The characterization of Fethry Duck

[juicymcduck]

As you all know, Fethry Duck was created by Al Hubbard and Dick Kinney for the Disney Studio Program. He was portrayed as an energetic, hyperactive beatnik who had a different fad of the week ever time he appeared — a convenient approach to come up with crazy shenanigans. Ironically, although he was created for foreign (= non-US) audiences, I only came to know that version of the character very late in the game.

Most comics I read as a child featured another version of Fethry, one that was mostly produced by Italian and French authors. This particular version looks like a patchwork of several characters: he’s got OG Fethry’s appearance, Donald’s bad luck, Gos Goose’s laziness, and a form of kookiness not unlike that of the obscure cousin Sgrizzo Coot. (The most recurring joke in the French material was that he slept all the time and favored tuna (!) feather pillows.)

My question here is twofold: (1) those of you who are familiar with both versions of the character, which one do you prefer? (2) why do you think Fethry’s characterization was so dramatically altered across the pond?

[phalanx091]

In my opinion Italian version of Fethry isn't such different from Hubbard origins. He is still this one weird duck with even weirder ideas, some of Faccini's on this character is more Hubbardish than stories created by Hubbard himself.

[Ramapith]

As a longtime Fethry writer/editor, I think outright Gus-ish laziness is wrong for such a motivated character.

But I can absolutely accept dreaminess spawned by Fethry's active imagination ("Think of it, Don... planting zucchinis on Mars... the climate is perfect!"), or cheerfully laid-back reactions to mayhem that would bother others ("Relax, Uncle Scrooge... that gorilla's just freely expressing herself!")

[bats]

Yeah, I think "fad of the week" is a bit too restrictive of a concept for him, and I don't think that's really what the original idea was either. Fethry is someone with a very wild imagination that ends up causing trouble for his surroundings because he gets all kinds of kooky ideas.

There's a classic Hubbard/Kinney story where Daisy hires him as a party planner and his insane ideas involve stuff like "the whole roast pig is actually a living pig that was just lying still" and "the surprise with the surprise cake is that it was made of cardboard and filled with living crows". Sure you can stretch the definition of "fad" and call "party planning" Fethry's fad of the week here, but you could do that for all the various mastery Donald stories too. The actual concept is more "Fethry goes about things in absolutely insane ways nobody but him would ever think would be good ideas".

Jul 14, 2021 7:15:35 GMT juicymcduck said:

a form of kookiness not unlike that of the obscure cousin Sgrizzo Coot.

Not sure if you're aware, but the reason Sgrizzo is so obscure is that he was created almost exactly at the same time Fethry was (fall 1964) and then got shelved for over 30 years before it was decided to actually make stories about him again (with the exception of a couple big event stories that featured pretty much everyone). The reason? The character was seen as so similar to Fethry writers might as well just use Fethry instead of confusing readers by having two more or less identical characters running around.

[Ramapith]

Jul 14, 2021 22:58:42 GMT bats said:

Yeah, I think "fad of the week" is a bit too restrictive of a concept for him, and I don't think that's really what the original idea was either. Fethry is someone with a very wild imagination that ends up causing trouble for his surroundings because he gets all kinds of kooky ideas.

There's a classic Hubbard/Kinney story where Daisy hires him as a party planner and his insane ideas involve stuff like "the whole roast pig is actually a living pig that was just lying still" and "the surprise with the surprise cake is that it was made of cardboard and filled with living crows". Sure you can stretch the definition of "fad" and call "party planning" Fethry's fad of the week here, but [...] The actual concept is more "Fethry goes about things in absolutely insane ways nobody but him would ever think would be good ideas".

Interestingly, Fethry may seem slightly less insane for an American reading the original version of the story.

It's not treated as a surprise that the pig is a live pig: instead, Fethry brings her as a pet from the start, poses her on the table and explains clearly that she's only there for decoration, not eating, so while he's clearly being silly and tempting fate, he's not deliberately serving a live pig as a cooked one.

The cake, meanwhile, isn't specified as being made of cardboard in English; it might simply be a legitimate, but hollow cake, and the specific presence of blackbirds (not crows, in English) is less random than a deliberate literalization of the old English poem,

Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing;
Wasn't that a dainty dish, to set before the King?

By the traditions of literacy and verse, Fethry is recreating a genuine medieval spectacle that, in his dreamy and literary manner, he has every reason to believe will impress people. He's still a blundering blockhead, of course, but his ideas aren't as random as they may have seemed in some translations.

(Hey, I'm not going to try to defend Fethry making lemonade in the fountain...)

[bats]

Interesting, especially with the poem. Definitely not something that would translate to a foreign audience.

Jul 15, 2021 5:24:35 GMT Ramapith said:

It's not treated as a surprise that the pig is a live pig: instead, Fethry brings her as a pet from the start, poses her on the table and explains clearly that she's only there for decoration, not eating, so while he's clearly being silly and tempting fate, he's not deliberately serving a live pig as a cooked one.

That scene I'm pretty sure was cut in the version I read.

[juicymcduck]

Jul 14, 2021 13:37:10 GMT Ramapith said:

As a longtime Fethry writer/editor, I think outright Gus-ish laziness is wrong for such a motivated character.

Yes, "motivated" is the term I was looking for! I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, my description of "Italian" Fethry as a patchwork harkens back to vague memories of a story I read many years ago — can’t remember the title, unfortunately. It was about Donald, Gladstone and Fethry competing to inherit the castle of a long-lost relative, some kooky and ugly noble. In the end of the day, Fethry was chosen as the heir because only embodied the same three character traits the late noble had: bad luck, laziness, and… I forgot the third.:$

Jul 14, 2021 22:58:42 GMT bats said:

Not sure if you're aware, but the reason Sgrizzo is so obscure is that he was created almost exactly at the same time Fethry was (fall 1964) and then got shelved for over 30 years before it was decided to actually make stories about him again (with the exception of a couple big event stories that featured pretty much everyone). The reason? The character was seen as so similar to Fethry writers might as well just use Fethry instead of confusing readers by having two more or less identical characters running around.

I knew they were both created in 1964, but had no idea that Sgrizzo was deliberately shelved because of that. Where did you learn about that? (To be fair, I'm still very unfamiliar with Sgrizzo/Kildare, whose 1964 origin story still has’nt been translated into French.)

Jul 15, 2021 5:58:28 GMT bats said:

That scene I'm pretty sure was cut in the version I read.

What version was that?

[Ramapith]

Jul 15, 2021 5:58:28 GMT bats said:

Interesting, especially with the poem. Definitely not something that would translate to a foreign audience.

It never ceases to amaze me just how American Dick Kinney's S-coded stories are, with at least as many provincial American cultural references as Barks—even though Kinney was producing his stories specifically for an overseas market, where only Australia published them in English.

It's exciting for me to publish them in English today when I can, in part because so few outside Australia have actually seen most of the gags as they're supposed to be seen.

[bats]

Jul 15, 2021 6:21:52 GMT juicymcduck said:

Jul 14, 2021 22:58:42 GMT bats said:

Not sure if you're aware, but the reason Sgrizzo is so obscure is that he was created almost exactly at the same time Fethry was (fall 1964) and then got shelved for over 30 years before it was decided to actually make stories about him again (with the exception of a couple big event stories that featured pretty much everyone). The reason? The character was seen as so similar to Fethry writers might as well just use Fethry instead of confusing readers by having two more or less identical characters running around.

I knew they were both created in 1964, but had no idea that Sgrizzo was deliberately shelved because of that. Where did you learn about that? (To be fair, I'm still very unfamiliar with Sgrizzo/Kildare, whose 1964 origin story still has’nt been translated into French.)

Oh man, I don't remember. It's possible it was just someone theorizing too, rather than a statement of fact.
I have read his origin story though, and you could very easily just plopFethry into Sgrizzo's role there without him eeming out of character. The two ARE very similar.

Jul 15, 2021 6:21:52 GMT juicymcduck said:

Jul 15, 2021 5:58:28 GMT bats said:

That scene I'm pretty sure was cut in the version I read.

What version was that?

This one:
inducks.org/issue.php?c=no%2FDD1998-07#j

I checked it now and there is a scene where Fethry places the pig on the table, but the dialogue here is just "Here's a pig on a silver platter. Doesn't it look delicious? Doesn't it make your mouth water? But nobody can eat from it! You see, I need it later tonight."

I guess this was originally him talking to the pig and telling it to stay still?

[juicymcduck]

Jul 15, 2021 9:52:35 GMT bats said:

I checked it now and there is a scene where Fethry places the pig on the table, but the dialogue here is just "Here's a pig on a silver platter. Doesn't it look delicious? Doesn't it make your mouth water? But nobody can eat from it! You see, I need it later tonight."

I guess this was originally him talking to the pig and telling it to stay still?

The original text is: "And piggy on the platter with an apple in her mouth! But absolutely no eating! I need her for other engagements!" (Much more tellingly, we see Fethry arrive with the live pig on a leash on page 2.)

[bats]

Yeah, I remembered the scene with the pig on the leash.

Jul 15, 2021 6:21:52 GMT juicymcduck said:

Jul 14, 2021 13:37:10 GMT Ramapith said:

As a longtime Fethry writer/editor, I think outright Gus-ish laziness is wrong for such a motivated character.

Yes, "motivated" is the term I was looking for! I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, my description of "Italian" Fethry as a patchwork harkens back to vague memories of a story I read many years ago — can’t remember the title, unfortunately. It was about Donald, Gladstone and Fethry competing to inherit the castle of a long-lost relative, some kooky and ugly noble. In the end of the day, Fethry was chosen as the heir because only embodied the same three character traits the late noble had: bad luck, laziness, and… I forgot the third.:$

It's this story: inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+2154-3

The third trait was clumsiness, though it should be mentioned that Fethry won because he injured his leg (clumsiness and bad luck) and then spent the rest of the day in bed to recover ("laziness"), so it didn't really imply that Fethry was inherently lazy.

[sim]

When I did interviews for my blog (almost a decade ago), the characterization of Fethry Duck was something I asked a few authors, because I was really interested about their conception of this "obscure" duck (of course not so obscure in Italy -where I live- since he appears every week on Topolino).

Here some definitions I got:

STEFAN PETRUCHA: If Horace is a greedy version of Goofy, then cousin Fethry is pretty much Goofy with a political agenda. He’s a true believer, more in love with believing something than with what he happens to believe at the time. From all their personalities, it’s very easy to see what kind of stories would work with them.


JANET GILBERT: As for Fethry, I'd never even heard of the character until I started writing for Egmont, and am still not quite sure who he is! A hippie, sort of?

KARI KORHONEN: Fethry I've never got a handle on. Nor have many writers. I suppose you had to live through the hippie-years for that.

LARS JENSEN:     1. is as smart as Barks' version of Donald Duck

                          2. has the manipulative powers of Scrooge

This views are pretty different from the Italian version (at least nowadays'), where Fethry is just a bizarre relative with crazy hobbies (kind of Kinney's) and a bit stupid also. Note that Donald's cat Tabby is Fethry's in Enrico Faccini stories.

[Spectrus]

Tabby (who also appeared as Fethry's cat in one story by Artibani I recently read) actually moved back to Donald in the series "Miao" (Meow): inducks.org/subseries.php?c=Miao