Donald was always a more appealing character to me than Mickey Mouse because he’s so relateable. He has trouble with love and with money and he’s impulsive and impatient.
Mickey, on the other hand, is such a nothing-character. He’s basically just a brand mascot at this point, with no recognizeable character traits.
And while there are iterations of Mickey that actually give him a personality, it’s much less consistent than Donald.
And I don’t understand why anyone likes Minnie either. She has exactly one more character trait than Mickey, and it’s “girl”. Which is just a perfect little example of patriarchy’s normalisation of manhood and why the 1900s sucked at writing female characters
Oh, Smurfette is actually interesting. Smurfs are a single-gender species in nature, but Smurfette was created by an evil wizard to inflitrate the smurfs and help the wizard capture them. So the fact that her only personality trait is “girl” is actually diagetically justified and it can lead into some interesting directions. That said, after breaking free from her programming she has the personality traits of guilt for her past actions and appreciating a new family. So there’s actually a bare minimum of depth there and tons of room to grow the story and the character in interesting directions, though unfortunately that promise wasn’t really explored because… it’s the fucking smurfs
Disney had (has?) a very strong cultural position in Sweden.
It’s a Christmas tradition to watch a TV broadcast of a Disney cartoon medley that started 1960 and is still going strong, the majority of Swedes watch it every year.
Before the dedicated cartoon channels made their debut in the latter half of the 90’s, the only time you could watch cartoons where on Friday night, and it was all Disney.
It was called Disneydags, or Time for Disney translated.
Spot on! I looked upon my collection with pride when I visited my parents last time. Even have most of the early ones where only half of the spreads were printed in color
The comics were only available in Danish for a while so we mostly took the Danish names, so in Icelandic Donald is Andrés Önd (similar to Anders And).
The nephews are Ripp, Rapp and Rupp (Rip, Rap and Rup in Danish).
Funnily enough there’s a generational gap between people who call Goofy Fedtmule (the Danish name) or Guffi (the Icelandic translation name)!
The spines would make a continuous picture and having no gaps where a mark of pride.
That usually only happens in “complete collections” or something like that in the US. With any medium, I mean. Movies, books, comics, etc… And it doesn’t always happen, either.
In Italy, for some reason, Mickey Mouse comics (including a lot of Donald Duck stories) are SUPER popular, Donald’s depicted as always in debt, losing any job he can get and going on extreme life-threatening adventures with Scrooge just to get a cent off his uncle’s debt list, but nobody uses this to actually think that this might be a real world problem and brushes it off as an exaggeration. Are Italians (including me) blind?
Funny thing is, I feel like the new Ducktales series is the closest TV representation of the comics-versions of the characters. They change some things (most crucially they give Huey, Dewey and Louie individual personality traits), but overall it really feels like watching the European comic books come to life. Scrooge is still too much of a good guy, where in the comics he’s often a kind of villain.
I have a working theory that Donald Duck comics never got popular in the US because of the ever-present scathing critique of capitalism
They’re not!? Colour me surprised!
Super popular in Sweden, at least when I grew up.
Donald got comics in Sweden that characterized him completely differently than how he’s shown in the US. I think he’s a much better character there.
Donald was always a more appealing character to me than Mickey Mouse because he’s so relateable. He has trouble with love and with money and he’s impulsive and impatient.
Mickey, on the other hand, is such a nothing-character. He’s basically just a brand mascot at this point, with no recognizeable character traits.
And while there are iterations of Mickey that actually give him a personality, it’s much less consistent than Donald.
And I don’t understand why anyone likes Minnie either. She has exactly one more character trait than Mickey, and it’s “girl”. Which is just a perfect little example of patriarchy’s normalisation of manhood and why the 1900s sucked at writing female characters
Yeah they probably only created Minnie just to have a female character, without thinking about trivial stuff like a personality. Same for Smurfette
Oh, Smurfette is actually interesting. Smurfs are a single-gender species in nature, but Smurfette was created by an evil wizard to inflitrate the smurfs and help the wizard capture them. So the fact that her only personality trait is “girl” is actually diagetically justified and it can lead into some interesting directions. That said, after breaking free from her programming she has the personality traits of guilt for her past actions and appreciating a new family. So there’s actually a bare minimum of depth there and tons of room to grow the story and the character in interesting directions, though unfortunately that promise wasn’t really explored because… it’s the fucking smurfs
I never thought I would read Smurf lore, but here we are.
Also the smurfs are anarcho-communists
I recall them being popular in Germany, too, but yeah, they never took off like that here in the US.
Disney had (has?) a very strong cultural position in Sweden.
It’s a Christmas tradition to watch a TV broadcast of a Disney cartoon medley that started 1960 and is still going strong, the majority of Swedes watch it every year.
Before the dedicated cartoon channels made their debut in the latter half of the 90’s, the only time you could watch cartoons where on Friday night, and it was all Disney. It was called Disneydags, or Time for Disney translated.
I can’t think of anyone I grew up with in America in the 80s who read Disney comics at all.
Sweden in the 90’s and 00’s kids would collect the Disney pocket books like they where shonen manga.
The spines would make a continuous picture and having no gaps where a mark of pride.
Spot on! I looked upon my collection with pride when I visited my parents last time. Even have most of the early ones where only half of the spreads were printed in color
Haha, nostalgin alltså.
Samlade aldrig själv, men hade vänner som var galna i Kalle Anka pocketböcker lol.
Was it also possible to subscribe to the pocket books in Sweden? I had a subscription growing up in Iceland (Donald Duck is huge over there as well)
I didn’t collect them myself, so I actually don’t know.
But it seems like a pretty safe bet to assume you could.
What is Donald Duck called in Icelandic? In Sweden he is kalled Kalle Anna and in Denmark I think Anders And.
Hewey Dewey and Lewey is called Knatte Fnatte and Tjatte.
The comics were only available in Danish for a while so we mostly took the Danish names, so in Icelandic Donald is Andrés Önd (similar to Anders And).
The nephews are Ripp, Rapp and Rupp (Rip, Rap and Rup in Danish).
Funnily enough there’s a generational gap between people who call Goofy Fedtmule (the Danish name) or Guffi (the Icelandic translation name)!
Lol, Goofy is called Långben in Swedish, meaning “long leg”
That usually only happens in “complete collections” or something like that in the US. With any medium, I mean. Movies, books, comics, etc… And it doesn’t always happen, either.
In Italy, for some reason, Mickey Mouse comics (including a lot of Donald Duck stories) are SUPER popular, Donald’s depicted as always in debt, losing any job he can get and going on extreme life-threatening adventures with Scrooge just to get a cent off his uncle’s debt list, but nobody uses this to actually think that this might be a real world problem and brushes it off as an exaggeration. Are Italians (including me) blind?
The Duck Tales show where he’s the good guy did really well tho
That’s because he was shown to care about a few people he was related to without needing to give up his vast amount of wealth.
This despite him being named after Ebeneezer Scrooge for a reason. I guess he was post-ghost visit Scrooge.
Funny thing is, I feel like the new Ducktales series is the closest TV representation of the comics-versions of the characters. They change some things (most crucially they give Huey, Dewey and Louie individual personality traits), but overall it really feels like watching the European comic books come to life. Scrooge is still too much of a good guy, where in the comics he’s often a kind of villain.
That would sadly explain it. We only recently got out of the Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaire phase and only because we were basically forced to.