Characters' Hair Color

[Scrooge MacDuck]

/SPOILERS FOR EPISODE ONE OF 'DUCKTALES 2017' AHEAD. READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL, YE FOOLISH TRAVELER!/

So any who have read past this explosive first line will now know that Della Duck is featured in the pilot of DuckTales 2017. And she looks like this: 


(Say, did you ever consider who that goon Della's fighting was? He looks quite lively, as opposed to his apparent master, Captain Peghook. Maybe he's Peghook's descendant? Hmmm…)

Now there are those who believe that Della actually sports an Amelia Earheart-style haircut (fitting, for a mysteriously disappearing female pilot), and that the long "bangs" on the sides of her hair are actually part of her pilot gear. But I find that rather unlikely, since if it's hair it lines up perfectly with Della's "accepted" haircut from Don Rosa's tree, like so.



Now you'll notice that her hair is, in fact, colored blonde in the Don Rosa family tree — and, as far as I'm aware, this is also the case in ever printing of anything featuring Della ever. See this German trading card (…? I'm as confused as you are.) featuring Della:


(I wonder where they pulled those stats from. According to this she has
a superdevelopped sense of humor but is not verys trong. That doesn't
seem to square well with her Dutch portrayal… Also, she's apparently
wearing Grandma Duck-like shoes here. Huh.)


And also, of course, the Dutch 80 is Praachtig which contained a controversial attempt at explaining the source of Della's disappearance:




Why the DuckTales crew felt a change was in order is anyone's guess. But it got me thinking about characters' hair color varying on the publication. Now that we've explored Della, let's move on to other characters…


GYRO GEARLOOSE

The lovable inventor is probably the one whose hair color has varied the most. Even the early Gyro in the U.S.A. was brown-haired, as seen in Think Box Bollix:



This was lastingly changed to bright yellow hair in Italian printings, like so:




Which, I think, works better with his wider Italian color scheme than with the tamer American one. In France, he was usually red-haired or brown-haired, but recent printings of Italian stories keep the blond hair, and brown has been used on occasion. Here's a "red-haired Gyro" scan, which you will recognize as a detail of the first panel of Gyro's First Invention:

 

This is also, for some reason, the color they picked when Gyro made his appearance in DuckTales Classic:




Perhaps more surprisingly, what may have originally been a poor choice of red paint became tradition for the Brazilian Gyro to have deep pink hair. (Yes, PINK. …I don't know. I really don't know. I guess if nothing else it goes well with his pink shirt. But OUCH MY EYES.)


Perhaps of some interest is the fact that while also brown-haired like his American counterpart, the Dutch Gyro seems to be a warmer brown.



In another strange choice (do this people have a deal with someone who sells white paint, or something?), Gyro suffered the same treatment as Della in the DuckTales reboot and now sports pure white hair (feathers?), which I think is a first.



And I think that's about it.

FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD

This one is easier. Flinty is best-known as sharing Scrooge's white facial hair, like this:



However, the colorists of the first printing of Barks's So Far and No Safari apparently didn't remember the character's past two appearances, which is excusable judging Barks himself doesn't draw him quite the same way in that story (notice he now wears shoes instead of spats), and colored his beard brown.



Next up, there are at least three example of the Italian Glomgold sporting varying saturations of blond hair:



Later, DuckTales Classic decided to make him more distinct from Scrooge, and part of his redesign was giving him a grey beard, rather than white, like this:



This was only briefly carried over to the comics, aside from the specifically DuckTales-inspired ones. It can be seen in this French printing of The Second-Richest Duck:



Because life is not fair, while Gyro and Della saw the color sucked out of them, the 2017 DuckTales's Glomgold retains the 1987 grey beard, with a pair of thick black eyebrows suggesting Glomgold's hair was jet black before it sarted grizzling.


And again, that's all I have on this fellow. Next up we find --

HORTENSE & MATILDA McDUCK

Those two I rank together because they haven't varied much. They just keep switching. Here's the European color scheme for the two girls (sorry for the bad quality)…



…as opposed to the American one:



(Sometimes Hortense's hair is redder than brown, like this.)


You see the problem: who, between Matilda and Hortense, is the blonde? I can see the appeal in Hortense being red-haired (it fits her fiery temper), and Matilda does look good in yellow… but I'm biased towards the European color scheme on this one, #1 because I grew up with it, and #2 because it fits better with Hortense's daughter Della being herself blond-haired as explored above.

---

So. The subject of this thread is double. Firstly, do you have any other varying hair-colors to discuss and bring examples of? And secondly, which among those we have already identified here do you think are best (or worst)?

[Deleted]

I was just thinking about how Gladstone's hair colour varies from blonde, white with a blond outline, completely white and sometimes even brown. I don't have access to scans at the moment, but it should be pretty easy to find examples.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

You're quite right. Hm hm…

GLADSTONE GANDER

The original Barks Gladstone had dark feathers-hair and no curl-thing on his forehead, like this:




This is, for some reason, the look DuckTales 2017 chose to emulate:




Though admittedly, the original DuckTales did have a white-haired Gladstone too (and nor did DT Gladdy have the roller-thing), so maybe we can't blame DuckTales 2017 too much for that one.



However, the look most of us are familiar with includes a curly roller-thing (…what's this sort of haircut even called?) on his forehead, and because the colorists suddenly notice there was something to color, they made him blond, like so…



…though this was not a universal decision.



Sometimes only the roller-thing is colored, too.




I can't find any brown-haired Gladstone on I.N.D.U.C.K.S., though, so Wahisietel may have been misremembering on this one.

[Matilda]

I'm familiar with both versions of Hortense and Matilda, though my first exposure as an American was to redheaded Hortense (or reddish brown, auburn) and blond Matilda. I don't have a strong preference either way. On Gyro, though, I strongly prefer the brown-haired Gyro I grew up with to the Italian blond Gyro or the Original DuckTales redheaded Gyro. In "Gyro's First Invention," it looks more brown than red to me.

I didn't even notice that Della's hair in the DuckTales painting wasn't blond. Trying to make her and Donald more twinny?

By the way, the scores on those German DuckStars cards are very annoying to all those in favor of gender equality, because the female characters regularly score lower on the positive qualities than arguably equivalent male characters (e.g. compare Junior Woodchucks to Chickadees!).

Wasn't Scrooge's hair in the hardcover DuckTales children's books colored solid gray?

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Aug 15, 2017 19:22:58 GMT Matilda said:

Wasn't Scrooge's hair in the hardcover DuckTales children's books colored solid gray?

Time for Scroogey!

SCROOGE McDUCK

Scrooge most often has pure white hair. (Or, well, whiskers? Some people treat as very receding hair, but most agree those are whiskers.) Like this.



Scrooge's proper animated debut in Scrooge McDuck and Money, however, did have the whiskers become a receding hairline, which was colored grey and was separated from his face with a visible line. Like so.



This carried over into Mickey's Christmas Carol, though admittedly, this cartoon's Scrooge is a "historical counterpart", whose differences from the original can be excused to an extent. He looks like this:



An interesting to note is that when we see "Ebenezer Scrooge" in his youth in one of the flashback sequences, his hair is white for some inexplicable reason, meaning it changed from white to grey over the course of his life. Does this mean by this movie's rules, an older Donald would have grey hair too?…



Both DuckTales Classic and the pseudo-pilot thereof, Soccermania, used a standard comic Scrooge, with white feather whiskers:



But Matilda is right that one hardcover DuckTales storybook used the old "grey receding hair" model, for inexplicable reasons, as there are no such oddities in the other books.



Also, as a less well-known tidbit, early French and Italian printings would occasionally color present-day Scrooge's whiskers yellow. Like this, more or less (though this is a more striking example than usual):



In this particular printing it's permanent, but sometimes you'd just have Scrooge's whiskers take a yellow (I guess the idea is that it's golden, actually) tint for a panel or two.

Also somewhat relevant is Rosa's Young Scrooge in Life & Times. The original colorists saddled him (and Fergus and Pothole!) with brown, progressively-whitening hair until poor Don gave him a call and explained in his view of things male ducks (Gladstone notwithstanding, I suppose, but he's half-goose so he doesn't count) should not have hair any other color than white, at any age. The poor colorist found a clever way of fixing it mid-series by having Scrooge's hair turn white when he's electrocuted in King of the Copper Hill. Susbsequent American reprints of the series fixed it from Episode 1, though.

[Monkey_Feyerabend]

Aug 15, 2017 18:56:25 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

The original Barks Gladstone had dark feathers-hair and no curl-thing on his forehead, like this:



I can't find any brown-haired Gladstone on I.N.D.U.C.K.S., though, so Wahisietel may have been misremembering on this one.

No! In his very first appearance in WDCS he had brown hair. In this panel that you have posted he has brown hair (see the Fantagraphic volume Old Castle secret from the Barks library). He gained his feathers-hair (and a more definitive Barksian-look) starting from his second story, Gladstone Returs, still from 1948. I guess this induck image comes from some reprinting or foreign translation.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

GOLDIE O'GILT

With a name like Goldie, it might seem ridiculous, but in at least two French printings (of a Brazilian and a Rosa story, respectively), Goldie was depicted as a red-head. (No scans, sorry.) Also, present-day Goldie may be anything between grey, blonde and white-haired.

[sirredknee]

I remember those blonde sideburns of Scrooge's in some comics. I kind of liked them.

[Orora]

When "Life and Times" was first published in France, Della was shown with PURPLE hair!!
(And also called "Margaux", to boot!)

Coloring was weird in this first French publishing of the story. Bombie's hair is reddish-brown in it, and this makes a panel very stupid where Scrooge sees his hair coming out of the water, and he says "hey, a white sponge!".

[Deleted]

Aug 15, 2017 17:42:40 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

/SPOILERS FOR EPISODE ONE OF 'DUCKTALES 2017' AHEAD. READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL, YE FOOLISH TRAVELER!/

So any who have read past this explosive first line will now know that Della Duck is featured in the pilot of DuckTales 2017. And she looks like this: 


(Say, did you ever consider who that goon Della's fighting was? He looks quite lively, as opposed to his apparent master, Captain Peghook. Maybe he's Peghook's descendant? Hmmm…)

Now there are those who believe that Della actually sports an Amelia Earheart-style haircut (fitting, for a mysteriously disappearing female pilot), and that the long "bangs" on the sides of her hair are actually part of her pilot gear. But I find that rather unlikely, since if it's hair it lines up perfectly with Della's "accepted" haircut from Don Rosa's tree, like so.



Now you'll notice that her hair is, in fact, colored blonde in the Don Rosa family tree — and, as far as I'm aware, this is also the case in ever printing of anything featuring Della ever. See this German trading card (…? I'm as confused as you are.) featuring Della:


(I wonder where they pulled those stats from. According to this she has
a superdevelopped sense of humor but is not verys trong. That doesn't
seem to square well with her Dutch portrayal… Also, she's apparently
wearing Grandma Duck-like shoes here. Huh.)
Della is drawn by Fernando Guell:https://inducks.org/story.php?c=D+26404

And also, of course, the Dutch 80 is Praachtig which contained a controversial attempt at explaining the source of Della's disappearance:




Why the DuckTales crew felt a change was in order is anyone's guess. But it got me thinking about characters' hair color varying on the publication. Now that we've explored Della, let's move on to other characters…


GYRO GEARLOOSE

The lovable inventor is probably the one whose hair color has varied the most. Even the early Gyro in the U.S.A. was brown-haired, as seen in Think Box Bollix:



This was lastingly changed to bright yellow hair in Italian printings, like so:




Which, I think, works better with his wider Italian color scheme than with the tamer American one. In France, he was usually red-haired or brown-haired, but recent printings of Italian stories keep the blond hair, and brown has been used on occasion. Here's a "red-haired Gyro" scan, which you will recognize as a detail of the first panel of Gyro's First Invention:

 

This is also, for some reason, the color they picked when Gyro made his appearance in DuckTales Classic:




Perhaps more surprisingly, what may have originally been a poor choice of red paint became tradition for the Brazilian Gyro to have deep pink hair. (Yes, PINK. …I don't know. I really don't know. I guess if nothing else it goes well with his pink shirt. But OUCH MY EYES.)


Perhaps of some interest is the fact that while also brown-haired like his American counterpart, the Dutch Gyro seems to be a warmer brown.



In another strange choice (do this people have a deal with someone who sells white paint, or something?), Gyro suffered the same treatment as Della in the DuckTales reboot and now sports pure white hair (feathers?), which I think is a first.



And I think that's about it.

FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD

This one is easier. Flinty is best-known as sharing Scrooge's white facial hair, like this:



However, the colorists of the first printing of Barks's So Far and No Safari apparently didn't remember the character's past two appearances, which is excusable judging Barks himself doesn't draw him quite the same way in that story (notice he now wears shoes instead of spats), and colored his beard brown.



Next up, there are at least three example of the Italian Glomgold sporting varying saturations of blond hair:



Later, DuckTales Classic decided to make him more distinct from Scrooge, and part of his redesign was giving him a grey beard, rather than white, like this:



This was only briefly carried over to the comics, aside from the specifically DuckTales-inspired ones. It can be seen in this French printing of The Second-Richest Duck:



Because life is not fair, while Gyro and Della saw the color sucked out of them, the 2017 DuckTales's Glomgold retains the 1987 grey beard, with a pair of thick black eyebrows suggesting Glomgold's hair was jet black before it sarted grizzling.


And again, that's all I have on this fellow. Next up we find --

HORTENSE & MATILDA McDUCK

Those two I rank together because they haven't varied much. They just keep switching. Here's the European color scheme for the two girls (sorry for the bad quality)…



…as opposed to the American one:



(Sometimes Hortense's hair is redder than brown, like this.)


You see the problem: who, between Matilda and Hortense, is the blonde? I can see the appeal in Hortense being red-haired (it fits her fiery temper), and Matilda does look good in yellow… but I'm biased towards the European color scheme on this one, #1 because I grew up with it, and #2 because it fits better with Hortense's daughter Della being herself blond-haired as explored above.

---

So. The subject of this thread is double. Firstly, do you have any other varying hair-colors to discuss and bring examples of? And secondly, which among those we have already identified here do you think are best (or worst)?