely grant you the climax with a giant portal was distinctly superheroish, though of course it's also James Bond tradition for the villains to have some kind of an outrageous doomsday device in the final act: SPECTRE's leader once threatened to destroy major cities from orbit using a giant laser made of diamonds… But I really think you're seeing things with regards to Bradford Buzzard's infiltration of SHUSH and McDuck Industries being a take-off on some Captain America plot point.
Ye cats, double agents are one of the most obvious thing you do in an extended "spy" story; if James Bond never did it, that is if nothing else a function of the degree to which they're not quite spy stories half the time. (And even then, the Daniel Craig Specter nearly pulled that trigger by revealing Ralph Fiennes's M as a Spectre plant, with only Fiennes's reluctance preventing things from going that route.) If we'd been dealing with doppelgangers or shapeshifters or clones, you'd have a better case, but a straight case of "boring office guy was actually an evil mastermind working for the other side" seems not at all germane to superhero fiction.
Is a fanboy trying to be Adam West's Batman for real more or less funny than a parody of the same who, within his own universe, invented all the faux-Batman gimmicks independently? I don't know. Probably the "literal cosplayer trying to act out a literal campy TV show" joke is blunter. But I wouldn't say the DT17 iteration is an unfunny premise in itself, by any means.
and (even worse) take away his family bond with Gosalyn,
…Here I'm rather puzzled. The lack of much Darkwing/Gosalyn content seems to me to just be a product of their first meeting being the last we got to see of the DT17 St. Canard cast. Everything about Let's Get Dangerous is screaming that Drake is becoming a substitute parental figure to Gosalyn faster than either of them even realise (recall Drake staying up all night trying to help her). There is no doubt in my mind that if Angones got his DT17-verse Darkwing spin-off handed on a silver platter, it would spend a lot of time on a Drake/Gosalyn father-daughter relationship following on from these beginnings. Sure, Drake's a bit younger and Gosalyn's a bit older, but I think in the right hands there is no reason you can't tell a very moving adoption story with an adoptive father in his late 20s and an already-teenaged adoptee.
(Oh, I think you, or someone else, complained earlier about Prof. Waddlemayer not really being dead in this continuity, but Let's Get Dangerous! is very clear that he is Irretrievably Lost, which is just fidgety-Disney-censors-ese for dead — "in a better world", don't you know — and is the same in practical in-universe terms besides: dead or not, Gosalyn's caretaker is missing and she'll never see him again, ergo we've got a kid in need of adopting.)
Granted, perhaps I'm overinterpreting you and you're just complaining about the sheer fact that we spent so much time with a 'young', pre-Gosalyn Darkwing, instead of jumping right in with him meeting her, as the original series did. The Surf Dracula problem, as it were (does anybody get that reference?). Which doesn't bother me insofar as the Darkwing Origins were running in the background of a show to which he is not the focus, instead of trying to make Darkwing Duck Without Gosalyn truly work as a status-quo; but mileages may fairly vary. The Surf Dracula Problem is annoying.
Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Jul 6, 2023 21:57:32 GMT
Yes, I suppose that's a tenable position. I do want to insist on my earlier point that I think it's reductive to view the original Darkwing as solely a spoof, and thus to see a show that earnestly buys into his coolness as a complete misfire; I would say that it is at worse a loss of complexity, an error of emphasis.
(And I also don't feel that F.O.W.L. is inherently a superhero thing; after all, before getting absorbed into Darkwing Duck they started in Double-O-Duck as a spy-fiction sort of thing, a take-off on James Bond's S.P.E.C.T.R.E; and for the most part the DT17 version stuck to those roots, what with the flashback-stuff to the heyday of FOWL vs. SHUSH being pitched as homages to 60s spy-fi like the — correct — Avengers. But let's put that to one side.)
Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Jul 6, 2023 11:51:36 GMT
I would agree — as I did from early on, for the same Atlantis reason — that the show did have a problem with not taking its fantastical adventures seriously. The Living Mummies was another early example. But I actually think this is something they improved on as time went on — the myth of the Papyrus and the Lost Library in the final season make for pretty close comparisons, and the difference is striking, those were treated with genuine mythical heft. (While rooted in a somewhat more high-key magical plot-device than either would typically use, Yellow Beak's ruined boat stuck on a mountain peek, with his skeleton still in the captain's chair, bent over his final testament, felt like a fitting Barks-Rosa-adventure setpiece.)
Also, it occurs to me that there is a seeming disconnect between that "they treat the adventures too lightly and snarkily" criticism, and the criticism that they treat other elements like the Darkwing Duck worldbuilding too seriously. You might, of course, argue that there is enough of a difference between the two that they genuinely should have just reversed — treated the adventures seriously but never the superheroics — but, I don't know. I think I disagree with the idea that it was never a key part of Darkwing Duck's appeal that a lot of Darkwing stuff is genuinely cool, at least to a preteen viewer. Is DT17 more unwilling to make fun of the Darkwing iconography qua iconography? Yes, perhaps, but the heart of the original's comedy still seems to be in the gap between the prima facie exciting and competent pulp-avenger persona, and the duck in the mask's abrasive personality; moreso than in the stylings of the persona itself. All of which to say that I would also be inclined to treat the "earnest" treatment of things like Gosalyn and Negaduck's stories as examples of the later seasons of the show (partially) getting over Season 1's flippancy problem.
Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Jul 4, 2023 17:20:39 GMT
We'll have to spin "the multiverse in Disney comics" off to its own thread at this rate! I'm familiar with the 1995 Cavazzano tale — I read it in French a while ago — but the Erickson story doesn't ring any bells; has it been printed in English? What was the title?
I suppose, again, this comes from my lack of proper knowledge regarding Marvel - my primary experience is with the films, as well as some of the animated media and games. So I could have the wrong idea on this - and if so, my point can be disregarded. Just as an example, though, you bring up Ducktales '17, in which multiversal travel is shown. However, in that, it's a very big deal; it takes years of research, and once the machine is destroyed, it's implied that it'll take a lot of work before it's ever possible again.
Perhaps, but I'm not sure what the feasibility of travelling between universes changes about whether these realities theoretically "exist" or not, you know?
Besides, dimension-hopping, like any other sci-fi trapping, is as easy or difficult as the latest story demands, in Disney comics as in any other big franchise of its type. It could be very difficult in Let's Get Dangerous! because this is necessary for the plot point about Gosalyn's grandfather being functionally lost to work; or any random urn you tip over might turn out to contain a genie who can trivially zap you to A Universe Where You Were Never Born, if you're Don Rosa writing The Duck Who Never Was. I don't recall one offhand but I would think nothing of a ten-pager where Gyro had casually invented a dimension-hopping machine as his outrageous creation of the week. (Compare the variability of time- or space-travel's banality; sometimes Gyro whips up a rocket in an afternoon and has a time machine in his garden shed; other times Scrooge has to invest a fortune in a fairly realistic NASA-style space mission, and Gyro is only just starting to experiment with a dodgy time-machine prototype.)
The main reason I bring up the Marvel multiverse is because there's, to my admittedly limited knowledge, a lot of overlap and crossover. As in, not just that, say, a character from one universe can show up in another or in a bizarrely different context, as is the case with the Ducks - there's an actual, clear explanation as to the fact that there are different universes, and characters often cross between them. As such, if one Marvel universe is connected to something, the entire multiverse may as well be, simply because there's so much crossover between them.
Well, yes — but as I said, "it's real as a parallel universe" is trivially true as soon as you have even a single story that uses "the infinite multiverse" as a plot point. Every story ever written, or indeed never written, is theoretically accessible to the Ducks if the Multiverse is accepted as a premise, regardless of whether there have been any direct crossovers with a given property — and certainly there have been a smattering of tales and the like which confirmed the existence of sci-fi parallel universes in a Duckian context.
(Indeed DuckTales 2017 itself played with the notion in Let's Get Dangerous, briefly establishing the world of the original DuckTales as existing as a parallel universe to its rebooted continuity: Scrooge and the nephew briefly get zapped into the events of the notorious "sea monster ate my ice cream" scene from Catch As Cash Can. The Fluppy Dogs universe was similarly established as such in an easter egg.)
But again, this is so wide-ranging as to be meaningless. Yes, if Gyro builds the right dimension-crossing gizmo, they could meet anybody from any franchise ever… so what? It has no particular implications on worldbuilding or storytelling or anything. Just because any random fanfic where Magica is secretly Scrooge's long-lost sister is logically, indeed inescapably "real" as a far-flung parallel dimension, does not mean this has any bearing on a tree that purports to document information about The Classic Universe (albeit widely defined).
As for Marvel, I'll admit I made the assumption that it works in canon - still, given Marvel's multiverse shenanigans, I'd count it with the caveat that they're not the 616 versions of the characters
The Marvel Wiki refuses to cover it for reasons unknown to me, so Googlable information is scarce. I believe its Spider-Man is played by the voice actor who voiced him in one of the many Spider-Man animated series, so if anything it would seem to be tied to that universe — but who knows. And yes, certainly it'd count on a multiversal basis either way (hence my confusion at the Marvel Wiki people having no listing for it) — but that's true of anything — and more to the point, just because it's a "valid" parallel universe to the default Marvel continuity, wouldn't have to mean that everyone who exists in the latter exists in that parallel universe; and ergo it would not carry any implications about what the Greco-Roman Gods are like in this Mission Marvel-world-which-we'd-arguably-have-to-equate-with-the-Duckverse — any more than Spooks and Magic has any bearing on what Medusa may or may not be like in the DuckTales 2017 universe.
House of Mouse is strange in that it contradicts the 'lore' of many of the universes within - yet it's not like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? wherein the universes are understood to be fictional. It's just kind of accepted that all of these characters can come together and have fun at the club, despite the fact that it contradicts many of the rules of many of the established universes. (…) With the likes of Zeus, no such connection (That I remember) exists. True, he could just be ruling over everything once the club finishes up for the night - or, he could be returning to his universe, and ruling over there. (…) The show absolutely allows for the interpretation that you present - however, it's equally possible that he returns to a home universe, distinct from Donald's. The show doesn't provide such context - and without any clear implications (Again, such as the family reunion photo), I think it's best not to make assumptions, at least as far as the tree would be concerned.
Well, really, if there is an implied "explanation", it lies in the opening credits, which declare that the House is located "on Main Street" — ostensibly the Disneyland Main Street. The Disney characters hang out at the House in the same way that Disneyland live events and meet'n'greets show them coexisting there… however that works. (Speaking of which, you could of course point to all types of narrative Disneyland events as connections between Renaissance-era Disney films and the Duckverse; Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom, for example, where Hades served as the main antagonist.)
I will say that I don't think the show really makes sense from a "multiverse" point of view. We occasionally see characters leaving the House in cars and the like, not stepping through a magical portal or anything. And I think there's dialogue referring to characters' homes in a way that doesn't imply they're different worlds — I think, once, Mickey quips about having been to Bald Mountain or something of the kind, not "Bald Mountain on Earth-1940" or anything of the kind.
(Personally, as far as my headcanon is concerned, I think the characters are all from the same universe but not necessarily the same time period. So the Hercules folks might be visiting from the distant past, as opposed to being versions contemporary to the 20th/21st-century Ducks, in whose present many stories have, after all, shown the Gods to be retired.)
I'd definitely disagree with the idea of it all being transitive, though - that opens up way too many floodgates.
Well, you could get somewhere with it being first-level transitive but not second-level transitive — i.e. if Donald meets Hades then all of Hercules goes in, but not necessarily anything that Hercules has itself crossed over with. It's all a bit arbitrary in the end… and as I said I do not claim that this standard should be used for the tree, necessarily. Just musing on my personal fiendishly-inclusive definition of canon.
He has, however, appeared in an episode of Lilo & Stitch: The Series. Stitch appears with Donald in both Kingdom Hearts and The Lion King 3. So, then, is Jake a part of this universe? Huey, Dewey and Louie appear in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue - do we then consider that all of those universes (ALF, Garfield, The Looney Tunes, The Smurfs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters, Muppet Babies, Alvin and the Chipmunks) should be taken into consideration? Would we have to search through their media to see their understandings of the likes of Cleopatra or Medusa? Donald and the Ducktales crew appear in Chibiverse, alongside Perry the Platypus. Perry appears in both Phineas and Ferb: Mission Marvel - so, when considering the Greek Gods, would we have to consider the Marvel interpretations of them, too?
Notwithstanding the above about first vs. second-level transitive, I fear I may have to accept Jake Long in some distant way… although I'll note that Kingdom Hearts is an alternative universe (or perhaps that would be a… parallel multiverse, given it's structured as a collection of pocket dimensions? hmm) relative to the classic characters. Many of the Disney movie characters are more or less the same as their originals, but that's not the case for the Ducks and Mice: the Kingdom Hearts Mickey is a King of Disney Town, who was once a Keyblade Holder, etc. etc. Indeed its "incompetent wizard" take on Donald is very close to his Wizards of Mickey counterpart; I wonder, was there any cross-pollination? (This is complicated by analogues of Steamboat Willie and Fantasia existing in KH!Mickey's backstory, but then, they also assert that the Three Musketeers movie is also somehow part of his actual biography, as opposed to being an alternate version of some kind, an ancestor, or an in-universe movie, or anything like that).
As for the other two, though, I'll free myself on two counts. Cartoon All-Stars is very much a meta thing in the vein of Roger Rabbit: all the characters are toys and comic books come to life — whether via magic or just being all in the teen boy's head, who knows. There's no assertion that the Ninja Turtles and company actually exist in the same world as one another. Actually, we never see Huey, Dewey and Louie coming to life from any toy, he just sort of runs into them at the park; so you could just about imagine that the teenager lives in Duckburg, and they're the real HDL… but that still has no bearing on the crossovers, and I don't think it was the intent in any case.
And likewise, the basic framing of Chibiverse is very explicitly that it's an alternative reality (created by "Disney mad scientists" in a lab, according to the opening credits). Besides, they're variations of the DuckTales 2017 characters, and I firmly hold the DT17 universe to be a parallel reality just as much as something like Wizards of Mickey. In any case I'm not sure the Phineas and Ferb special takes place in the normal P&F universe (whatever that is), and I'm furthermore pretty sure that it simply presents alternative versions of the Marvel characters it uses, not in-continuity with any prior iterations of the Marvel universe, meaning it has no direct connection to what the Greco-Roman gods may be like in Marvel.
…I freely recognise that all this is entirely circumstantial and the Strong Transitive Principle would uncover similar issues sooner or later, but all the fun's in nitpicking!
Let's say that Donald Duck appears as a cameo in Wish; we'll take that as Donald Duck. Not as their take on him, we actually see him as Donald Duck. Whereas if Zeus appears, we treat him as that universe's take on Zeus - we don't make the same assumption that he carries the history etc of the Zeus from Hercules, Fantasia, Ducktales '17...
So, to the relevant discussion, Medusa: Assuming we accept the Phyllis Diller connection, what universes are relevant? The Haunted Mansion, The Mouse Factory, the universe in the Duck and Mouse comics and, by extension, The Sword in The Stone. They're all connected in this concept. However, there's nothing that gives us reason to believe that it's the same Medusa in Hercules: The Animated Series or American Dragon: Jake Long. It's 'Medusa', but they're clearly meant to be different interpretations of the myth - the same as with Zeus, Triton or any other such characters. (…) Chasing down basically anything with a Disney label that ties in to mythological characters feels like a bit too much, imo
I agree with that last sentence wholeheartedly — and I will also say again that I think it's entirely fair enough if the tree doesn't want to go as far as what I'm about to propose, either.
But my point, which I suppose I mustn't have made clear enough either, is that insofar as the Donald and Mickey in House of Mouse are substantially The Donald and Mickey, then a depiction of Zeus or Herculesin House of Mouseis a depiction of the Duckverse's Zeus, even if it happens to be recycled from a movie which had not originally been made with the Duckverse in mind. If Hercules's Zeus appeared on House of Mouse, then he is a depiction of the Zeus of the Duckverse, as much as the one in Trombone Troubles and any of the smattering of comics in which Greco-Roman deities have shown up in person.
And my controversial take, starting from that premise, is that in the fullest view of the No-Holds-Barred Disney Comics Universe, this is transitive to any other media set in "the universe of Hercules": House of Mouseasserts that "the Hercules universe" is synonymous with Donald Duck's universe, therefore a depiction of Medusa in a Hercules: The Animated Series episode is in a very indirect sense a depiction of "the Medusa of the Duckverse", and should be considered in the same way as a depiction of the mythological Medusa in a random Disney comic (in much the same way that we are connecting unrelated Disney-comics uses of Cleopatra).
I again, fully accept that this sort of reasoning is maybe too tenuous to be used on the Tree. (Heaven knows it proved just too damn much for a three-person team to use on the Wiki, which is one of the reasons I ran away from the poor thing like a dirty coward a few years back… One day, I'll come back and rebuild it from its ashes. Yes, one day…) I just want it on record that it is not at all the same thing as taking into consideration "anything with a Disney label". Case in point, I don't believe any Jake Long characters have ever shared the screen with a Duck or Mouse, therefore that show is null and void regardless of what production company made it!
(And contrariwise, I would argue in the same way for any non-Disney-owned franchise with a Duckverse crossover. For example, as per that delightful Vicar time-travel story, I do think the Asterix comics are valid history for the Ancient Gaul of Donald's universe; so the depiction of Cleopatra from Asterix and Cleopatra would be "valid" in my view.)
How liberal do we get if we allow these interpretations? Do we allow for the versions of the characters from Once Upon a Time? If we do get to that stage, do we allow for the Marvel version of Hercules?
Well, my view is that Little Mermaid and Hercules have some standing for the exact same reason Mim does: their characters having appeared in stories that directly have Ducks (and Mice) in them. House of Mouse, y'know! Donald Duck has interacted with the Hercules version of Hades, and so by HoM's indirect account, the whole Hercules franchise is bolted on as one possible account of what the Greek Gods are like in the Duckverse. Of course, I fully expect Ramapith to dismiss this in the same way as Spooks and Magic and for much the same reason, but from where I'm standing, if one accepts the crossovers of yore, when Witch Grimhilde could casually antagonise Scrooge McDuck, Yellow Beak could duel Captain Hook, and good old Madam Mim was teaming up with just about everybody, then it's only fair to extend the same courtesy to later media which went on having the Ducks & Mice interacting with a wider gallery of Disney characters like it weren't no thing. Or to pull from the TV end of things, Spooks and Magic feels like the natural descendant of all those lovely Wonderful World of Disney specials; Diller is essentially filling in for Hans Conried's live-action Magic Mirror here — or Jiminy Cricket — or, and thereon hangs the tale, original-flavour Ludwig Von Drake!
For what it's worth, House of Mouse with all it implies, and Spooks and Magic, are both very much “real” in my view of the wider Disney Comics Universe’, in a way which could never be true of Once Upon a Time (which is firmly a "parallel universe" relative to any classic Disney universe(s), much like Descendants; or indeed like DuckTales 2017 is relative to any portrayals of the classic characters).
(I admit that this argument would be stronger, as regards inclusion of Medusa, if the Hercules Medusa had appeared in House of Mouse directly, but it still feels direct enough for me.)
…All this being said, it strikes me that we may not have any Disney-comics-verse source for the idea that Medusa is a blood relation of the Greek Gods, which would simplify matters considerably. I don't think the Hercules episode says as much; the Haunted Mansion franchise never has to my knowledge. So maybe all of this is moot.
Plus, it's canonically the case that different versions of mythological figures exist in different universes - for example, Triton in The Little Mermaid is not the same character as Triton as he appears in Hercules. Making specific assumptions based on other universes would complicate things, I think.
glares at usage of the “C” word
More seriously, it seems to be the basis of this tree to overlook perceived differences between universes, e.g. DT17 — and the Hercules/Little Mermaid one is certainly not clear-cut — yes, the Hercules TV series' Triton does not look much like his Little Mermaid self, but then again, if we're willing to accept radically different portrayals of Santa Claus or indeed King Neptune from one story to another… Certainly I recall hearing that at one stage the Disney Parks meet'n'greet version of Hercules acknowledged technically being Ariel's cousin, though higher-ups later told the performers to cut it out.