Post by Zantaf on Jul 30, 2017 14:04:00 GMT
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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.
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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).
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.