Ducks and time periods

[stuftmcduck]

So, Feathery Society members, what time periods do we prefer our Duck stories to be set in? Some writers set their stories in essentially the modern day, whenever that happens to be, so you'll see ducks with cell phones, computers, and so forth. Others, most prominently Rosa, see the characters as historical figures, with their adventures having already happened in the past and being tied to real historical events. Rosa drew Scrooge's funeral, even.

Me? Maybe it's just because I got into the Duckverse with Rosa and Life and Times remains my favorite Duck story, but I am 100% behind the Duck stories having "already happened." That they're tied in to real-world history is one of their biggest appeals to me - like, I'd never even heard of the Australian and South African gold rushes before I found the Ducks. In particular I couldn't bear to lose the Klodike connection, as a) I'm a big Alaska and Yukon history aficionado (which I attribute to two excellent family vacations to Alaska and playing lots of Yukon Trail as a kid), and b) the Life and Times Klondike trilogy are among the finest comics I've ever read.

Though keep in mind, in the '40s-'60s when Barks was writing, it was definitely possible for someone who had Scrooge's adventures to still be alive.

[Matilda]

I'm pretty much in the Rosa camp. The present is the 1950's, at the latest the early 1960's. I'm OK with rockets and satellites--Rosa included that in "The Duck Who Fell to Earth", but later regretted that as out of sync with his sense of the Duck "present". I do accept as "real" in my headcanon some stories which include much more recent tech, but I mentally "blip" over or erase that element in the story. Stories where the plot hinges on more recent tech do not become "real" in my headcanon, though I may still thoroughly enjoy them.

Like you, I keep the Ducks in the mid-20th century so as to preserve Scrooge's Klondike backstory in particular and the "Life and Times" in general. It will be very interesting to see how the new DuckTales deals with (or handwaves) the conflict between Scrooge's Klondike backstory and his being alive in 2017. Another element of the Duck stories I want to preserve is the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook, whose awesomeness is reduced in the time of smartphones.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

I'm kind of the other way around to Matilda. I accept present-day stories, but not PKNA-style ones: presumably because Donald and Co. somehow haven't aged since the 1950's, Duckburg walked meekly into modernity by taking on more and more technology but not giving up most of its traditions — hence bowler hats, spats, and rubbery-looking cars are still in fashion even though the characters have mobile phones on hand. I really don't like the stories where they try so hard to look "modern" and "cool" (TVtropes calls these kinds of efforts "We're Still Relevant, Dammit!"), a la Quack Pack or An Extremely Goofy Movie. In general, I take the authors' word for when their story takes place, so, as most stories were meant to take place in the "present-day" of when they were created, my headcanon timeline spreads out for as long as Disney comics have existed in the first place, baiscally. And I have no problem with some "flashback" stories, like Don Rosa's, still taking place in the 50's and 60's, if the author (like Rosa) specifically refers to them as such.

[The KKM]

I like period piece stories like the Fantomius line, but overall, I'm perfectly ok with the general Italian take of stories happening in a vague "present", where there's modern tech and clothes but also old tech and clothes and it's all mixed together. It's why it's so disappointing to me that the Duckport stories are considered a separate "canon".

[drakeborough]

I agree with stuftmcduck and Matilda: to me, Duck comics work better if they are set in the 1950's. It's really annoying to see Scrooge referring to his Klodike background at the end of the 19th century in stories explicitly set in the 21st century, as if he were some sort of fairy tale immortal creature: that doesn't appeal to me at all, and it gets worse every decade.

The inclusion of modern technology turns me off, as it seems out of place even in stories that don't mention Scrooge's background: it just feels "wrong" and "out of place" even if I don't think hard about it, just out of instinct. Plus, said technology is often a burden in a story rather than a help, as for example the lack of cell phones or other means to communicate with other people in situations of danger was a key point in making many story interesting.

But beside that, there's just the plain fact that certain characters belong to a specific era, and they don't work well in a different time. Scrooge is a capitalist who made his fortune in the 19th century in a way that is totally different from modern tycoons. Same for Glomgold, and even for a more modern buisnessman like Rockerduck (indeed, DuckTales' effort to super-modernize everything for the reboot caused him to be replaced by an unltra-modern buisnessman created from scratch). Gladstone is a kind of dandy that doesn't exist anymore. Today nobody has a car like Donald's. The Junior Woodchuck Guidebook is a cool idea, and to see it replaced by an e-book like in modern Italian stories is really sad. Scrooge paying Donald 30 cents per hour made sense in 1951, but it doesn't make sense in 2017. And so on.

Plus, the desire of looking modern at all costs (by continuously dropping modern pop culture references) often creates the opposite effect: the stories often look dated in a few years, as opposed to stories clearly set in the past that paradoxically seem closer to the readers. For example, I really dislike the scenes where characters take selfies for no reason, just to look "modern".

I don't think the occasional satellite is an anachronism, since the earliest satellites were launched in the 1950's.

Most modern authors set their stories in the present, but I wonder: did they all choose to do so, or some or them were forced to do so by their editors? This is part of a message that Rob Klein wrote on this forum:

I grew up in the late 1940s and early 1950s. That is the "classic period" of my life. All my stories take place in that era. I have been writing stories and drawing storyboards since the late 1950s, and, professionally, since 1984. And I have only first used any modern (post 1950s) technology in a story starting 2 years ago, and, so far, only in 2 or 3 stories. That action was precipitated by Egmont's policy of striving to "modernise" their stories (e.g. keep their stories up with the times, and not seem dated to their young readers). Too many kids these days, first discovering Barks stories, wonder why the characters don just take out their mobile telephones and warn their colleagues of the impending danger, or send them the needed information, or use their mobile telephone's Internet to get instant answers to any question?

I think the editors' policies on this matter are un understudied aspect of Disney comics fandom.

[stuftmcduck]

The very concept of an uber-rich tycoon as a good guy, albeit one with deep flaws, is something you just don't see anymore in the post-Great Recession age.

[jubalpomp]

I think Duck stories don't have a time period. There are Duck stories set in 1940, in 1800, in 2017, in 1300 and in Palaeolithic. There isn't a real present, it all depends on what the story needs.

[Hector]

When i used to read Disney stories (mid-late 90s), Internet wasn't so widely known/used,
so one could write a story where the heroes had to use their brain or exert effort to
solve a problem without making the young readers (including me; i was a kid back then)
wonder: ''Why didn't he just google it?''.
That's why i prefer stories to take place at 50s-60s, the problem is that nowadays' kids
will still wonder: ''Why don't they google all their problems away?'', because it's still
hard to tell the difference between 50s and nowadays. Maybe, 100 years from now, Disney
stories can be written as era stories, like most disney movies.

[drakeborough]

Jul 3, 2017 2:03:53 GMT Hector said:

When i used to read Disney stories (mid-late 90s), Internet wasn't so widely known/used,
so one could write a story where the heroes had to use their brain or exert effort to
solve a problem without making the young readers (including me; i was a kid back then)
wonder: ''Why didn't he just google it?''.

Related to that: although I strongly dislike Internet appearing in modern Duck stories, I think that, if they are really going to use it, they could at least call it Internet. Instead, Italian stories call it "Papernet" ("Ducknet") or "Toponet" ("Mousenet"), depending on whether it is a Duck story or a Mouse story. Luckily, past creators were wiser than that, so we can have the television rather than "duckvision"/"mousevision", we can have the telephone instead of "duckphone"/"mousephone" or nonsense like that, etc.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jul 3, 2017 8:12:28 GMT drakeborough said:

Jul 3, 2017 2:03:53 GMT Hector said:

When i used to read Disney stories (mid-late 90s), Internet wasn't so widely known/used,
so one could write a story where the heroes had to use their brain or exert effort to
solve a problem without making the young readers (including me; i was a kid back then)
wonder: ''Why didn't he just google it?''.

Related to that: although I strongly dislike Internet appearing in modern Duck stories, I think that, if they are really going to use it, they could at least call it Internet. Instead, Italian stories call it "Papernet" ("Ducknet") or "Toponet" ("Mousenet"), depending on whether it is a Duck story or a Mouse story. Luckily, past creators were wiser than that, so we can have the television rather than "duckvision"/"mousevision", we can have the telephone instead of "duckphone"/"mousephone" or nonsense like that, etc.

Yes, because the stories started when television or the telephone, while unfrequent, was already established. Calling internet "Papernet" (and I-phones I-quacks) is a result of people parodying the name because it's a novelty and thus joke-worthy. In-universe, I choose to imagine that the Internet is called the Internet, and Papernet and Toponet are popular browsers used by the characters.