Ducktales: Not Your Grandfather's Donald Duck

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I bought as many Gold Key Disney comics as I could find: the anonymous artist (later identified as Carl Barks) sent Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, and their three identical-triplet nephews on rousing adventures:  The Lost Crown of Genghis Khan, the Mines of King Solomon, the Golden Fleece,  the Fabulous Philosopher's Stone, the Flying Dutchman.  Come to think of it, I first heard of those legends in Disney comics.














It was a masculine world of high adventure, with no women and no references to heterosexual desire.  Donald, of course, had a girlfriend back home, but she rarely appeared in the adventure stories, and neither Uncle Scrooge nor the nephews displayed any heterosexual interests.

Gold Key comics gradually disappeared during the 1970s, but in 1985, fledgling company Gladstone started publishing Disney comics again.  In West Hollywood, my regular Saturday night routine was to cruise at Mugi, the gay Asian bar, then stop at the Book Circus for a pile of Gladstones. I liked the reprints of classic Carl Barks stories from my childhood. The European versions of the Ducks were sometimes interesting.  But I didn't like Don Rosa's new comics: he gave Uncle Scrooge a passionate, life long romance with Yukon show girl Glittering Goldie. Yikes!

Between 1987 and 1990, the WB broadcast DuckTales, with animated versions of the stories.  Donald Duck is absent, and there are many new characters, including the housekeeper Mrs.Beakley and a girl, Webbigail, I guess to draw in a female audience.

I didn't watch; I was usually busy on weekday afternoons, and besides, I was afraid of what they would do to heterosexualize the beloved gay icons of my childhood.  Have Uncle Scrooge torn between Duck versions of Betty and Veronica? Have Huey, Dewey, and Louie compete over who would bring the it-girl to the school dance?

Now there's a new version of Ducktales (2017-),  with many differences to adjust to the changing times:

1. Donald is back.  He still speaks with that impossible-to-understand Clarence Nash voice from the 1930s cartoons.

2. Mrs. Beakley is a secret agent/bodyguard, not a dowdy housekeeper.

3. Huey, Dewey, and Louie are differentiated into nerd, teen operator, and a third that I haven't identified.

4. Their parents were never mentioned in the comics (except their mother, Della, wrote a note in an early Carl Barks one shot).  Presumably they were dead, which is why Uncle Donald was raising the boys.  But now Della is back. Apparently she was an astronaut, stuck on the moon for several years.

5. Their Boy Scout-like club, the Junior Woodchucks, was boy-only.  Now it's gender-inclusive.  .

6. In the first episode of Season 3, Huey and Violet, a regular rival who has appeared in four previous episodes, compete for a major Junior Woodchucks prize.  And we find out that Violet has two dads!

They have no speaking parts, but they're very obvious,drawn to stand out from the other characters, both wearing "I'm With Dad"t-shirts.  First they are sitting with the other parents during a presentation; then they appear in the background during a sports day; and finally they come up onto the stage to congratulate Violet on winning the prize.

Ok, it's the third season, and as far as I can tell, neither they nor Violet appear in any later episodes.. Not a lot of representation.  But seeing them share the screen with Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, and the nephews isamazing, as if Duckburg has been gay-friendly all along.