Grandpa Duck

[Scroogerello]

In the Dutch translation of the story, "Pietrino Paperino" is called "Oom Daniël", and he is Scrooge's uncle and Donald's great-uncle.
As for the brother-sister references:
In the second panel of page 26, when Scrooge drives away in his car, (the last panel of which you showed a scan), Scrooge says "Op naar mijn dierbare zus!" ("I'm off to my dearest sister!"). Then, in the second panel of page 29, Scrooge says: "That unknown benefactor, who helped my poor sister out of her finanical problems, was yours truly!".
Note that, since the references were apparently added by the Dutch translators, this translation (first printed in 2013) is a fairly recent example of Scrooge and GD being siblings.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Apr 7, 2017 9:53:56 GMT drakeborough said:

Mar 24, 2017 19:52:58 GMT Scroogerello said:

A more recent example of Grandma and Scrooge being portrayed as siblings is the 2013 Dutch translation of this story:
coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL++582-A

Mar 24, 2017 22:25:38 GMT drakeborough said:

I don't have the story, so I can't say if the reference to them being sibiling is already present in the original version or if it's something added by the Dutch translator. All I know is that in the story you linked Grandma's name is said to be Genoveffa (this is way before Rosa took the name Elviry from an obscure old story and made it mainstream as Elvira).

I got hold of the story ("Paperino e la vecchia ricevuta", 1967, text by Carlo Chendi and art by Luciano Gatto), and there's no reference to Grandma and Scrooge being sibilings in the original Italian version. Since you said there's a reference to that in the Dutch version, it must have been added by the Dutch translator. Can you tell me the page and panel in which the reference is present?

That said, we are not off-topic if we discuss that story here because I saw that it contains multiple mentions of the very subject of this thread: Donald's grandfather.

This is the plot of the story (I'll include many spoilers): while looking for a costume for a masked ball, Donald finds his grandfather's uniform when he was part of the 7th Cavalry Regiment. Inside the uniform's cap there's a receipt belonged to Pietrino Paperino (his name can be translated as Little-Peter Little-Duck, and is similar to Donald Duck's Italian name, Paolino Paperino, which means Little-Paul Little-Duck. I guess the logical English localized name of Pietrino Paperino would be Peter Duck). According to the receipt, Peter Duck had loaned Scrooge ten dollars so that Scrooge could buy an equipment to be a gold prospector in the Klondike (Soapy Slick is reading this and says hi); in exchange for the loan, Scrooge had to repay Peter with half of the gold he would find in the Klondike plus the interests. And since all of Scrooge's money directly or indirectly derives from the gold he found in the Klondike, half of Scrooge's money now belongs to the heir of the late Peter Duck, which is Donald Duck. Scrooge decides to do a research on Peter's will, and finds out that he left everything to his grandson, Donald Duck, with the exception of his uniform which was left to Peter's cousin Tom Paper (Peter and Tom were both part of the 7th Cavalry Regiment). Since Donald found the receipt in Peter's uniform's cap, Scrooge concludes that Donald doesn't own it. Tom Paper is dead, and in his will he left everything (i.e. Peter's uniform) to his distant relative Pieretto Paperetto, who is still alive and tells Scrooge that he gave up his inheritance in favour of Grandma Duck who is a distant cousin of him. Grandma Duck tells Scrooge that a mysterious benefactor once gave her the money to rebuild her farm (which had been destroyed by a fire) without revealing his identity: he didn't expect to be refunded, but she still decided to gave him something, and she gave him the rights on that uniform. The benefactor was actually Scrooge, and now that he owns the uniform and the receipt contained in it, Donald doesn't own anymore half of Scrooge's money and even has to repay him of the 10 million dollars he already spent. The story ends with an example of Writers Cannot Do Math, as Scrooge wrongly says that, if Donald pays him one dollar per day, it would take him about 27,387 years and six months to pay the whole debt.

I won't upload every panel in which Donald's grandfather is mentioned, but I will at least upload the panels where he actually appears:

SCROOGE: Hi, Peter!

PETER: Scrooge, my boy! How did it go for you? Did you find the gold?

SCROOGE: Yes, and I came to pay my debt with half of the gold I found!

PETER: Are you kidding? I don't want it!

SCROOGE: But you lend me those ten dollars and...

PETER: It was you who insisted to sign the receipt! I gave you those ten dollars as a gift! So, keep your gold!

SCROOGE: Thanks, Peter!

PETER: You are a good boy, and you really deserve to make a fortune!

SCROOGE: I was so moved that I forgot to tell him to destroy the receipt! I am sure he forgot too!

I can also confirm that what I read about Grandma Duck's name is true: in this story, she is actually referred to as Genoveffa Papera ("Genevieve Duck"):

SCROOGE: Then you are the heir of Tom Paper!

PIERETTO PAPERETTO: Yes, but I gave up that inheritance in favout of a distant cousin of mine. Genevieve Duck!

SCROOGE: It's Grandma Duck!

PIERETTO PAPERETTO: ?

By the way, now that I think about it, I am not sure that what I said in the first paragraph of this message is 100% true. Peter is never said to be Grandma Duck's late husband, and it seems he is not since his heir is Donald and not Grandma Duck; plus, we are told Grandma Duck is the distant cousin of the distant relative of a cousin of Peter, so it seems the two of them are basically unrelated. Every family tree has two sides, and if Peter was Donald's grandfather but was unrelated to both Scrooge and Grandma Duck then it seems that, in the context of this story, Peter belonged to one side of Donald's family tree and both Scrooge and Grandma belong to the other. If Scrooge and Grandma are implied to belong to the same side of Donald's family tree, then it's possible that Chendi did think of Scrooge and Grandma as sibilings when writing this story. Maybe. Or maybe I am seeing too much into this issue despite the fact that this is just a story written in a period when writers didn't always think too hard about what they were doing and often had no idea of what exactly they were implying.

Note that in Gilles Maurice's Duck Family Tree, Pietrino Paperino is included under the name of 'Jeremiah McDuck' and is featured as an uncle of Scrooge McDuck. I… have no clue why.

[drakeborough]

Apr 7, 2017 11:08:06 GMT Scroogerello said:

In the Dutch translation of the story, "Pietrino Paperino" is called "Oom Daniël", and he is Scrooge's uncle and Donald's great-uncle.

After reading the story I thought this was the case, since you mentioned the story in this thread without saying that Donald's grandfather appears in it.

Still, I wonder why some translators feel the need to make pointless changes to the stories. In the case in question, the change doesn't even make sense: if Pietrino/Daniël were Scrooge's uncle and Donald's great-uncle, his heir would likely be Scrooge rather than Donald.

Apr 7, 2017 11:08:06 GMT Scroogerello said:

As for the brother-sister references:
In the second panel of page 26, when Scrooge drives away in his car, (the last panel of which you showed a scan), Scrooge says "Op naar mijn dierbare zus!" ("I'm off to my dearest sister!").

In the Italian version, Scrooge says "È Nonna Papera!" ("It's Grandma Duck!"), since she has been referred to as Genoveffa Papera in the previous panel (see the last picture in my previous message). Is she referred to as "Oma Duck" ("Grandma Duck") in the Dutch version of that panel, or is she called Dora?

Apr 7, 2017 11:08:06 GMT Scroogerello said:

Then, in the second panel of page 29, Scrooge says: "That unknown benefactor, who helped my poor sister out of her finanical problems, was yours truly!".

In the Italian version, Scrooge says "Quell'ignoto benefattore che regalò il denaro a Nonna Papera per ricostruire la fattoria... sono io!" ("That unknown benefactor who gave the money to Grandma Duck for rebuilding her farm... that's me!").

Apr 7, 2017 11:08:06 GMT Scroogerello said:

Note that, since the references were apparently added by the Dutch translators, this translation (first printed in 2013) is a fairly recent example of Scrooge and GD being siblings.

It's bad enough to see sibiling references in newly produced stories, but it's really annoying to see them added into translations of older foreign stories that don't have such references.

Apr 7, 2017 11:14:36 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Note that in Gilles Maurice's Duck Family Tree, Pietrino Paperino is included under the name of 'Jeremiah McDuck' and is featured as an uncle of Scrooge McDuck. I… have no clue why.

Could it be that Pietrino is also said to be Scrooge's uncle in the French edition of the story? That would explain Maurice's choice. Unfortunately, the explanatory table of Maurice's tree has been "under re-construction" for more than ten years, and at the moment I can't use the Wayback Machine to see if the explanatory table that was present many years ago mentioned the character.

[Scroogerello]

Apr 7, 2017 15:34:30 GMT drakeborough said:

Apr 7, 2017 11:08:06 GMT Scroogerello said:

As for the brother-sister references:
In the second panel of page 26, when Scrooge drives away in his car, (the last panel of which you showed a scan), Scrooge says "Op naar mijn dierbare zus!" ("I'm off to my dearest sister!").

In the Italian version, Scrooge says "È Nonna Papera!" ("It's Grandma Duck!"), since she has been referred to as Genoveffa Papera in the previous panel (see the last picture in my previous message). Is she referred to as "Oma Duck" ("Grandma Duck") in the Dutch version of that panel, or is she called Dora?

She is referred to as Dora Duck in that panel--as I mentioned earlier in the thread, the name has become quite well-known to readers throughout the years. Personally, I think the name fits the character well (note that, in Dutch, there seems to have been more of an attempt to maintain the alliteration with "Duck" in the names of Donald's relatives; Grandma Duck's full name is Dora Duck, Fethry is Diederik Duck, Scrooge is Dagobert Duck, Eider Duck is Driekus Duck, Seafoam McDuck is Dorus Duck, etc. The same goes for the German version, where, in addition, Rumpus McFowl is called Dietram Duck and Gideon McDuck is Dettmar Duck).

[drakeborough]

Apr 7, 2017 17:29:49 GMT Scroogerello said:

Apr 7, 2017 15:34:30 GMT drakeborough said:

In the Italian version, Scrooge says "È Nonna Papera!" ("It's Grandma Duck!"), since she has been referred to as Genoveffa Papera in the previous panel (see the last picture in my previous message). Is she referred to as "Oma Duck" ("Grandma Duck") in the Dutch version of that panel, or is she called Dora?

She is referred to as Dora Duck in that panel--as I mentioned earlier in the thread, the name has become quite well-known to readers throughout the years.

Then it makes sense that that the Dutch translator would rewrite the "It's Grandma Duck!" line since, according to what you said, in 2013 it would be redundant to remind Dutch readers that Dora Duck and Grandma Duck are the same person. That line was needed in the Italian version since Genoveffa Papera is a name the writer made up for that story, and was never used in any other story before or after it. Still, I wish the rewritten line had been something other than "I'm off to my dearest sister!".

By the way, it would be interesting to investigate whether the name Dora was really used for the first time in the Dutch edition of "From Egg to Duck" or if there are earlier examples. But I guess a similar discussion should take place in a separate thread rather than here (and since I have posted an image of Grandma called Genoveffa, I guess there's enough material for a new discussion).

Apr 7, 2017 17:29:49 GMT Scroogerello said:

Personally, I think the name fits the character well (note that, in Dutch, there seems to have been more of an attempt to maintain the alliteration with "Duck" in the names of Donald's relatives; Grandma Duck's full name is Dora Duck, Fethry is Diederik Duck, Scrooge is Dagobert Duck, Eider Duck is Driekus Duck, Seafoam McDuck is Dorus Duck, etc. The same goes for the German version, where, in addition, Rumpus McFowl is called Dietram Duck and Gideon McDuck is Dettmar Duck).

There are many alliterations indeed, but I think they overdid it. Why should everyone have the surname Duck, including characters like Scrooge which wre purposely given a different surname in the original version? And why should everyone's first name start with "D"?

Apr 7, 2017 15:34:30 GMT drakeborough said:

Apr 7, 2017 11:14:36 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Note that in Gilles Maurice's Duck Family Tree, Pietrino Paperino is included under the name of 'Jeremiah McDuck' and is featured as an uncle of Scrooge McDuck. I… have no clue why.

Could it be that Pietrino is also said to be Scrooge's uncle in the French edition of the story? That would explain Maurice's choice. Unfortunately, the explanatory table of Maurice's tree has been "under re-construction" for more than ten years, and at the moment I can't use the Wayback Machine to see if the explanatory table that was present many years ago mentioned the character.

Update: the Wayback Machine is working now, and here is the most recent version (dated February 19, 2006) in which the explanatory table is still available. However, Pietrino is not mentioned, and maybe at the time he hadn't been included yet in the tree.

[drakeborough]

Jan 25, 2017 22:43:57 GMT drakeborough said:

This Italian story from 1952 may mention Donald's grandfather, but I don't have it so I can't check.

In this Italian story from 2011 he appears or is mentioned, and is called Dabney.

In this Italian story from 2015 he appears and is called "Nonno Papero" ("Grandpa Duck").

Ok, so I have already documented the first two entries of this list, but I haven't talked yet about the third entry. Now I can do it because I got hold of that story, which is Nonna Papera e la sbuffante Elvira ("Grandma Duck and the puffing Elvira"), from Topolino #3113 (July 28, 2015), written by Alessandro Sisti and drawn by Stefano Intini. Grandpa Duck appears in a flashback of two non-consecutive panels:

GRANDMA: Good job, kids! Now I can introduce you to Elvira!

NEPHEW: Oooh! It's fantastic!

NEPHEW: Yes, but... what is it? A locomotve or some sort of tractor?

GRANDMA: A bit of both! It's a steam tractor!

GRANDMA: Many years ago it was the maximum of modernity for farms!

GRANDMA/CAPTION BOX: Grandpa Duck and I were the first to have one in all Webfoot County [NOTE: the name Webfoot County comes from Barks' ten-page The Truant Nephews, 1951]

GRANDPA: Great, eh?

GRANDMA: Yes, but don't rush!

FARMER: Gasp!

GRANDMA: Our neighbors considered us to be avant-garde farmers!

NEPHEW: Compliments!

NEPHEW: Maybe they might have liked to take a ride!

GRANDMA: You almost guessed, Dewey!

GRANDMA/CAPTION BOX: They asked us to give it to them for the hardest jobs!

FARMER: Formidable! Thanks, friends!

FARMER: We should take one too!

NEPHEW: Why didn't they buy one?

GRANDMA: Back then a steam tractor was very expensive!

GRANDMA: But we got it for a low price!

NEPHEW: What a luck!

GRANDMA: The person who sold it to us didn't want us to tell anyone! Eh! Eh!

NEPHEW: It still looks new!

NEPHEW: Explain us why it is called like you!

NEPHEW: Elvira is your name!

GRANDMA: Back in those days this veteran looked like a wonderful machine!

GRANDMA: It was never tired and was able to do many things!

NEPHEW: Eh, eh! Who does it remind you of, brothers?

GRANDMA: Right, Louie! In fact, Grandpa called it after me!

NEPHEW: But why puffing? You don't puff!

GRANDMA: But it does! You'll hear it!

NEPHEW: Does it still work?

In both panels of the flashback it seems that Grandpa's design is based on Rosa's version, since he has his straw hat, but the images are so small that we can't see if he has his goatee or not. On the other hand, in a later panel we see the picture of a character that must be Grandpa, and in addition to his straw hat he has a goatee:

Finally, Grandpa gets one last mention in the following panel:

NEPHEW: Grandma Duck said she and Grandpa were the first ones to have a steam tractor!

[RobbK1]

Mar 24, 2017 11:20:21 GMT drakeborough said:

Mar 23, 2017 21:05:49 GMT Scroogerello said:

Something else that I thought would be worth adding to this topic: in Don Rosa's original sketches & script for "The King of the Klondike", Grandpa Duck had a considerably larger role.

Indeed, it is worth adding to this topic. I wonder why I didn't think of mentioning it here before.

An interesting fact is that in these sketches Grandpa Duck has a different design, for example he has no goatee.

Mar 23, 2017 21:05:49 GMT Scroogerello said:

This storyline is very different from want the printed story ended up with, but I think it's a shame it was abandoned. In fact, I personally find this unpublished storyline much more entertaining and funny than the *actual* story

It is entertaining an funny indeed, but I could see why Byron decided the script needed a rewrite, and it's hard to argue against that:

But having said all that about the story, the truth is that this was the other instance in the series when my editor Byron rejected the entire first draft of the script! Ouch! My original story involved $crooge meeting up with Grandma Duck who was running a diner in Dawson City with all her family, whom I ended up using in chapter X. Grandma's husband at one point is on his way to put $crooge's claim in his safety deposit box, but Soapy has told Goldie about it and Goldie coldcocks him and swipes the claim. Goldie had a large role in this version, with her and Grandma Duck getting into a dance-hall-girl vs. frontier-wife brawl right out of DESTRY RIDES AGAIN. But Byron said that $crooge's Yukon adventure should represent the toughest, nastiest, loneliest, most miserable time in his life to be suitably dramatic! My first script had $crooge almost like the secondary character in a story about a large bunch of his friends and supporters. And Byron was right, as always! So I did a complete rewrite. It would take too much space to show you the entire original 24-page script, but we'll try to use one sequence to show you it was a funny, but lifeless tale.

Mar 23, 2017 21:05:49 GMT Scroogerello said:

I never really liked that 'Hulk-smash' sequence in the printed story, where Scrooge beats up Soapy Slick and destroys an entire riverboat.

Well, Soapy Slick crossed the line by mocking her recently died mother (Scrooge didn't even knew she was dead), so it's not like the berserk button sequence was overdone or uncalled for. Anyway, there's one thing about that epic scene that is often misanderstood: it didn't necessarily show what really happened, it's just that after the McDuck legend grew the facts were exaggerated every time the tale was retold. Indeed, in "Hearts of the Yukon" we hear Scrooge's version of the events.

I like Don's sketches MUCH, MUCH better than his final pencils and inking!  They are nice and fluid, and have a lot of breathing room.  I can actually read them and see what's going on.  I won't buy Don's hardbound volumes.  But, if they'd make hardbound volumes of ALL of his storyboard sketches, - I WOULD buy those!  I'd do the same for Jan Kruse's, Evert Geradts' and Gorm Transgaard's.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Here is something else entirely: a conspicuously non-appearance of Grandpa Duck in a Barks story (albeit written by Bob Gregory). Consider this panel, from Too Much Help (code W OS 1150-04):



Not cried since kindergarten, huh? Grandma, am I to take it you didn't shed a tear when your beloved husband died?

[drakeborough]

It seems like back then many writers often didn't think too hard about what they were doing, sometimes even to the point of insulting the reader's intelligence.

A more recent case of Grandpa's non-appearance is this Italian story from 2013, set in the present, which shows the romance between Grandma Duck and an old duck named George McQuack: a mention of her late husband would have been appropriate imho.

Similar situations happen in this Italian story from 2000 (set in the past, since it's a Donny Duck story, and in this series Grandpa is implied to be dead already), this Italian story also from 2000 (set in the present), and this American story from 1963 (set in the present and mentioned by Scroogerello in another thread): in the first two stories the supposed romance is the result of a misunderstanding, while in the third story the romance is real. Anyway, I think none of these stories mentions Grandpa Duck.

Then, there are stories in which Grandpa's non-appearance seems to be replaced by Grandpa's non-existence. I am thinking about Rota's "From Egg to Duck" (1984), in which she adopts Donald after finding it in a street and decides to call herself Donald's grandmother. Or this Italian story from 1990 where, as I mentioned a couple of times, she bought Donald's egg at the market:

DONALD'S LONG-LOST BROTHER (which doesn't exist because we later find out the whole story is a dream): "Grandma Duck at the market bought not only you, as an omelet egg, but also me. Two twin egges, if we can say that... and she raised us with great love!"

In both stories it seems Grandma is a spinster rather than a vidow. She is also regarded as a spinster by some people who make family trees in which she is Donald's aunt rather than his grandmother. Which I don't like, but I can't help taht since I am not the author of these works.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Apr 20, 2017 10:15:14 GMT drakeborough said:

Or this Italian story from 1990 where, as I mentioned a couple of times, she bought Donald's egg at the market:

DONALD'S LONG-LOST BROTHER (which doesn't exist because we later find out the whole story is a dream): "Grandma Duck at the market bought not only you, as an omelet egg, but also me. Two twin egges, if we can say that... and she raised us with great love!"

If the whole story is All Just A Dream, then there's no reason to fret about the whole "market egg" thing. Dreams don't always make perfect sense.

[drakeborough]

Apr 20, 2017 10:23:16 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Apr 20, 2017 10:15:14 GMT drakeborough said:

Or this Italian story from 1990 where, as I mentioned a couple of times, she bought Donald's egg at the market:

DONALD'S LONG-LOST BROTHER (which doesn't exist because we later find out the whole story is a dream): "Grandma Duck at the market bought not only you, as an omelet egg, but also me. Two twin egges, if we can say that... and she raised us with great love!"

If the whole story is All Just A Dream, then there's no reason to fret about the whole "market egg" thing. Dreams don't always make perfect sense.

I admire your attempts at trying to make sense of things that don't have sense. Still, it's pretty obvious that, in the context of this story, the writer meant for Donald to really have been hatched from an omelet egg bought at the market, and the false-information-from-the-dream is only the presence of a second egg who became Donald's twin brother.

So, I don't think I am mistaken if I say that in both this story and Rota's story Grandma is probably meant to be a spinster. Which of course would raise many questions about the origins of her other grandsons like Gladstone, but these questions would be pointless once we realize these stories falls into the category of "writers don't trying too hard and often not having an exact idea of what they are doing".

It's ironic that the writer of the "omelet egg bought at the market" story, Carlo Panaro, is now one of the authors who most often quotes facts from Barks and Rosa.

[drakeborough]

Another indirect (very indirect) mention of Grandpa Duck is in Don Rosa's "The Duck Who Never Was", in which Gus Goose draws a family tree on a wall with a chalk:

We don't see the names on the family tree except for "me" (meaning Gus) and "Scrooge", but it's pretty obvious who is who (well, except that it wasn't obvious for the letterer, who inverted the position of Scrooge and Gus). Anyway, it's easy to tell that Grandpa Duck is the one Gus is indicating with the top of his chalk. By the way, if empty circles count as a mention, then "The Duck Who Never Was" has also one of the few Rosa's mentions of Della in a story. And Rosa's only mention of Della's husband in a story. And Rosa's only mention of Fethry in a story.

I will conclude this post with an image called "Donald's Family Tree Pin Set", from a limited to 3000 edition pinset box edited by Disney Catalog (I don't know the exact year, but I guess it's from the 2000's). Only characters appearing in animation up to the 1960's were included, and one of them is grandaddy from the short "No Hunting", here called "Grandpa Duck":

Also, something that wasn't said on page 1 of this thread: in the short "No Hunting", the character was voiced by Bill Thomson. As for the Disneyland episode "Your Host, Donald Duck" (which apparently is still not available anywhere) I see no credit for the character's voice, but I don't know if it's because he doesn't talk or because none could identify it (I guess it's the latter, since the special being so hard to find means there are few people who could try recognizing his voice).

[drakeborough]

As I mentioned in another thread, the Italian comic title I Classici di Walt Disney (first series, second series) consisted, from 1957 to 1984, of older stories tied together by new frame stories, which make it seem as all the reprinted stories are part of a single tale.

Why am I mentioning this fact here? Well, the story Paperino e la vecchia ricevuta (1967) which we discussed here was published in I Classici di Walt Disney (first series) #39 (March 1971), with this frame story written by Gian Giacomo Dalmasso and drawn by Giuseppe Perego tying together all the reprinted comics. The segment of the frame story that comes after "Paperino e la vecchia ricevuta" briefly discusses the events of that story, and a mention is made of Pietrino... except that there is a goof and he is called Pietrino Paolino instead of Pietrino Paperino (as I previously said, the name Pietrino Paperino is based on Donald's Italian name, which is Paolino Paperino).

Also, while I confirm that in the story there are no references to Scrooge and Grandma being sibilings (unlike the 2013 Dutch translation), a couple of references are present in this segment of the frame story.

[drakeborough]

Jan 25, 2017 22:17:30 GMT drakeborough said:

[...]

Anyway, the first American version of the family tree was in WDC #600 (ad: October 17, 1995; cover: December 1995), and as you say he is called Humperdink here rather than (as Rosa originally planned) Dabney. This decision was made after a DCML exchange between Don Rosa and David Gerstein in October 1994. Gerstein's message (12 October):

And according to those rather bad Grandma stories of early-'50s WDC&S, Grandma's (apparently deceased) husband was named Humperdink. Consistently. Did you go with that, Don? I have not seen the Duck Family Tree (indeed, I have no idea when or if Gladstone plans to publish it) and I don't know what name you gave him.

This was Rosa's message (13 October):

DAVID:
I recall you posting a message about Grandma's husband being named "Humperdink" several months ago when you were just popping in and out here. Tell me what issues of WDC&S this appears in. And you imply it was mentioned more than once? That is unusual to see ANY sort of continuity in these comics in those days.
I can easilly be persuaded to use that name -- I picked "Dabney Duck" for reasons I can certainly no longer recall after 3 years. But since Barks never gave him a name, "Humperdink" has a precedent in those old WDC&S and does not conflict with Barks, so I can use it.

Did Rosa refer to a message of the previous day as being "several months ago"? I don't think so, therefore I guess he was referring to some other, previous message, but I can't find it. Anyway, this was Gerstein's reply (17 October):


First, Don Rosa asked me if "Humperdink" appeared more than once as the name of Donald's grandpa. As far as I remember, yes. Maybe not, but the fact remains that no other name was ever given (and furthermore, wasn't Grandma's name of Elvira only used once, too? I seem to remember that's what we concluded when discussing it some months ago). In the particular story I recall, Grandma was in need of money and decided to sell some antiques in her attic, but couldn't bring herself to get rid of them in the end because each of them reminded her of some great event in her life. Humperdink was mentioned many times in this story.

[...]

Anyway, it seems that David's recollection of more than one W-coded story using the name Humperdink was a false memory, since I don't think there's more than one (though I can't be 100% sure of that).

Maybe it wasn't a false memory?

TV Tropes says ""Humperdink" is the name given for Grandma's late husband in the 50s Grandma Duck comics", which is pretty generic, but later it also says "As early as the 50s Grandma Duck comics, it was established that Grandma has nothing but loving memories of her husband. One 1951 comic has her find his love letters in the attic while searching for stuff to sell and the apparent loss of the letters in the events following deeply upsets her. In another comic published that same year, Grandma is pressured into dressing up by her new maid and she picks a dress that reminds her of time spent with Humperdink."

The first example is obviously W VP 2-12 (unofficially known as "Grandma Duck and the Charity Sale"), which was widely discussed in various websites and even in this thread, but which story is the other one? I don't know if the person who wrote that TV Tropes page is a user of this forum or not, but at any rate here is a list of the 22 W-coded stories featuring Grandma Duck in the year 1951. If that story exists and is really from 1951, it must be one of those.

[RobbK1]

Jan 25, 2017 21:04:49 GMT Scroogerello said:

Jan 25, 2017 20:45:18 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Huh? I thought Daniel was supposed to be his… great-grandfather or something?

Not in the original version, at least...
Also, something I recently came across: apparently, Grandpa Duck reappeared in animation in the "Disneyland" episode "Your Host, Donald Duck". It's a shame that the episode is seemingly unavailable to watch anywhere. All I could find on the web was this screenshot:

They really should have made the "pioneer" Daniel Duck Donald's great Grandfather.  Donald was really too young to have had a mid 19th Century adult as his grandfather.  Another irrational mistake, similar to Scrooge McDuck having sailed as an adult on a Mississippi River Steamboat in the 1880s and still being only one generation older than Donald.