Characters backstories / origin stories

[LP]

Good day to you all.
This here thread is about characters' backstories from before the status quo. How did they become what they are now? …And so forth.

We sort of get the Beagle Boys' origin in The Master of the Mississippi (Lo$2), although they are already criminals here. Is there a story showing us why they turned to a life of crime? I guess the Beagles have been criminals many generations back, but still.

Lo$4, Raider of the Copper Hill, shows us John D. Rockerduck's origin as a spoiled kid who presumably inherits all of his father's wealth. 

In Lo$6, The Terror of the Transvaal, we see a younger Flintheart Glomgold, but it's not much of an origin, as he's already a criminal and we don't learn why he chose this path.

In Mickey Mouse Sails for Treasure Island, we learn that Pete worked on Captain Churchmouse's boat 15 years ago prior. It's not much, but at least it's something. 


Okay, so that was just villains, but this thread is for any characters; both good and bad guys.
I, for one, am very curious about Magica DeSpell's origin - if there is such a thing.

[fredj]

Nov 15, 2020 9:46:09 GMT LP said:

Lo$4, Raider of the Copper Hill, shows us John D. Rockerduck's origin as a spoiled kid who presumably inherits all of his father's wealth. 

Korhonen, in his new ”McDuck Journals”, develops Rockerduck’s origin slighly, further explaining how the son of a decent father could turn out so bad. It shows how young Rockerduck is sent to his law bending uncle, ”the richest man in Duckburg”.

[Minotaur]

Maybe this one: I TL 3035-5

[Matilda]

Nov 15, 2020 11:38:21 GMT Minotaur said:

Maybe this one: I TL 3035-5

Yes, il patto della luna is the story I would also have mentioned as the closest thing to an origin story for Magica. There’s a series of flashbacks to her childhood and adolescence. Personally I don’t accept this backstory because it explains the origin of her pursuit of the Number One dime as an assigned task/challenge to work the amulet spell, and I don’t like that theory at all. If Magica is going to waste much of her life in a futile quest, I at least want her to be granted the dignity of agency in coming up with this goal on her own, out of her own research into the amulet spell.

Someone said there were other stories that implied such a source for Magica’s obsession, so it may be that Vitale just fleshed out the story more. But in that case I’d dismiss those other stories from my headcanon, too.

The first and last flashbacks show her as a small child with an uncle Giann (French version), the closest thing to a parent-figure. He asks her to promise that when she becomes a real sorcerer, she will not use her magic for evil. In the first scene of her as a child at sorcery school, she is indeed shown as being mocked by classmates for being nice; a dog, however, approves.

[Matilda]

There are stories that explain the origin of particular details, such as the explanation of why Donald always wears a sailor suit in Gorm Transgaard's The Odyssey. The Donald Duckling stories are one version of a backstory for Donald, one that does not fit into my headcanon; for one thing, where's his sibling who could be HDL's parent? I think Donald and Della were brought up by their parents, who died when D&D were in their teens or early 20's.

I believe there are a bunch of stories that go into aspects of Grandma Duck's history, ownership of the farm, etc. The Italian ones that assume that Grandma Duck is Scrooge's sister are not of interest to me in building my headcanon, so I haven't sought them out. Janet Gilbert has a story, Cowgirl Saves the Day, about her capturing robbers in her youth. But it doesn't particularly show why she became who she is; she's already clever and capable. There was an old American story that said she was an actress in her youth.

Rosa also gave us an origin story for Helper, which as a Rosa fan I accept. There are, however, also stories where Gyro already has Helper in his childhood.

Has anyone written a story telling how Magica got Algorab/Ratface in the first place?

[Minotaur]

Nov 15, 2020 14:11:40 GMT Matilda said:

Nov 15, 2020 11:38:21 GMT Minotaur said:

Maybe this one: I TL 3035-5

Yes, il patto della luna is the story I would also have mentioned as the closest thing to an origin story for Magica. There’s a series of flashbacks to her childhood and adolescence. Personally I don’t accept this backstory because it explains the origin of her pursuit of the Number One dime as an assigned task/challenge to work the amulet spell, and I don’t like that theory at all. If Magica is going to waste much of her life in a futile quest, I at least want her to be granted the dignity of agency in coming up with this goal on her own, out of her own research into the amulet spell.

Someone said there were other stories that implied such a source for Magica’s obsession, so it may be that Vitale just fleshed out the story more. But in that case I’d dismiss those other stories from my headcanon, too.

The first and last flashbacks show her as a small child with an uncle Giann (French version), the closest thing to a parent-figure. He asks her to promise that when she becomes a real sorcerer, she will not use her magic for evil. In the first scene of her as a child at sorcery school, she is indeed shown as being mocked by classmates for being nice; a dog, however, approves.

Thanks for sharing. I didn't read the story (since it is not available in any language that I can easily read), but have heard it being mentioned quite a few times when talking about Magica's past.

[TheMidgetMoose]

I wonder if Grandma Duck's backstory might be the one which we have the most stories about. If only someone could read all of those stories and connect them into one coherent timeline and narrative. In addition to the stories that Matilda  brought up, I TL 1677-B, which I think would be translated into English as The Grandma Duck Story or something of that sort, is a Grandma Duck backstory which I'm familiar with. It depicts Grandma has growing up on a farm with her grandmother but disliking it and moving to the city upon becoming an adult. In the city, after much hard work, she eventually becomes a model and starts dating a Clark Gable parody. They move to Africa together where he makes her work his farm while he goes on safaris. To read more about the story, I'd recommend checking out xanderares 's blog post about it. I'm sure that there are many other stories detailing various elements of Grandma's past. I would absolutely love to see someone, be it an official author making a Life and Times of Grandma Duck-style comic or just a fan writing out detailed stories and story summaries on this forum, weave all these stories into one.

There are also many more backstories for Flintheart Glomgold than just The Terror of the Transvaal. In Scrooge's Debt to Glomgold (D 9346), we learn that Flinty first met Scrooge McDuck when the two worked on a ship together. A Glass of Water (D 89276) depicts the two misers as having been close friends back when they were both poor, and Reunion (D 90106) apparently shows them as having mined in the Klondike together. There's also Plunkett's Emporium (D 91210) which I know little about but feel like has been brought up by someone else before.

[LP]

Nov 15, 2020 14:11:40 GMT Matilda said:

Yes, il patto della luna is the story I would also have mentioned as the closest thing to an origin story for Magica. There’s a series of flashbacks to her childhood and adolescence. Personally I don’t accept this backstory because it explains the origin of her pursuit of the Number One dime as an assigned task/challenge to work the amulet spell, and I don’t like that theory at all. If Magica is going to waste much of her life in a futile quest, I at least want her to be granted the dignity of agency in coming up with this goal on her own, out of her own research into the amulet spell.

I really want to read that one. It seems we are playing mostly by the same rules when it comes to what's allowed in our head-canons, Matilda, and I'll likely exclude this one too. It's a shame. 
I just want to know why Magica wants that gold amulet so bad. What would she do with unlimited gold? It's been 59 years - it's time we found out her motivation!

[LP]

Nov 16, 2020 15:49:38 GMT TheMidgetMoose said:

I wonder if Grandma Duck's backstory might be the one which we have the most stories about. If only someone could read all of those stories and connect them into one coherent timeline and narrative. In addition to the stories that Matilda  brought up, I TL 1677-B, which I think would be translated into English as The Grandma Duck Story or something of that sort, is a Grandma Duck backstory which I'm familiar with. It depicts Grandma has growing up on a farm with her grandmother but disliking it and moving to the city upon becoming an adult. In the city, after much hard work, she eventually becomes a model and starts dating a Clark Gable parody. They move to Africa together where he makes her work his farm while he goes on safaris. To read more about the story, I'd recommend checking out xanderares 's blog post about it. I'm sure that there are many other stories detailing various elements of Grandma's past. I would absolutely love to see someone, be it an official author making a Life and Times of Grandma Duck-style comic or just a fan writing out detailed stories and story summaries on this forum, weave all these stories into one.

There are also many more backstories for Flintheart Glomgold than just The Terror of the Transvaal. In Scrooge's Debt to Glomgold (D 9346), we learn that Flinty first met Scrooge McDuck when the two worked on a ship together. A Glass of Water (D 89276) depicts the two misers as having been close friends back when they were both poor, and Reunion (D 90106) apparently shows them as having mined in the Klondike together. There's also Plunkett's Emporium (D 91210) which I know little about but feel like has been brought up by someone else before.

I'd be down to learn some more about Grandma! Rosa showed a brief flashback of her as a little girl living in Duckburg, and a Taliaferro-strip mentions her travelling west on a wagon... or something along those lines.

Why does every Flintheart origin have him knowing Scrooge in the past? Why can't he just have a life separately from Scrooge? Rosa's Lo$ did that too, and it's one of the weaker aspects of it. Flintheart's introduction story even has him and Scrooge not knowing or recognizing each other. 

[Matilda]

Nov 16, 2020 15:49:38 GMT TheMidgetMoose said:

I wonder if Grandma Duck's backstory might be the one which we have the most stories about. If only someone could read all of those stories and connect them into one coherent timeline and narrative. In addition to the stories that Matilda  brought up, I TL 1677-B, which I think would be translated into English as The Grandma Duck Story or something of that sort, is a Grandma Duck backstory which I'm familiar with. It depicts Grandma has growing up on a farm with her grandmother but disliking it and moving to the city upon becoming an adult. In the city, after much hard work, she eventually becomes a model and starts dating a Clark Gable parody. They move to Africa together where he makes her work his farm while he goes on safaris. To read more about the story, I'd recommend checking out xanderares 's blog post about it. I'm sure that there are many other stories detailing various elements of Grandma's past. I would absolutely love to see someone, be it an official author making a Life and Times of Grandma Duck-style comic or just a fan writing out detailed stories and story summaries on this forum, weave all these stories into one.

I respect the wish to fit everything published together into one coherent narrative, and I certainly am impressed by the gyrations people go through to resolve obvious inconsistencies (lookin' at you, MacDuck!). Personally, I feel this is a lost cause, and the various stories of Grandma Duck's first seven decades will have massive contradictions. Just for starters, there's the issue of whether she is thought to be Scrooge's sister, or cousin, or (as in Rosa-world) related to Scrooge only through the marriage of her son to Scrooge's sister. Just look at Scrooge MacDuck's Wikia's Elvira page! You can't possibly fit a story where she is growing up with her brother Scrooge (and maybe Gideon) into the same coherent narrative as a story where she is not Scrooge's blood relative. Yes, some of the events described in different stories could be strung together in a single timeline, but not the different versions of what family she grew up in or what country they lived in. Even her first name is in dispute!

It will probably come as no surprise that I would *not* want her to be portrayed as Yet Another character who was not raised by her parents. I resist that with respect to April, May and June--I believe they live in an apartment with their mother, Daisy's sister, and their father--and with respect to Donald and Della, who I believe were raised by their parents who died when D&D were teens or young adults. AMJ may spend lots of vacation time with Daisy, whose suburban house and yard has more room for them to run around, and Donald may have spent summers on Grandma's farm while Della was at Chickadees summer camp. This thinking allows me to accept *some* of the many stories where AMJ are depicted as living with Daisy or even some of the Donald Duckling stories, as long as the kids aren't in school. You have to do some serious finagling to accept both the Donald Duckling backstories and the very existence of HDL--you have to say Della (or some sibling who could be HDL's parent) is radically older than Donald (she can't be younger, because there are apparently no parents anymore), and it's still very strange that she's never mentioned.

What I myself would be interested in is a "life of Elvira" story (or, say, 3-part series) that would accord with Rosa's version of the Barks world. It could certainly include or make reference to episodes from extant stories if those fit the overall sense of where she was when and with whom.

[Matilda]

Nov 16, 2020 19:34:03 GMT LP said:

Nov 15, 2020 14:11:40 GMT Matilda said:

Yes, il patto della luna is the story I would also have mentioned as the closest thing to an origin story for Magica. There’s a series of flashbacks to her childhood and adolescence. Personally I don’t accept this backstory because it explains the origin of her pursuit of the Number One dime as an assigned task/challenge to work the amulet spell, and I don’t like that theory at all. If Magica is going to waste much of her life in a futile quest, I at least want her to be granted the dignity of agency in coming up with this goal on her own, out of her own research into the amulet spell.

I really want to read that one. It seems we are playing mostly by the same rules when it comes to what's allowed in our head-canons, Matilda, and I'll likely exclude this one too. It's a shame. 
I just want to know why Magica wants that gold amulet so bad. What would she do with unlimited gold? It's been 59 years - it's time we found out her motivation!

Since you and Minotaur are interested, maybe I will post a rough-and-ready translation from the French of the flashback sections of this story on a new thread here at some point.

[Matilda]

On the "surviving Duck family members" thread a year ago, Scroogerello mentioned the story Hoe Gijs bij Oma Duck kwam, or "How Gus ended up at Grandma Duck's". That certainly counts as a backstory, giving the origin of a central feature of the current Duckworld.

[LP]

Nov 16, 2020 21:09:55 GMT Matilda said:

Since you and Minotaur are interested, maybe I will post a rough-and-ready translation from the French of the flashback sections of this story on a new thread here at some point.

I would appreciate that greatly!

About the Gus-Grandma origin, when do those flashbacks take place relative to the present? When does Gus secure the gig? There's a theory that Gus replaced Grandpa Duck as the farmhand when the latter died. This would have happened no too long before the "now", as Grandpa is implied to still be alive in The Hard Loser.

[Matilda]

Nov 17, 2020 9:40:24 GMT LP said:

Nov 16, 2020 21:09:55 GMT Matilda said:

Since you and Minotaur are interested, maybe I will post a rough-and-ready translation from the French of the flashback sections of this story on a new thread here at some point.

I would appreciate that greatly!

About the Gus-Grandma origin, when do those flashbacks take place relative to the present? When does Gus secure the gig? There's a theory that Gus replaced Grandpa Duck as the farmhand when the latter died. This would have happened no too long before the "now", as Grandpa is implied to still be alive in The Hard Loser.

We have to ask Scroogerello about the story--it's only been published in Dutch, and I haven't seen it.

[TheMidgetMoose]

Nov 16, 2020 21:04:06 GMT Matilda said:

I respect the wish to fit everything published together into one coherent narrative, and I certainly am impressed by the gyrations people go through to resolve obvious inconsistencies (lookin' at you, MacDuck!). Personally, I feel this is a lost cause, and the various stories of Grandma Duck's first seven decades will have massive contradictions. Just for starters, there's the issue of whether she is thought to be Scrooge's sister, or cousin, or (as in Rosa-world) related to Scrooge only through the marriage of her son to Scrooge's sister. Just look at Scrooge MacDuck's Wikia's Elvira page! You can't possibly fit a story where she is growing up with her brother Scrooge (and maybe Gideon) into the same coherent narrative as a story where she is not Scrooge's blood relative. Yes, some of the events described in different stories could be strung together in a single timeline, but not the different versions of what family she grew up in or what country they lived in. Even her first name is in dispute!

It will probably come as no surprise that I would *not* want her to be portrayed as Yet Another character who was not raised by her parents. I resist that with respect to April, May and June--I believe they live in an apartment with their mother, Daisy's sister, and their father--and with respect to Donald and Della, who I believe were raised by their parents who died when D&D were teens or young adults. AMJ may spend lots of vacation time with Daisy, whose suburban house and yard has more room for them to run around, and Donald may have spent summers on Grandma's farm while Della was at Chickadees summer camp. This thinking allows me to accept *some* of the many stories where AMJ are depicted as living with Daisy or even some of the Donald Duckling stories, as long as the kids aren't in school. You have to do some serious finagling to accept both the Donald Duckling backstories and the very existence of HDL--you have to say Della (or some sibling who could be HDL's parent) is radically older than Donald (she can't be younger, because there are apparently no parents anymore), and it's still very strange that she's never mentioned.

What I myself would be interested in is a "life of Elvira" story (or, say, 3-part series) that would accord with Rosa's version of the Barks world. It could certainly include or make reference to episodes from extant stories if those fit the overall sense of where she was when and with whom.

Good points indeed. As I think I've expressed before, I don't personally view all stories as being in one continuity anyway, so I totally see what you're saying. I guess what I was envisioning would make more sense as a Scrooge McDuck Wiki biography. I'd also be happy to see what you described in the last paragraph of your message, though I would definitely wish for the author of it to reference as many other stories as they could so long as those stories do not go against the grain of Rosa's and Barks's works or contradict anything established by them, i.e., the stories with her as Scrooge's sister.