Dec. 8: Life after Duck Tales

 I always preferred Donald Duck to Mickey Mouse. I think most people must. We want our lives to go the way Mickey's does but it's Donald with whom we relate. Mickey Mouse has a stress-free life. Donald's has nothing but stress. This is what makes Donald Duck's stories more interesting than Mickey Mouse's.

If Mickey was building a house, I would expect everything to go swimmingly. He would have all the materials he needed, the weather would be beautiful, and anyone helping him would be fully competent and eager to work. With Donald, there would be a thunderstorm on house-building day. His materials would be dropped off late and would be of substandard quality. His assistants would be more interested in burning the house down than putting it up.

Mickey Mouse is boring. He never has any problems. We all want Mickey Mouse lives. We want our lives to be boring. Ever hear someone tell a story about their vacation? Gets boring real quick, doesn't it? That's because there's no conflict. If you don't have conflict, you don't have a story.

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Enter DuckTales, a late 1980s animated series that centres around Donald Duck's uncle, Scrooge McDuck, and his nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Scrooge McDuck is a trillionaire and most of the episodes deal with Scrooge trying to protect his fortune, surely the largest in history, from scheming thieves and other petty criminals.

I have vague recollections of my brother enjoying DuckTales, but I never cared for it. Scrooge McDuck and Huey, Dewey, and Louie were nowhere near as interesting as Donald.

My favourite Donald Duck cartoon of all time has to be The Autograph Hound.



It is classic Donald. He has a goal, which is to collect autographs from a whole bunch of movie stars from the late 1930s. There is conflict; Donald battles a studio policeman who is determined to keep him off the premises, uncooperative and bullying movie stars, and his own clumsiness. There's a twist ending when all the movie stars realize something we all know, that Donald Duck has more of a claim to fame than any of them. I mean... how many of us today remember Greta Garbo, the Ritz Brothers, or Sonja Henie?

Yeah, so I'll take Donald Duck and everyone else can keep Uncle Scrooge and the nephews. They're all Robin and Donald Duck is Batman.

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It's tragic that Disney doesn't make Donald Duck movies anymore. Nowadays they're all about big budget musicals like Frozen and Lion King, etc... Too bad. I think Donald Duck is the best thing Walt Disney ever created.

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Better than DuckTales was Donald Duck Presents, an animated series that started airing in the early 1980s. Those people knew there was a market for classic Donald Duck in the golden age of animation. You might catch the Autograph Hound on Donald Duck Presents. You'd definitely see him blow his gasket a number of times.

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Is there life after Duck Tales? Sure, there is. But in Disneyland, you won't find anyone better than Donald Duck. Mickey, Goofy, the dwarves, and all those beautiful doomed princesses take a back seat to that sailor suit-wearing mallard who always gets stuck with all the bad luck.




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