Elroy, Ellsworth, Pluto, Goofy, what's an animal and what's a person

[Fritz]

the Big Bad Wolf (does he have a first name in English?)

Zeke. In fact, according to Inducks, at least one English story gave him the full name Zeke Midas Wolf, which is a nod to his name in Dutch stories.

Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers kinda brought me into Disney comics, so it's always going to be a sentimental favorite...but occasional gag references aside (in some of the Boom Darkwing Duck comics) I could never consider that version part of the same universe as any Duck or Mice stories;  CDRR pretty clearly has human beings instead of dog nose people, and while many animals are sentient the human race as a whole just plain doesn't realize it.  It works on completely different "rules" than the Duck and Mice universes.

[drakeborough]

Jun 25, 2017 17:09:30 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Jun 25, 2017 13:08:26 GMT drakeborough said:

As far as the standard Mouse universe goes, Goofy has no son (minus the single example that I listed above) and he is definitely a bachelor and not a vidower. Because of that, I find it annoying when someone tries to indicate various female characters from the Mouse comic universe as the possible mother of Max. It's only the animation that (unfortunately) kept Max even after the Goof Troop show and movies ended, though it seems that they removed it from most recent productions, which is a good thing.

You are mistaken on one account, though: Goofy having a son was not made up for Goof Troop. In the 50's and 60's, it was a recurring element of his theatrical cartoons that he was married and had a young son, who was only ever called "Junior"

Actually, I'd say that a recurring element of Goofy's theatrical cartoons in the 50's and 60's is that... they didn't feature Goofy at all! Disney often regards their characters as actors playing roles (in animation more than in comics), and this idea was heavily used in the Goofy cartoons of the time, in which at first we were introduced to a world in which everyone is a Goofy lookalike (none of which was the "real" one), and then the series focused on one of them, George Geef, who could do things that Goofy cannot.

The fact that George is not Goofy is indicated by many clues: the fact that we were introduced to him through the device of a world populated by Goofy lookalikes, the fact that his appearance was gradually changed until he was noticeably different from Goofy, the fact that he has a different name, the fact that his life and personality were often different from Goofy's, etc. So, if George Geef is not Goofy, then it is true that, prior to Goof Troop, Goofy was always portrayed as being a bachelor who had no children. Because of that, it was annoying to see what was intended to be the real Goofy suddenly being a father of a pre-teen, effectively creating a schism between animation and comics, as the differences here were far bigger than whatever change DuckTales made from the Uncle Scroge comics.

By the way, this is in my opinion the real reason why we often see nephews/nieces in the Duck and Mouse universe rather than sons and daughter. I don't think it's a matter of censorship as many people say, it's just that when you have unpteen stories establishing that a character has no children you can't have a grown child appearing out of nowhere in the character's (unpteen+1)th story as if the child has always been there. Or, you could do it (and, in the case of Goof Troop, they did it), but it would violate everything about the established continuity, possibly disappointing readers/viewers who feel their intelligence has been insulted. That's why giving a character a nephew/niece is often the only way to create stories in which he/she interacts with a kid.

Jun 25, 2017 17:09:30 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

(most people think Max is that 'Junior' all grown up, suggestig Goof Troop takes place a few years after those theatrical cartoons).


On an other note enitrely, in my view of continuity, it's easy to reconcile Max with Goofy's apparent son-lessness: House of Mouse, generally agreed to take place a few years after An Extremely Goofy Movie (the chronologically last work set in the Goof Troop series), shows Max having a job as a doorman. Indeed, from Goof Troop to A Goofy Movie to An Extremely Goofy Movie to House of Mouse, Max is seen steadily aging from a twelve-year-old to an adult, a unique case in Classic Disney paraphernalia, I believe. At any rate, it's easy to assume that Gottfredson stories took place when Goofy was still single, and that recent stories that have him single again take place when Max is already an independant young man.

I really admire, and I am not ironic, the cleverness of your explanations with which you always try to find a way to tie everything (in this case, Max' existence) together in a single continuity: I am really amused by it. I guess you also have an explanation for Pete's wife and children, and for why they live in Spoonerville rather than Mouseton, and I can image what it may be.

That said, I am not really convinced by these arguments: for example, why didn't HDL age between Goofy not being a father yet and Max being almost an adult (I am not sure if working as a doorman necessarily means you are an adult)?

My explanation is simply that Goof Troop is non-canon to the Mouse universe comics, and in my headcanon Max doesn't exist.

Jun 25, 2017 19:37:18 GMT Fritz said:

the Big Bad Wolf (does he have a first name in English?)

Zeke. In fact, according to Inducks, at least one English story gave him the full name Zeke Midas Wolf, which is a nod to his name in Dutch stories.

So, he is called Zeke which is often a shortened form Ezekiel. This explains why in Italy he is called Ezechiele Lupo (meaning "Ezekiel Wolf"). In fact, I have learned the name Ezechiele with this character, to the point that I have a hard time not thinking about him whenever I hear the name.

[drakeborough]

Jun 25, 2017 19:37:18 GMT Fritz said:

the Big Bad Wolf (does he have a first name in English?)

Zeke. In fact, according to Inducks, at least one English story gave him the full name Zeke Midas Wolf, which is a nod to his name in Dutch stories.

I checked his Wikipedia page, and the part about his comic book stories says that "Carl Buettner, Gil Turner and Jack Bradbury were among the noted creators to work on the series in its early years, with Buettner giving Big Bad his proper name of Zeke (1946) and Turner supplying his middle name of Midas (1949)".

I don't know if Midas was invented as a middle name for Zeke or if it was meant to be a first name because the authors didn't knew about the earlier name Zeke: if it's the latter, then the fact that Midas is his middle name is a fan interpolation, while if it's the former then it is an official fact.

Regardless of which one of these two hypotheses is true, I don't think that the name Midas in English was meant to be a nod to his Dutch name: if anything, it's the other way round.

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Thought this would be helpful to our discussion (from Pete Emslie's blog):




This isn't perfect, but based on this, I'd say:
Pluto is an example of level 1.
Chip 'N Dale are either level 2 (if they don't communicate with Donald) or level 3 (if they do, or in Rescue Ranger form).
Jaq and Gus-Gus are level 3.
Donald, Mickey, Scrooge et al. are level 4 (except that they don't exist in a "human world", rather an "all-anthropomorphic people" world).
Personally, I'd rather the Duck and Mouse comic universes only have level 1 and level 4 type characters, because anything else gets messy.

EDIT: I'd split level 4 into two: level 4A where the character at times acts like, and is still treated like, the animal they are derived from (eg., Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, who, despite acting like human beings for the most part, are still hunted and threatened with being eaten by "humans" like Elmer Fudd; Bugs burrows in the ground, and Daffy can fly) and level 4B where the character is treated as a human being in all respects (eg., the Beagle Boys would never threaten to eat Scrooge, though dogs eat ducks). Among Disney characters, the Big Bad Wolf/Three Little Pigs situation is best described as a level 4A. Sometimes, like in the case of Brian Griffin from Family Guy, humor comes from an essentially level 4B character suddenly acting like or being treated like a level 4A one.

The wolf threatening to eat Gyro because he wants a "chicken dinner" in "The Think Box Bollix" is an example of Barks violating Gyro's status as a level 4B character and instead treating him like a level 4A one. (Also, I just realized, this is an example of where Barks actually identifies Gyro's species in a story)

EDIT 2: Okay, rereading a description of the story, I see it was Donald-disguised-as-a-wolf who suggested Gyro was a chicken, and the wolf who demoted Donald from a 4B to a 4A by saying he wanted "roast duck". Also, bizarrely, the wolf-disguised-as-a-dognose calls his disguise a "dog" instead of a "man", so this story is really all over the place, anthropomorphism-wise (I can't think of another Disney story where a dognose refers to himself as a "dog" instead of a human being).

[Scroogerello]

Jun 26, 2017 8:29:30 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 25, 2017 19:37:18 GMT Fritz said:

Zeke. In fact, according to Inducks, at least one English story gave him the full name Zeke Midas Wolf, which is a nod to his name in Dutch stories.

I checked his Wikipedia page, and the part about his comic book stories says that "Carl Buettner, Gil Turner and Jack Bradbury were among the noted creators to work on the series in its early years, with Buettner giving Big Bad his proper name of Zeke (1946) and Turner supplying his middle name of Midas (1949)".

I don't know if Midas was invented as a middle name for Zeke or if it was meant to be a first name because the authors didn't knew about the earlier name Zeke: if it's the latter, then the fact that Midas is his middle name is a fan interpolation, while if it's the former then it is an official fact.

Regardless of which one of these two hypotheses is true, I don't think that the name Midas in English was meant to be a nod to his Dutch name: if anything, it's the other way round.

Midas was supposed to be his first name in the original English, too. The idea that it's his middle name was made up by online fan articles.

EDIT: Just checked the original English; turns out that Midas actually was intened as his middle name, after all. Seems like I confused it with the Dutch translation.

[Fritz]

I don't think that the name Midas in English was meant to be a nod to his Dutch name: if anything, it's the other way round.

Just checked the original English; turns out that Midas actually was intened as his middle name, after all. Seems like I confused it with the Dutch translation.

That's why I love this place--always something new to learn! Thanks for setting that straight, guys.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 26, 2017 18:03:28 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

I'd split level 4 into two: level 4A where the character at times acts like, and is still treated like, the animal they are derived from (eg., Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, who, despite acting like human beings for the most part, are still hunted and threatened with being eaten by "humans" like Elmer Fudd; Bugs burrows in the ground, and Daffy can fly) and level 4B where the character is treated as a human being in all respects (eg., the Beagle Boys would never threaten to eat Scrooge, though dogs eat ducks). Among Disney characters, the Big Bad Wolf/Three Little Pigs situation is best described as a level 4A. Sometimes, like in the case of Brian Griffin from Family Guy, humor comes from an essentially level 4B character suddenly acting like or being treated like a level 4A one.

The wolf threatening to eat Gyro because he wants a "chicken dinner" in "The Think Box Bollix" is an example of Barks violating Gyro's status as a level 4B character and instead treating him like a level 4A one. (Also, I just realized, this is an example of where Barks actually identifies Gyro's species in a story)

EDIT 2: Okay, rereading a description of the story, I see it was Donald-disguised-as-a-wolf who suggested Gyro was a chicken, and the wolf who demoted Donald from a 4B to a 4A by saying he wanted "roast duck". Also, bizarrely, the wolf-disguised-as-a-dognose calls his disguise a "dog" instead of a "man", so this story is really all over the place, anthropomorphism-wise (I can't think of another Disney story where a dognose refers to himself as a "dog" instead of a human being).

On the first point: you could further divide 4B between 4B-1 where the characters don't behave like their animals than we behave like monkeys, but are still referred to as being, biologically, a rabbit or whatever; and 4B-2 where drawing them as animals is just a type of caricature and "in-universe" they're humans.

On the second point: well, anotehr example would be the Beagle Boys, at least before the retcon that "Beagle" is a family name (which I don't believe was the original intention). 

[Monkey_Feyerabend]

Jun 24, 2017 22:08:50 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 24, 2017 21:27:20 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

I just named you a famous story by Barks doing that. Would you say that Barks did not know what he was doing?

I wouldn't say that Barks didn't know what he was doing, since there's nothing wrong at all with this scene:

Jun 24, 2017 21:27:20 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

And I think that even Gottfredson is being ironical, or playing with the meta-level, when shows Minnie afraid of a mouse.

Of course Gottfredson is being ironical, but it's an irony that works because Minnie is actually a person, and so it's normal that she would be scared by a mouse. Meta-level, sure, but readers who don't regard Minnie as a person are the ones who often claim this scene doesn't make sense (for me, it perfectly makes sense).

I do think that this jokes make perfect sense. But we were talking about a joke by Dick Kinney, where Donald refuses to go duck-hunting with Fethry. That joke is an instance of the same kind of humor conveyed by these examples above from Barks and Gottfredson.  And with the same degree of consciousness by the author. So the question was: what is your problem with Kinney's joke?   

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Jun 27, 2017 6:58:16 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

I do think that this jokes make perfect sense. But we were talking about a joke by Dick Kinney, where Donald refuses to go duck-hunting with Fethry. That joke is an instance of the same kind of humor conveyed by these examples above from Barks and Gottfredson.  And with the same degree of consciousness by the author. So the question was: what is your problem with Kinney's joke?   

I would argue that the Gottfredson and Kinney jokes are, in fact, diametrically different. In the "Minnie is scared by a mouse" joke, the humor comes from Minnie's apparent lack of awareness that she is a "mouse" herself. In the "Donald is offended by duck hunting" gag, the humor comes from Donald's self-identification with non-anthropomorphic ducks. The former is compatible with the idea that the comic Ducks and Mice are humans, not animals, and the latter is not.

The Barks gag, yes, is in the same mold as the Kinney joke (much as I would like to argue otherwise, I cannot), and is the sole example of violation of the "the Ducks are human" idea (that he has expressed himself in interviews) in his huge body of work.

Posted by Scrooge MacDuck
13 hours ago

On the second point: well, anotehr example would be the Beagle Boys, at least before the retcon that "Beagle" is a family name (which I don't believe was the original intention).

Do the Beagle Boys ever refer to themselves as "beagles" (implying a species) rather than as "Beagle Boys" (their group or "company")? As to "Beagle" being a last name, didn't Barks refer to Blackheart "Beagle"? This would suggest that it is indeed a last name, although Rosa is the one who brought that into wider currency in the comics. Interestingly, DuckTales '87 also came up with that idea independently (Burger Beagle, Ma Beagle, etc.).

EDIT: Barks also gave us "Grandpa Beagle" in "The Money Well", so yes, "Beagle" was intended to be a family name, but, I would argue, in the same way that "Duck" is a family name, not a species (besides, they don't much look like beagles, they look like your typical dognose humans).

[Monkey_Feyerabend]

I see your point. We should then make a case analysis then.

• If you care about that peculiar paradigm of 'characters as humans unaware (!) to look like animals', then you are right, Gott's joke goes in the opposite direction than Kinney's one!
• But if you do not believe in that unawareness, as I do, then the two jokes are just two diverging executions of the same comic intuition. And in any case, I am still convinced that the page from The Gilded Man proves that Barks was - or to has been at least once - on my side on this issue.

As usual, everyone reads this stuff as she wishes, no problem with that. But I hope you guys realize that you are highly minoritary among Disney comics readers (who in Europe are not just Disney comics fanatics like us) with this view of 'humans unaware (!) to look like animals'.
[malicious mode on] Also, I wish people could read more attentively Rosa's magnificient stories and less attentively Rosa's interviews.[malicious mode off]

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Well, referring back to the "Modified Emslie Anthropomorphism Scale" discussed earlier (henceforth referred to as MEAS), it all depends on whether you consider Minnie and Donald MEAS level 4A (animals that live among and act like humans) or level 4B (humans that look like animals when viewed through a filter applied to the audience's eyes) characters. If MEAS-4A, then they're no different than Bugs Bunny or Woody Woodpecker, constantly having to worry about being eaten by humans or other anthropomorphic predator-types. That's a staple of most non-Disney cartoons, but the Ducks and Mice, even in the highly unorganized and chaotic world of animation, have never been presented that way. Name one cartoon where Donald was threatened with being hunted, or Pete, a cat, threatened to eat Mickey, a mouse. Bugs and Daffy have to deal with that most of the time. So jokes like Barks' in "The Gilded Man" and Kinney's in "The Retriever" are exceptions to rule. Now, at least in the US (can't speak for Europe), people unfamiliar with the nuances of both the Disney cartoons and the comics might not immediately make the distinction between the way Bugs is portrayed and the way Mickey is portrayed ("Aren't they all just cartoon animals?"), but it's fairly easy to see once pointed out.

"Think Box Bollix" is a strange Barks story because in it, Donald, a MEAS-4B character, is referred to as a "duck" (the bird, not just a last name) and another MEAS-4B Gyro as a "chicken", and to complicate matters a dognose is referred to as a "dog" (by a presumably MEAS-1 wolf who becomes an MEAS-3?) in a story about giving "animals intelligence".

Not sure how Rosa interviews came into this discussion ...

[drakeborough]

Jun 26, 2017 18:03:28 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Thought this would be helpful to our discussion (from Pete Emslie's blog):

TV Tropes has a more elaborate take on this: Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism. This list includes 11 degrees of anthropomorphism (9 if you remove the extremes "Human" and "Animals"), though they are ordered from human to animal rather than from animal to human like in the image you posted:


• Human - Just an ordinary, run of the mill human. This is what you need to be to be on this site. Superintelligent chimps are NOT supposed to be given internet privileges, so any of those should go back to their cages right now!

• Little Bit Beastly - These are on the lower end, they are practically human in every way, if your eyes never reach the top of their head where their ears are, or if you miss that tail behind them. Artistic laziness issues are almost never in the cards for this, unless the animal characteristics are used to distinguish a character in a world of Only Six Faces; usually this is due to Rubber-Forehead Alien or Planet of Hats, because reality is boring. Of course there are other reasons this might show up.

  ◦ Catgirls are a subtrope. The Eastern versions usually just give females the ears and sometimes the tail of whatever animal they supposedly are and males are anthropomorphic animals (though of course there might be exceptions), along with a very few defining characteristics and a personality that matches their animal.

• Borderline Little Bit Beastly - This form is basically a Petting Zoo Person, but with a more or mostly (but not completely) human-like head. Or, alternatively, a Little Bit Beastly person with a furry skin and/or an animal nose or muzzle. They are often treated more like Petting Zoo People than like Little Bit Beastly. The cast of Cucumber Quest is a good example.

  ◦ Beast Folk - a human (male or female) with animalistic physical and often behavioral traits. Cheetara from Thunder Cats is a Beast Woman.

• Petting Zoo People - These are human in as many ways as they are inhuman. On the one hand they will act human, and if you look under the fur you'll find a human skeletal system, for the most part, but they have animal heads instead of human heads, and often tails, wings, and the like. Furries Are Easier to Draw comes into play, as they don't have difficult-to-draw human faces, but the obviously human traits make the characters less alien to the audience, making them easier to take seriously. Also using multiple species makes a cast easier to differentiate, another plus in medias that suffer from Only Six Faces. Females will of course have the obvious sign they are female.

  ◦ Humanoid Female Animal - What happens when you combine Petting Zoo People, Funny Animal, or Civilized Animal with Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism. The older females will (almost) always be a step or two closer to human than the males are. At the lower end, they may have long hair or Non-Mammal Mammaries. Where there are bigger differences, they may be a step higher up the scale from males. If a show focuses on Funny Animals or Civilized Animals, expect the female(s) to be Petting Zoo People. If the main cast are mostly Petting Zoo People then the girl will be only a Little Bit Beastly or a borderline Little Bit Beastly. Cleo the cat from Heathcliff and the Catillac Cats is a great example.
  ◦ Intelligent Gerbil - A science-fiction/fantasy method of characterization for Petting Zoo People, Funny Animals, and Civilized Animals. These are aliens/fantasy races who are, by amazing coincidence, like earth animals, which is reflected culturally and behaviorally. This is often explained as the result of an "alternate evolutionary path" (with the weirdly Unfortunate Implications that all animals somehow secretly want to be human).

• Funny Animal - This is where we hit characters who could be human, but Furries Are Easier to Draw. Generally, the majority or most of their mannerisms are that of a human. In some cases, almost all their mannerisms may be that of a human. Artistically, they are usually bipedal and have hands, but otherwise need not resemble humans at all. Mickey Mouse is a terrific example. He is a character who has become humanized to the point that you could replace him with a human and the plot would be nearly identical. He always wears clothes, he goes to work and lives in a house, and... he has a pet dog. This term hails from the golden age of comics.

• Civilized Animal - This is an intermediary stage between animals who talk and animals who might as well be human. They generally have half the mannerisms of a human and half the mannerisms of the animal. Bugs Bunny would be an excellent example: he lives in a hole in the forest and is hunted by Elmer Fudd — and he stands upright, wears White Gloves, and tries to take vacations to Aruba. Brian the dog in Family Guy is this trope; he drinks martinis, walks on two legs and goes to college but also barks at people, scratches his butt on the carpet and so forth. Twilight Sparkle and her friends go here too: they live in houses, are the top of civilization with technology and magic ... and walk on all fours and eat hay. Its seminal use in literature is The Wind in the Willows... Which is itself rather confusing at some points (Toad lives in a splendid old Hall, Mole lives in a hole in the ground).

  ◦ Mouse World is a subtrope of Civilized Animal in which intelligent, well-dressed animals live on the fringes of humanity. Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit tales are another example.
  ◦ Cockroaches Will Rule the Earth when a new, generally small species takes over after humans are gone.

• Partially Civilized Animal - This is the intermediary stage between the Nearly Normal Animal/Speech-Impaired Animal/Talking Animal level (animals who are still unarguably animals, and have mostly animal behavior) and the Civilized Animal level. Generally, the majority of the mannerisms are that of the animal. Examples include the cats and dogs of, well, Cats & Dogs and the owls of the Legend Of The Guardians The Owls Of Ga Hoole.

• Talking Animal - This is an animal who can talk as well as a normal human, and who can communicate with humans. However, they still are unarguably animals, and usually have mostly animal behavior (the humans might not like what such animals have to say about them). They may occasionally act more human-like if the need (and Rule of Funny / Rule of Cool) calls for it. Examples include Dinotopia's Ambassador Bix the Protoceratops, TV's Mister Ed, and the animal denizens of Narnia and the Land of Oz.

  ◦ Uplifted Animal is usually here - it's an animal that can talk THANKS TO SCIENCE! or sometimes MAGIC.

• Speech-Impaired Animal - An animal who can't quite talk (at least not without heavy quirks), but is definitely of above-animal intelligence and usually capable of relatively efficient communication. There can and often will be misunderstandings. Like Talking Animals, they may occasionally act more human-like if the need (and Rule of Funny / Rule of Cool) calls for it. Scooby-Doo is practically the Trope Maker. Pokémon and other creature that "speak" to humans in nonhuman languages also fit here.

• Nearly Normal Animal - An animal that is very much an animal, particularly when it comes to thought processes, personality, instincts, priorities, and motivations.

  ◦ Largely Normal Animals - An animal who clearly has thought processes, but doesn't talk freely with humans. LNA characters may talk to each other, essentially having their own language, but humans won't understand them. That is, unless they Speak Fluent Animal or if the language can be learned. Their thought processes and personality are still very much like that of whatever animal they are. Many of them are able to make human-like arm and hand gestures and some can even grasp objects as if they have opposable thumbs. A few examples are bipedal even if their species isn't naturally so. The cast of Watership Down and the original four legged Garfield fit here. So do Mickey Mouse's dog Pluto, the original four legged Snoopy from Peanuts, and Krypto the Superdog.
  ◦ Mostly Normal Animals - basically normal animals that have been given clear thought processes as well as a few human or some or several doglike characteristics (greater frequency of uttering sounds, human-like expressions) that still don't retract from their animal-ness. These animals don't talk. They can talk in Animal Talk within species, but not between species. These animals don't go beyond being able to make human-like arm or hand gestures sometimes.They stay on all four legs if they are four-legged animals. They are between Largely Normal Animal and Almost Normal Animal.
  ◦ Almost Normal Animals - basically normal animals that have been given very few human or a few doglike characteristics (greater frequency of uttering sounds, human-like expressions) that don't retract from their animal-ness but allow audience not well versed in the way of animal behaviour to understand what's going on in the animal's mind. Can be merely a result of bad research, or completely intended. Like MNAs, these animals don't talk, not even in Animal Talk. They don't make human-like arm or hand gestures and they stay on all four legs if they're four-legged animals. Mostly seen in works aimed at children.

• Animals - They're treated as just that in the work. As a joke, they will understand everything characters say.

Also, in a 2000 discussion on DCML Don Rosa gave the following answer to a user who had asked about the relation between Mickey Mouse and the Cinderella mice:

>>>What is the relation between Mickey and Jaq&Gus? Cousins? Long cousins? Very long relatives? Very-very long relatives? Very-very-very long ones? Or not at all?

Not at all. Gus and Jaq are mice, Mickey is a human. Sooner you should worry about creatures who live their lives in close proximity to one another, like Goofy and Pluto, or Grandma Duck and the ducks waddling around in her barnyard. What's that all about?
But what's more amusing to do, and which we've done on here from time to time, is try to count the number of different types of characters there are in Disney comics. An incomplete list would include normal animals (the squirrels in the background trees, the fish in the water), normal animals that have high intelligence (Pluto), normal animals with super-intelligence and the ability to think and speak, at least to other animals (Chip n' Dale, Scamp), animals who wear clothes and live in houses but otherwise act like normal animals and eat each other (Big Bad Wolf, 3 Pigs), characters drawn in some ways as animals but which are clearly otherwise completely human (Donald, Mickey, etc.), Barksian Duckburg people that are totally human but grudgingly given round black noses on an otherwise completely human body to satisfy ancient style-book customs, and normal humans with normal noses. And there are more categories in between all those -- I recall someone once came up with about 15 or so, perhaps also counting the animation characters.

That DCML quote was mentioned in this interview, which I recently posted on the Beagle Boys thread for another reason (i.e., debunking the idea that Don Rosa dislikes the use on dognoses on his characters).

Jun 26, 2017 18:03:28 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

This isn't perfect, but based on this, I'd say:
Pluto is an example of level 1.
Chip 'N Dale are either level 2 (if they don't communicate with Donald) or level 3 (if they do, or in Rescue Ranger form).
Jaq and Gus-Gus are level 3.
Donald, Mickey, Scrooge et al. are level 4 (except that they don't exist in a "human world", rather an "all-anthropomorphic people" world).
Personally, I'd rather the Duck and Mouse comic universes only have level 1 and level 4 type characters, because anything else gets messy.

Indeed, I also think hybrids should be avoided.

Jun 26, 2017 18:03:28 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

EDIT: I'd split level 4 into two: level 4A where the character at times acts like, and is still treated like, the animal they are derived from (eg., Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, who, despite acting like human beings for the most part, are still hunted and threatened with being eaten by "humans" like Elmer Fudd; Bugs burrows in the ground, and Daffy can fly) and level 4B where the character is treated as a human being in all respects (eg., the Beagle Boys would never threaten to eat Scrooge, though dogs eat ducks). Among Disney characters, the Big Bad Wolf/Three Little Pigs situation is best described as a level 4A. Sometimes, like in the case of Brian Griffin from Family Guy, humor comes from an essentially level 4B character suddenly acting like or being treated like a level 4A one.

Why do they need to be at level 4A, instead of just being at level 3?

Jun 26, 2017 18:03:28 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

EDIT 2: Okay, rereading a description of the story, I see it was Donald-disguised-as-a-wolf who suggested Gyro was a chicken,

Can you tell me the page and panel in which this happens?

Jun 26, 2017 18:03:28 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

and the wolf who demoted Donald from a 4B to a 4A by saying he wanted "roast duck".

I don't know about real life, but in popular literature and fairy tales wolves are often shown eating humans: I guess Barks wrote "roasted ducks" because it sounded better and funnier than "rosted humans".

Jun 26, 2017 18:03:28 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Also, bizarrely, the wolf-disguised-as-a-dognose calls his disguise a "dog" instead of a "man", so this story is really all over the place, anthropomorphism-wise (I can't think of another Disney story where a dognose refers to himself as a "dog" instead of a human being).

In theory, a dognose calling himself a "dog" is not different from Donald calling himself alternatingly a "duck" and a "man", or Mickey calling himself alternatingly a "mouse" and a "man". Of course, seeing an anthropomorphic dog calling himself a "dog" feels weirder, because we are not used to it, while we are used to characters calling themselves a "duck" or a "mouse".

Jun 26, 2017 18:39:54 GMT Scroogerello said:

EDIT: Just checked the original English; turns out that Midas actually was intened as his middle name, after all. Seems like I confused it with the Dutch translation.

So, Midas was intended to be Zeke's middle name after all. The question now would be if the middle name was used often or if it was just a one-time thing.

I don't have the story (W WDC 106-03) in Italian, but the Inducks scan shows that "Zeke M. Wolf" was translated as "Vorace M. Lupo" ("vorace" being the Italian word for "voracious"):

I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see that he is not called "Ezechiele" yet, since this is a 1949 story (released in 1950 in Italy) while we just said that the name "Zeke" (of which "Ezechiele" is a translation) was first used in W WDC 65-04 (named "When I Was A Lad" in the 2007 reprint), a 1946 story that appeared in 1949 in Italy: so, it makes sense that the name Ezechiele was not firmly established yet at the time, even assuming that it had been invented already (which is something I can't either prove or disprove).

The Inducks scan doesn't show the point where the meaning of the middle name is revealed, but another Inducks page says his full name in the Italian version of this story is "Vorace Mida Lupo", which is kind of obvious given that a key point of the story's plot seems to be that his middle name coincides with King Midas' name, and King Midas is known in Italy as Re Mida.

I find it strange the Dutch comics actually use Midas Wolf as the character's full name. Do we know when was the name Midas first used in a Dutch publication?

Jun 26, 2017 21:56:03 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

On the second point: well, anotehr example would be the Beagle Boys, at least before the retcon that "Beagle" is a family name (which I don't believe was the original intention). 

Why not? "The Beagle Boys" sounds like "The Dalton Boys" or "The James Boys" or any other real-life family of criminals that is referred to as "The [surname] Boys", though of course Barks kept the joke that most characters of the Duck and Mouse universes have a surname that indicates which kind of anthropomorphic animal they are. Why do you think that "Beagle" was not meant to be their surname at first?

Jun 27, 2017 6:58:16 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

I do think that this jokes make perfect sense.

This is a good thing. But many people on some websites often complain that these scenes don't make sense or that Donald is a cannibal or nonsense like that.

Jun 27, 2017 6:58:16 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

But we were talking about a joke by Dick Kinney, where Donald refuses to go duck-hunting with Fethry. That joke is an instance of the same kind of humor conveyed by these examples above from Barks and Gottfredson.  And with the same degree of consciousness by the author. So the question was: what is your problem with Kinney's joke?   

I don't think their jokes use the same kind of humor or show the same degree of consciousness by the author. Quite the oppisite: Barks' scene from "The Gilded Man" and Gottfredson's scene of Minnie being scared by a mouse would still work if you took Donald, Donald's nephews, and Minnie out of these stories and replace them with human characters. On the other hand, this scene...

wouldn't work at all if you replaced Donald and Fethry with two human characters, and that's why I claim it's a different kind of humor, albeit it's still about the same subject.

The only way to make the scene work with humans would be to remove the second panel, since the first panel alone is ambiguous enough that an hypothetical human replacement for Donald could be scared for another reason: for example, because the hypothetical human replacement for Fethry is keeping the rifle so close to his mouth.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 27, 2017 13:08:04 GMT drakeborough said:

I don't think their jokes use the same kind of humor or show the same degree of consciousness by the author. Quite the oppisite: Barks' scene from "The Gilded Man" and Gottfredson's scene of Minnie being scared by a mouse would still work if you took Donald, Donald's nephews, and Minnie out of these stories and replace them with human characters. On the other hand, this scene...

wouldn't work at all if you replaced Donald and Fethry with two human characters, and that's why I claim it's a different kind of humor, albeit it's still about the same subject.

The only way to make the scene work with humans would be to remove the second panel, since the first panel alone is ambiguous enough that an hypothetical human replacement for Donald could be scared for another reason: for example, because the hypothetical human replacement for Fethry is keeping the rifle so close to his mouth.

I can see it for Minnie, but how on Earth would the "Gilded Man" joke work if Donald and the nephews were Homo Sapiens? The only way I would see it work would be a pun on their family name 'Duck', but that could just as well be used for Kinney's joke (with Donald initially believing that Fethry has gone Sweethearts and Coronets and wants to slaughter the Duck family). 

[drakeborough]

Jun 27, 2017 11:24:23 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Jun 27, 2017 6:58:16 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

I do think that this jokes make perfect sense. But we were talking about a joke by Dick Kinney, where Donald refuses to go duck-hunting with Fethry. That joke is an instance of the same kind of humor conveyed by these examples above from Barks and Gottfredson.  And with the same degree of consciousness by the author. So the question was: what is your problem with Kinney's joke?   

I would argue that the Gottfredson and Kinney jokes are, in fact, diametrically different. In the "Minnie is scared by a mouse" joke, the humor comes from Minnie's apparent lack of awareness that she is a "mouse" herself. In the "Donald is offended by duck hunting" gag, the humor comes from Donald's self-identification with non-anthropomorphic ducks. The former is compatible with the idea that the comic Ducks and Mice are humans, not animals, and the latter is not.

You anticipated me in answering this question while I was writing that long block of text, but it's not a bad thing since our answers don't overlap but provide different arguments, despite the fact that we have the same view on this matter.

Jun 27, 2017 11:24:23 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

The Barks gag, yes, is in the same mold as the Kinney joke (much as I would like to argue otherwise, I cannot)

This time I disagree: the following scene...

... still works even if you replaced Donald and the boys with real humans, since finding stuffed ducks in that place is scary in itself. I think this is the same kind of humor as "Minnie is scared by a mouse".

Jun 27, 2017 11:24:23 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Posted by Scrooge MacDuck
13 hours ago

On the second point: well, anotehr example would be the Beagle Boys, at least before the retcon that "Beagle" is a family name (which I don't believe was the original intention).

Do the Beagle Boys ever refer to themselves as "beagles" (implying a species) rather than as "Beagle Boys" (their group or "company")?

I don't know if they ever referred to themselves as "US BEAGLES", but even if they did, I would interpret that as "us Beagles" (meaning it's a surname, since in English surnames have a plural) rather than "us beagles". And even if it meant "us beagles", I'd argue that this would be a similar case to Donald calling himself alternatingly a "duck" and a "man", so that's why sometimes he said "US DUCKS" (which can mean either "us Ducks" or "us ducks" but would make sense in both cases).

Jun 27, 2017 12:04:05 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

I see your point. We should then make a case analysis then.

• If you care about that peculiar paradigm of 'characters as humans unaware (!) to look like animals', then you are right, Gott's joke goes in the opposite direction than Kinney's one!
• But if you do not believe in that unawareness, as I do, then the two jokes are just two diverging executions of the same comic intuition. And in any case, I am still convinced that the page from The Gilded Man proves that Barks was - or to has been at least once - on my side on this issue.

I think it's the former, as these jokes obviously start from the fact that the characters are drawn as animals, but they are very different since in one case they involve the characters non being actually animals despite how they are drawn, and in the other case the joke is the opposite.

Jun 27, 2017 12:04:05 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

As usual, everyone reads this stuff as she wishes, no problem with that. But I hope you guys realize that you are highly minoritary among Disney comics readers (who in Europe are not just Disney comics fanatics like us) with this view of 'humans unaware (!) to look like animals'.

I am not sure about that, since Italian comics often has the ducks and other characters even calling themselves human beings...

Jun 27, 2017 12:52:55 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Name one cartoon where Donald was threatened with being hunted, or Pete, a cat, threatened to eat Mickey, a mouse.

Well, there is one early cartoon (When the Cat's Away, 1929) in which Mickey and Minnie are real mice and Pete (here called "Tom", before getting in later cartoons the name Pegleg Pete given to the pre-Mickey Disney villain) is a real cat. But we can call it the exception that proves the rule, as it was released in a period where the concept of anthropomorphic animal was still in the process of being defined (see Horace and Clarabelle starting as real animals before becoming humans with animal features).

So, despite this example, your point is still valid.

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Jun 27, 2017 13:08:04 GMT drakeborough said:

TV Tropes has a more elaborate take on this: Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism. This list includes 11 degrees of anthropomorphism (9 if you remove the extremes "Human" and "Animals"), though they are ordered from human to animal rather than from animal to human like in the image you posted:

That seems overly detailed, I couldn't even bring myself to read it all. As someone who deals with scales like this all the time, I would say, the simpler the better. I vastly prefer the MEAS, which is elegant and more concise. Not perfect, but does the job, IMHO.

Also, in a 2000 discussion on DCML Don Rosa gave the following answer to a user who had asked about the relation between Mickey Mouse and the Cinderella mice:

Rosa seems to essentially be describing the MEAS here.

Why do they need to be at level 4A, instead of just being at level 3?

The distinction is whether the character lives predominantly in the animal world (level 3, eg., Chip 'N Dale) or predominantly in the human world (level 4 eg., Bugs Bunny). Also, an additional characteristic appears to be whether the character retains the size of the animal (level 3) or is much bigger (level 4), in relationship to humans. Both groups can apparently wear clothes or use props (glasses, canes).

Can you tell me the page and panel in which this happens?

I don't have the story at hand, and was going by a description I read online. Perhaps someone who has easy access to the story can chime in?

In theory, a dognose calling himself a "dog" is not different from Donald calling himself alternatingly a "duck" and a "man", or Mickey calling himself alternatingly a "mouse" and a "man". Of course, seeing an anthropomorphic dog calling himself a "dog" feels weirder, because we are not used to it, while we are used to characters calling themselves a "duck" or a "mouse".

Here I kind of like Scrooge MacDuck's idea of subdividing MEAS 4B into 4B1 (characters are still occasionally referred to as their species, not just as a last name) and 4B2 (characters never referred to as animals, and all treated as human entirely). Thus, since Donald and Scrooge are referred to as "ducks" (not just because of their names) and Mickey is referred to as a "mouse" (again, not just  because of his name, he is often called a "meddlesome mouse") they would be 4B1s. On the other hand, O'Hara or Neighbor Jones are never referred to as dogs, they're men, and so level 4B2s. Goofy somehow slipped through as a level 4B2 (never called a dog, always a man). I don't like the fact that there are 4B1s at all (Scrooge should never be called "the richest duck in the world", he's the "richest man in the world") but the tradition is too well-established to be changed now.