I had that experience with Daisy Duck too, when I moved to the US I was disappointed to find out she wasn’t a true celebrity.
Donald from a US standpoint: constantly broke, unemployed, clumsy, drives an old banger, most of the time single, bad temper, three nephews to feed.
Donald from a German standpoint: bohemien, jack of all trades, owns a house and a car, has a rich uncle, in an on/off relationship with a great lady, enthusiastic, family man, secret vigilante with hightech equipment fighting evil at night.
Donald Duck is pretty much famous all over Europe. Sweden even prefers Uncle Scrooge over Donald Duck. Italy makes a ton of their own Donald Duck comics.
Generally speaking the majority of European countries like the Duck family way more then the mouse.
“Just as the French are obsessed with Jerry Lewis, the Germans see a richness and complexity to the Disney comic that isn’t always immediately evident to people in the cartoon duck’s homeland,” Bernofsky wrote.
So US Americans are to lazy to think about a deeper Message in Comics?
It’s simple, really: no trousers.
I’ve encountered the same during my time in Sweden. 3pm, every Christmas Eve.
I loved Donald as a kid and I love him even more nowadays. He’s a working class (super) hero with anger issues who just can’t catch a break, both fun and relatable
It’s just that Mickey Mouse is so … bland and boring. No edges at all. Donald is only edge and always on it!
One of the best parts of the new Duck Tales show was the episode where Donald Duck suddenly spoke intelligible. But I am sure US fans hated that.
His three Nephews are also much better characters ! It is in the names already. Tick,Trick,and Track. They are clever, resourceful, motivated, etc.
And Donald is fantastic. He can do almost anything (other than working of his debt 🙂
I always wondered this as a child with DisneyLand in Paris which has this super high focus on that boring, unrelatable mouse. It makes sense, as it was mainly planned by Americans.
Am German. Can confirm I love Donald. As a kid they had a Disney comic book series called Lustiges Taschenbuch (Funny Pocketbook) and I would only read the Donald stories and skip Mickey. I still remember the Donald as Marco Polo storyline. So good.
I love Donald and never read the Mickey stories.
I was obsessed with the Donald Duck comics as a kid. Our local library had a huge collection of Carl Barks comics and the Lustige Taschenbücher. I used to spend a lot of friday evenings and saturday mornings there just reading comic books like a complete nerd. Good times.
Never forget that the Germans had an antihero supervillain named after Scrooge McDuck: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Funke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Funke)
Also the model for the villain in Speed.
If you read this essay, and took away from it that it is actually all about how Americans are culturally unsophisticated, inferior, or whatever negative conclusion, you may need to examine your priors.
You are not just knee-jerk anti-American. You are reading anything that is distinct about another culture from the lens of “but how can I make this about America.”
Not German (American) but, for better or worse, I see a lot of myself in Donald. Particularly the short fuse, frustration with life’s little irritations, luck, and (non-physical) fighting spirit.
Because he is spider man?
damn…i haven’t thought about those books since i was a little kid…
coming home saturday afternoon with a big stack of old mickey maus books from the trodel market was one of the highpoints of my childhood!
20 comments
Yes, let’s honor Erika Fuchs which made all of this possible!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erika_Fuchs
I had that experience with Daisy Duck too, when I moved to the US I was disappointed to find out she wasn’t a true celebrity.
Donald from a US standpoint: constantly broke, unemployed, clumsy, drives an old banger, most of the time single, bad temper, three nephews to feed.
Donald from a German standpoint: bohemien, jack of all trades, owns a house and a car, has a rich uncle, in an on/off relationship with a great lady, enthusiastic, family man, secret vigilante with hightech equipment fighting evil at night.
Donald Duck is pretty much famous all over Europe. Sweden even prefers Uncle Scrooge over Donald Duck. Italy makes a ton of their own Donald Duck comics.
Generally speaking the majority of European countries like the Duck family way more then the mouse.
“Just as the French are obsessed with Jerry Lewis, the Germans see a richness and complexity to the Disney comic that isn’t always immediately evident to people in the cartoon duck’s homeland,” Bernofsky wrote.
So US Americans are to lazy to think about a deeper Message in Comics?
It’s simple, really: no trousers.
I’ve encountered the same during my time in Sweden. 3pm, every Christmas Eve.
I loved Donald as a kid and I love him even more nowadays. He’s a working class (super) hero with anger issues who just can’t catch a break, both fun and relatable
It’s just that Mickey Mouse is so … bland and boring. No edges at all. Donald is only edge and always on it!
One of the best parts of the new Duck Tales show was the episode where Donald Duck suddenly spoke intelligible. But I am sure US fans hated that.
His three Nephews are also much better characters ! It is in the names already. Tick,Trick,and Track. They are clever, resourceful, motivated, etc.
And Donald is fantastic. He can do almost anything (other than working of his debt 🙂
I always wondered this as a child with DisneyLand in Paris which has this super high focus on that boring, unrelatable mouse. It makes sense, as it was mainly planned by Americans.
Am German. Can confirm I love Donald. As a kid they had a Disney comic book series called Lustiges Taschenbuch (Funny Pocketbook) and I would only read the Donald stories and skip Mickey. I still remember the Donald as Marco Polo storyline. So good.
I love Donald and never read the Mickey stories.
I was obsessed with the Donald Duck comics as a kid. Our local library had a huge collection of Carl Barks comics and the Lustige Taschenbücher. I used to spend a lot of friday evenings and saturday mornings there just reading comic books like a complete nerd. Good times.
Never forget that the Germans had an antihero supervillain named after Scrooge McDuck: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Funke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Funke)
Also the model for the villain in Speed.
If you read this essay, and took away from it that it is actually all about how Americans are culturally unsophisticated, inferior, or whatever negative conclusion, you may need to examine your priors.
You are not just knee-jerk anti-American. You are reading anything that is distinct about another culture from the lens of “but how can I make this about America.”
Not German (American) but, for better or worse, I see a lot of myself in Donald. Particularly the short fuse, frustration with life’s little irritations, luck, and (non-physical) fighting spirit.
Because he is spider man?
damn…i haven’t thought about those books since i was a little kid…
coming home saturday afternoon with a big stack of old mickey maus books from the trodel market was one of the highpoints of my childhood!
​
…oh shit! i even found an old one!
[https://imgur.com/a/JfYaNVz](https://imgur.com/a/JfYaNVz)
this thing followed me across the world and has been sitting one one bookshelf or another for the last 30 years!