I heard that the character Donald Duck is really popular in Europe. In particular, his comic books are super popular.
Can anyone who lives in or has been to Europe confirm this? And why do you think Donald is so popular in Europe?
Currently, we in the U.S. are getting translations from “Topolino,” an Italian Disney comics magazine. Some VERY good stuff, far better than what is being produced domestically.
Why Donald (et al) are popular, I can’t guess, but, yes, they are very popular in Europe right now.
Yes he’s very popular in some parts of Europe but especially here in the Nordics. As for why, only speaking for Finland here but Donald’s temperamental character is something Finns can relate to. Also, Donald Duck, the magazine, was one of the first foreign comics published over here, in Sweden 1948, and Finland 1951. In Finland Donald Duck was getting popular right around the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and kinda got the same positive association of a new forward looking optimism of post-war Finland.
In Finland it’s traditional for parents to get a subscription of the weekly Donald Duck comic for their kids. Most Finnish kids first learn to read by from Donald Duck. My parents did it to us and kept on subscribing right up till my youngest sibling turned 18. One of the weekly comics made up phrases ‘kääk!’ which Donald Duck shouts when he’s exasperated has made it in the Finnish dictionary. If you get really lucky, or get away with something, you might be referred as a total Gladstone Gander and if you’re rich, or cheap, you’re a Scrooge McDuck.
When Carl Barks, or Don Rosa, visited Finland it made the national news.(Link)(Link)
Absolutely true - in my childhood in Denmark (1970s, I’m old), Tuesday was a red-letter day, because the new Donald Duck magazine would be in stores.
It’s actually a good read. The good artists (Carl Barks above all, Don Rosa taking over after him) would deliver great storylines, sometimes continued over weeks. The magazine really paid attention to detail, and tried to be educational without it being obvious. For instance, instead of characters yelling “Help! Police!”, they would be more likely to say “Sound the alert! Turn out the guard!” or somesuch - very well-spoken ducks. Kids may not be able to verbalize an appreciation of quality, but they do recognize it.
As to why, specifically, Donald (“Anders And”) is popular? He’s a relatable everyman struggling in a world that tends to steamroll over him if it even notices him, and what adult can’t recognize that? Children of course like the fact that the nephews are smart.
There are semi-serious works published analyzing the universe - the word “Donaldism” was coined by Norwegian Jon Gisle to describe the study of all things Donald.
In the UK, no. Not at all. At least not that I ever remember from my childhood, those of my friends, my own children and their friends.
I don’t know of any particular fascination with Donald Duck in Europe. But I have read Donald Duck Adventures in France and Italy. And I was given to believe they were very popular – with his Uncle Scrooge’s endless money, some duck scientist I can’t remember, there are endless inventions to work with, and Huey, Dewy and Louie to help, the stories are endless. Mickey doesn’t really do that, he’s more a a homebody. And the whole Goofy as dad meme wasn’t in place before fairly recently.
Goofy had a wife and child in some of the original shorts.
The Carl Barks Donald Duck stories have always been revered by comics nerds in the U.S.; I’m not surprised that Europeans love them, too.
Either Gyro Gearloose (a goose), if it was an actual inventor, or Ludwig Von Drake (a duck), if it was just a scientist/scholar/professor type.
I’m not kidding when I tell you to listen to Tuomas Holopainen’s album that was written as a soundtrack for The Life And Times of Scrooge McDuck.
And Holopainen is normally a symphonic metal band member. He loved the comic series so much, he wrote the music for it.
It has been my impression that the Disney comics had a greater following in Europe than in America. The only Disney comics I’ve read are the ones translated into Latin (except the Scrooge ones, which are hard to get a hold of). Yet there seems to be an ongoing meme I notice now and then coming out of Europe snarking at Mickey Mouse as an emblem of American cultural inanity. And for a long time, I was prepared to tell any European who asked that nobody in America gave a shit about Mickey Mouse anymore. It’s Europeans who care about that shit. But The Disney Channel has been pushing the whole Mickey gang for what appears to have been over a decade now. Not with funny cartoons like the Disney cartoons you have to look to YouTube for, but with these brain numbing shows where you’re supposed to pretend you’re talking to the TV. So my son has been more exposed to Mickey Mouse than I was when I was a kid.
You can “thank” Dora the Explorer for those kinds of shows.
There’s a new series of Mickey Mouse shorts that air on Disney Channel.
It’s not really Disney per se, or even Donald Duck, that is/was very popular in (parts of) Europe, but specifically the Scrooge McDuck adventure comics by Carl Barks and later Don Rosa. They were once popular in the States too, but their popularity dwindled as comic books went from a mass market to a niche market and Disney got out of the comics business stateside. They were kind of forgotten about except by aficionados until they became the basis for the Duck Tales cartoon.
It seems like every other country has some part of American culture or media that they are fascinated with long after it has past its sell date in the States. I guess the classic examples would be Jerry Lewis in France and David Hasselhoff in Germany. I was surprised to find out that The Phantom (the long-running comic strip about a tights-wearing jungle hero) was far more popular in Northern Europe, with reprint digests and new adventures produced solely for the European market, than it was in the US.
Very popular in Germany. Micky Maus was one of the first comic books published after the war (1951) and always contained more Donald content than Micky content.
At one time, there were more than a dozen weekly or monthly Disney titles available in German. Not sure how many are still out there today, but it is still a massive market.
One hypothesis, though I’m not sure how this squares with it being the comics that are especially popular: Donald’s voice is very difficult to understand in any language, and thus his cartoons must be written with the expectation that he won’t be understood. And thus they transcend language barriers better than a character whose dialog must be understood.
Agreed, he’s not particularly popular at all in the UK. Maybe non-English-speaking countries like him because you don’t have to understand English to watch as he’s unintelligible even in English.
It is true. My girlfriend grew up in Germany and has dozens of Donald Duck comics (graphic novels essentially). He also stars in many of their TV specials. She loves the character since he was everywhere in her childhood.
I had a Donald Duck book when I was a child in Japan. I often took it out when we returned to the States. I remember nothing about it except it had a glossy hardcover, and it was read right-to-left.
In actuality, I was never a big fan of the Disney cartoons/comics. But I remember liking this book.
Dear Tony Anselmo: Your Donald is nearly unintelligible, please dial it back a notch.