I know it's never been overtly stated, but I like to think Horace and Clarabelle are now married (the idea of Clarabelle being a love interest for Goofy never appealed to me).
I still like the idea, too. When I first read the Gottfredson stories where Horace and Clarabelle were engaged, e.g., The Great Orphanage Robbery, I figured that they must have gotten married. Sure, their wedding was never seen by the reader, but why couldn't it have happened offscreen? Then I read Race for Riches, and that whole line of thinking was blown out of the water, since the story features a romance between Clarabelle and a certain villain, takes place after at least a couple of years after The Great Orphanage Robbery chronologically, and includes Horace as nothing more than a potential love interest for Clarabelle instead of a fiance or husband. Anyway, they still could have gotten married sometime later, though I don't know why they broke up between The Great Orphanage Robbery and Race for Riches.
Yes, I like to believe they got married after the events of "Race for Riches" as well. On another thread (where the introduction of Clarabelle's mother and Horace's father was discussed) it was mentioned that recent Dutch stories have depicted Horace and Clarabelle living together, further cementing their status as a married couple in my mind.
Perhaps, but on the other hand the authors are clearly having fun with it. The toys have hoods too.
Even the toys?
In my opinion, these stories clearly misunderstood the reason the Blot wears a hood in the fist place. But I guess it's also a matter of imprinting: I grew up with stories in which the Blot wears it the whole story, wears it only in scenes where it's needed, or doesn't wear it at all depending on the context, so for me that's the natural way to do. Only later I read W-coded stories with the always-hooded Blot: I found them awful, and not just for the hood.
I even heard that in some countries (France maybe?) the Blot has been given different names depending on whether he has his hood or not.
Sorry for the OT, but it's similar in German, where in his first Italian story that was printed here he was called Plattnase (flat nose) because he was never seen masked. The translators did not make the connection to the creature that appeared in the Murry comics around the same time. The original Gottfredson story wasn't printed until later.
And yes, sometimes both names were used within one and the same story. It's confusing.
Continuing with the off-topic, I think I only read two stories where Phatom Blot is unmasked, "O Caso das Quatro Manchas" e "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot".
Continuing with the off-topic, I think I only read two stories where Phatom Blot is unmasked, "O Caso das Quatro Manchas" e "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot".
There are many more, especially from Italy. See for instance this one, where he's unmasked all through the story.
This discrepancy in ages not only brings up the question of how old we take the Blot to be ("frozen timeline" aside, I'd say mid-50's?), but it brings up a lot of questions about the Blot's marital status. Leïla's relationship to the Blot is not well-known until the story; she appears to have recently discovered her parentage, though it's a little ambiguous. Therefore, we might fairly assume the Countess to be an illegitimate child. Possibly from the Blot's days as a spy, if you collapse things back into a short Gottfredson-based timeline.
But what about the Phantom Brat? The Blot is the one to care for her, except when he's in the clink, at which point his housekeeper takes over. So there's clearly no mother in the picture. Is she the Countess's sister or merely her half-sister? And if they are of different mothers, was the Blot married to the Brat's mother and then widowed? Did she die in childbirth? What?