p.s. If someone could write out for me the dialogue of the Easter 2018 one-pager, I would much appreciate it! (German or Dutch text is fine; Scandinavian languages I'd just have to depend on Google Translate.) I'm sure the dialogue has nothing to do with the gender-of-Woodchucks issue, but I want to keep the story as a rare example of thoroughly integrated Woodchucks. And nobody is selling that issue by itself on German eBay to buyers outside of Germany. The other countries' printings are far less likely to be available to me for sale.
As you wish.
1: "Junior Woodchucks, you can win this giant chocolateegg. And how? By decorating an egg as original (?) as possible." 2: "Creative work aren't us." "No, but chocolate is." "We don't have to do anything. I've got an idea." 3: "We'll just have to pay a visit to Gyro Gearloose." 4: "It wasn't easy but we've got a winner." 5: "All the eggs are nice but the jury is most impressed over..." 6: "...Huey, Dewey and Louie's selfdecorating egg."
Thanks muchly, gadgetphile!
People may come up with more published examples over time, but at this point, this one-pager stands out for depicting a Junior Woodchuck organization with male and female troops. It's the first story I've seen that shows more than *one* female Woodchuck!
Update on female Woodchucks in non-DuckTales comics:
I observe that the abovementioned Easter 2018 one-pager by Gentina is catalogued on Inducks as featuring Chickadees as well as Woodchucks. However, the girls, while possibly in a separate troop, are clearly wearing Woodchuck hats and brandishing a Woodchuck flag. The only thing that makes their insignia look different in the Inducks scans is the coloring.
Meanwhile...I just got the Journal de Mickey with Seppälä's Look for Life in it. HDL are with a group of Woodchucks at a gathering of representatives of many different scouting organizations of different nations, taking place in Madagascar. There is a female Woodchuck with pigtails/ponytails (which word you use in English for this hairstyle depends on what region of the USA you live in) depicted in panel four of p. 2, and another girl Woodchuck with the same hairstyle shown in the first and last panels of the last page. On the last page the girl seems clearly to be part of a troop with boys. The hair of the two girls is colored differently in the French printing, and there are other cues which make me think they're two different girls, though they could conceivably be the single Smurfette. So, another instance of girls among the Woodchucks. Postdates Northern Blight, slightly predates the Gentina one-pager.
Seems to me that the editors (both Italian and Egmont) are either allowing or promoting the inclusion of girls in the Woodchucks, outside the DuckTales 'verse. Any other examples any of you have run across in the last year?
In LTB 553, the one with Astrup's Magica origin story in it, there's also this Italian JW story which shows more than one female Woodchuck. From the Inducks listing, it looks as though a couple of these ("Beth" and "Michelle"? are those both Woodchucks?) are taken from the story anonnewbie referred to above. That one was authored by Federico Rossi Edrighi; this more recent one by Marco Nucci, so it's not just a case of one author reusing characters he introduced. In the Nucci story the female Woodchucks are definitely mixed in with the male JWs in the same troop, not in a separate troop. (I haven't seen the Alaska story yet.)
So, it looks like both Italian and Egmont editors have decided to go along with a co-ed Woodchucks organization.
When I was still a part of the Catholic Baden-Powell-Scout Federation of Belgium (now just "The Scouts"), boys and girls were together between the ages of 6 and 8, as "baladins", but separated into different troops after that, as "louveteaux" and "louvettes" (8 to 12), "éclaireurs" and "éclaireuses" (12 to 16), and finally "pionniers" and "pionnières" (156 to 18). I've been out of the loop for a looong time, but I think that nowadays most sections are co-ed, although it's by no means mandatory. (Personally, I think it's a good thing that they're turning towards co-ed, but there are arguments to be made for both positions. I think having the choice is good.).
Last Edit: Feb 1, 2022 18:01:29 GMT by juicymcduck
I've never been a scout myself, but I am pretty sure it's mixed in Italy
I believe it depends on the organization.
(as a former boy scout, I'm no big fan of forced co-ed. Boys and girls ARE different, and it's healthy for them to have organized activities like this that actually take this into account. At that age you do a lot of co-ed scout-esque stuff in school anyway)
In Finland, the "original" division between the Woodchuks and Chickadees scouts is still maintained because the Finnish editorial wants to be loyal and faithful to the duck universe of Barks as a fanservice and so much as it is still possible. This has been taken so far that when it comes to a male scout then it is always the Woodchuks and when it comes to a female scout then it is always the Chickadees, no matter what the original language said. For example, in one scout story by Nino Russo and Alessandro Barbucci, the girls and boys are possibly the same scout organization with different clothes, but in the Finnish translation it was decided to split them into Woodchuks and Chickadees. But correct me if I’m wrong because I’ve never gotten to read the original Italian story.
Speaking of all this, are the Chickadees actually confirmed to belong to the same organization as Clinton Coot's JW?
See, now, there's an interesting question. First of all, I'd say that even if they are said to belong to the same organization in one story, I wouldn't call that "confirming" because all the stories can't possibly fit into one coherent narrative (which you know I think is a *good* thing).
In Barks and Rosa, the assumption appears to be separate organizations. This would accord with the scouting set-up in the USA, where the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts are separate organizations. The waters are somewhat muddied by the recent acceptance of girls into the Boy Scouts, but that occurred even after the period when Rosa was writing, not to mention decades after the mid-20th-century setting of his stories. One way I would underline the separateness of the organizations is to say that the Chickadees have no access to the miraculous JW Guidebook. It is true that the joke/allure of the Guidebook is diminished in these smartphone/Wikipedia days, but that's still a significant marker in the old days.
Marginally relevant detour: When the DuckTales story The Arcadian Urn was published in the USA in 2011, Webby's generic guide to Greece was called a Chickadee Field Guide in the American dialogue. Gerstein later said on Disney Comics Forum:
Jonathan Gray and I translated this story from Dutch; in the Dutch version, at least, Webby's book was simply a basic guide to ancient Greece. Nothing about the Chickadees (or, for that matter, Woodchucks) was mentioned. Jon felt the book's rather intricate knowledge seemed inappropriate for a basic guide, so he decided to make Webby a Chickadee and the book her manual—good idea. We translated from Dutch, by the way, because Egmont couldn't locate Halas' original British English version to send us. So we still don't know what the very first version of the story called the guide.<end quotation>
This may be the only instance of the Chickadees' having a guidebook with impressive arcane knowledge! As a reader with a Rosa-type headcanon, I was fine with this because it was in a story from the DuckTales alternate universe. Possibly David Gerstein was fine with it for that reason, too. I don't know whether they would have put a Chickadee Field Guide with arcane knowledge into a story from the regular Duckworld. Even so, they were keeping the DuckTales world of this comic story more in line with the regular Duckworld by making Webby a Chickadee rather than a Woodchuck, even though she was a JW in one episode of Original DuckTales. (Of course, it wouldn't have made sense for her book in this scene to be the JW Guidebook, since she alone apparently has it; the boys listen to her read from it.)
And back to Barks' and Rosa's world, the uniforms, insignia and titles in the two scouting groups are all distinct. The Chickadees do not go in for amusing acronyms! Nor for abundant medals. I'd also say that the dishonorable behavior of Captain Ramrod in The Chickadee Challenge would not have been portrayed in a JW troop leader.
In the USA, it is Girl Scouts who sell cookies to raise money, cookies that are actually manufactured and packaged/labeled as "Girl Scout cookies" of different varieties. I don't know whether the Chickadees have ever been portrayed as cookie-sellers, but I was amused when I read a European story where the all-male Junior Woodchucks were selling cookies, since that's something only Girl Scouts do here.
In the myriad stories where Chickadees compete with Junior Woodchucks, there is typically no indication that the two groups are part of a single organization.
I don't believe the two scouting groups were portrayed as part of a single overall organization in the Italian GM comics...but I've only read a handful of those, please correct me if I'm wrong.
If the writer of a story lives in a country where the girls' and boys' scouting outfits are part of a single organization, it would make sense that that would be their default understanding and presentation of the Chickadees and JWs. I don't know whether that has come across clearly in any story/stories. Earlier on this thread I noted the Dutch story Mix, whose summary says that due to financial constraints, the Junior Woodchucks and the Chickadees are going to merge. I asked whether anyone had read that and could say more about it, but no one has responded so far.
I just remembered this passage from W.H.A.D.A.L.O.T.T.A.J.A.R.G.O.N., in which Scrooge just said he'll fire every "screwball Woodchuck" currently in his employ. The way the female employee phrases her response would indicate that the former Chickadees would quit out of solidarity, so I guess you're absolutely right: they must be separate organizations.
As an aside, I *really* like the idea of there being a Chickadee Guidebook as well. Why should the girl scouts be inferior to the boy scouts? The Barks stories where they compete, Chickadees can pretty firmly hold their own against Woodchucks.
If there's one reservoir of inexhaustible knowledge, there might as well be two. I bet ol' Coot never bothered to add cookie recipes to his Guidebook!
As an aside, I *really* like the idea of there being a Chickadee Guidebook as well. Why should the girl scouts be inferior to the boy scouts? The Barks stories where they compete, Chickadees can pretty firmly hold their own against Woodchucks.
Note that there is a one-pager in which it is confirmed that they have their own guidebook: Boek-lopers.
As an aside, I *really* like the idea of there being a Chickadee Guidebook as well. Why should the girl scouts be inferior to the boy scouts? The Barks stories where they compete, Chickadees can pretty firmly hold their own against Woodchucks.
Note that there is a one-pager in which it is confirmed that they have their own guidebook: Boek-lopers.
If there's one reservoir of inexhaustible knowledge, there might as well be two. I bet ol' Coot never bothered to add cookie recipes to his Guidebook!
What does making cookies have to do with having to a guidebook for the Chikadees?
On your second question: That Duckfan is probably referring to what I said about only Girl Scouts selling cookies in the USA.
Thanks much for the reference to the one-pager! Since I can't read the dialogue in the Inducks scan, and since it hasn't been published in France or Germany from whence I might be able to buy a copy, I would greatly appreciate it if you would post an English translation of the dialogue. (Or just post it in the language you have it in, and I'll run it through GoogleTranslate.) Like That Duckfan, I do really like the idea of the Chickadees having their own Guidebook...I just have reluctantly accepted in my personal headcanon that the magical JW Guidebook is inaccessible to them as to any non-JWs, and that its singular origin story is impossible of replication, so that there couldn't be another magical compendium of All Knowledge available to the girls. But I'm very much interested in the idea of a Chickadee Guidebook. I would be most interested to hear what this one-pager indicates about their guidebook. Plus, it's not really off-topic, because it would shed light on Geradts' understanding of the relation between the two organizations. Though of course Geradts has never been known for caring about continuity or consistency, even within his own output! So this would show only Geradts' theory for the purposes of this one-pager.
In Finland, the "original" division between the Woodchuks and Chickadees scouts is still maintained because the Finnish editorial wants to be loyal and faithful to the duck universe of Barks as a fanservice and so much as it is still possible. This has been taken so far that when it comes to a male scout then it is always the Woodchuks and when it comes to a female scout then it is always the Chickadees, no matter what the original language said. For example, in one scout story by Nino Russo and Alessandro Barbucci, the girls and boys are possibly the same scout organization with different clothes, but in the Finnish translation it was decided to split them into Woodchuks and Chickadees. But correct me if I’m wrong because I’ve never gotten to read the original Italian story.
Daniel Maline: Could you please give the title of the Russo/Barbucci story you refer to here? It's an interesting example, both of original intent and of editorial rewriting.