This mosaic was found in the Catacombs of Constantinople in 1213, AD
The year was 2004, and I was anxiously sitting in the audience of a question-and-answer session with a world-famous cartoonist at Raptus, the annual Comics festival in Bergen, Norway. Then he took the stage - I couldn't believe it. There I was, face to face with Don Rosa himself!
If you're an American, you might be thinking, Don WHO? The irony is, of course, that Don Rosa himself is also an American - but his principal fan base is European.
That's because the comic he writes and draws goes virtually unpublished in America, though in countries like Norway (and many others in Europe, especially in the North) it would not be an exaggeration to say that the comic series he works on has been perhaps one of the most significant in the entire history of European comics.
That series is Donald Duck & Co.
"Donald Duck & Friends", and the Norwegian version, "Donald Duck & Co."
Yes, Donald Duck. In America, of the "big three" Disney characters - Mickey, Goofy, and Donald, Donald actually shows up with increasing rarity these days, though in Scandinavia particularly, he's the star of the show. So why should such a talented cartoonist, who lives in America, working on a series about a character created by Disney, an American company, be virtually unknown in the good ol' U.S. of A, but so popular wherever his work is exported?
That was exactly the question that throbbed in my mind as I nervously raised my hand.
"You there," he said, pointing at me. "In the sweater with the ponytail." (Don Rosa did not speak Norwegian. Fortunately nearly all of us at the convention spoke English. I stood up and asked my question.
"Mr. Rosa - I'm half-American, half-Norwegian. I grew up in Texas. Why is it that-"
Seeing exactly where this was going, he finished for me, "...that I'm completely unknown back in the States?"
"Yes! And here the line for your panel wrapped out the door!"
"Well, my friend, that has everything to do with the history of comics in countries like Norway, and the rest of Europe for that matter." What follows here is a combination of what Don Rosa told us, mixed with my own understanding and research of the events in question:
The biggest influence that came into European comics happened during the reconstruction of Europe when the Allies used programs like the Marshall plan to rebuild what the Axis had demolished. Needless to say, an enormous amount of British and American goods reached Europe in numbers and intensity of the like they had never seen before.
The Marshall Plan saved Europe from Economic collapse after World War II
More importantly, Europeans came into contact with American culture in ways they never had before. At the time, places such as Norway were not particularly wealthy, especially not after the devastation of the Blitz. Things like radios, television sets, movie theaters, and private cars were not and would not be as widely available as they were in America for years to come. (Stenersen, Libęk 134) But one form of American entertainment was cheap, quick to produce, easy to distribute, and highly enjoyable for the whole family - comics.
And the most popular one of all, of course, was Donald Duck.
Now Donald Duck had actually been a decently popular newspaper strip back in the 1940's in the U.S., but for whatever reason, Donald Duck never caught on as an American tradition, and Donald faded from the limelight and let Mickey Mouse overshadow him as Disney's main spokes-character.
But in places like Norway, we simply couldn't get enough of the delightful duck. Don Rosa went on to talk specifically about the weekly comic book Norwegians traditionally got their Donald fix with - Donald Duck & Co., a 60-page comic book that comes with about 5 "long" ten page stories and several "short" one-to-three pagers. About two-thirds of the content is new and another third is classic content from the many decades of vintage Donald Duck.
Donald Duck & Co., as it turns out, is not published by Disney, as I had once believed. Don Rosa said quite bluntly, "The Disney corporation deserves zero credit for the Donald Duck you Norwegians have come to know and love." These comics are produced by a company called , which is an independent licensor of the Disney Characters. Egmont pays Disney for the rights to their characters, and then writes, draws, prints, and sells stories about them.
There have been other companies besides Egmont that do this sort of thing. Gladstone was a big one back in the old days, when Donald Duck was more widely read in America. (Sean's Dad regaled me about the days when he would read Donald Duck comics published by Gladstone. Telling him about Norway's cultural obsession with Donald Duck made him respond, "I suddenly just gained an enormous respect for your country, Lars.")
An issue of Donald Duck, published by Gladstone
The irony is that Disney employees know less about their own characters than the writers at companies like Eggmont (for there are several Donald Duck publications, such as Donald Pocket and Uncle Scrooge), who have essentially developed their personalities, lives, and, in traditional comic-book form, various conflicting back history continuities.
It is in fact through companies like Eggmont that many original Disney characters have been created - the most famous of all being that lovable Scottish entrepreneur/miser, "Uncle" Scrooge McDuck.
Scrooge McDuck was first created by the legendary Carl Barks, considered nearly unanimously to be the greatest Donald Duck cartoonist of all time (Don Rosa is considered by many to be his successor). All of these characters that companies like Eggmont create for their own use become Disney's intellectual property, of course. But the deal is a good one, apparently, because these comics couldn't be more popular.
Carl Barks created Uncle Scrooge and many other famous Disney Characters
The process goes like this: the comics are written and drawn in English, then sent to the company's local offices in the various countries around Europe to be localized. This is not merely done by translating the original comics - because each country has its own supply of local Donald Duck cartoonists, too! These people write and draw many of the cartoons that show up in their own country, and are usually tapped to write country-specific stories, such as any special stories for the issue coming out in Norway the week of the 17th of May, Norway's independence day.
And very occasionally, the big guns are called in to do a special story for a country. When the Olympics were in Lillehammer, Norway, Don Rosa was asked to write a special story about the Norwegian Olympics that year. However, Don Rosa had a dilemma - his stories are exclusively set in the 1950's. The Lillehammer Olympics was in 1994.
Luckily, there was an Olympics hosted in Oslo way back in 1952 - so he set the story then, which pleased both his own artistic constraints as well as his editors.
The main reason Donald Duck has enjoyed so much success is because of its enviable position as an honest-to-God pillar of modern Norwegian culture and tradition. The saying goes, that when a couple first gets news they're pregnant, the first thing they do is buy a subscription to Donald Duck. (The fact that the baby won't be born for another nine months goes a long way to show how much even adults love the series).
Donald Duck in many ways is a legendary figure - and I mean that in a literary sense. In a legend, your audience is generally familiar with the tale, the characters involved, and the basic chronology. However, legends are quite mutable, and one of their main characteristics is that they are a literary form which in many ways encourages canonical corruption and variation.
A Classic Carl Barks adventure. Note the Gladstone logo.
Think of the Legend of King Arthur, with all of its competing versions (does Arthur get Excalibur from the stone, or from the Lady in the Lake?). Even still, most people understand the basic gist of the story. (Some writers, such as Paul Gadzikowski of Arthur, King of Time and Space, get a great deal of comedic mileage out of trying to reconcile these different versions!)
Think also of the Legend of Zelda, if you're part of the Nintendo Generation. After a few sequels, Nintendo just abandoned any attempt to string the continuity together at all and just said, "It's a legend. Each story is a new version, and there's no continuity between them, officially. That's why there's major differences, even contradictions, between the sequels, but there's always a few core things left the same." This kind of statement is quite liberating.
I wish superhero comics would get on the ball and take advantage of this approach. Instead of having to have a "crisis" storyline to reconcile parallel universes and time-travel paradoxes, it would be much better if we just had, "Here is a tale of Wolverine," or "Here is a tale of the Spider-man," understanding that these legends don't have to pretend to fit into canon.
Link, Arthur, and Donald: Heroes of Legend.
That is exactly what Donald Duck does. If this thing tried to stick to canon, Donald would be a senior citizen and his nephews would have a glandular defect that keeps them from going through puberty even though they'd be in the retirement home, too. (Just glancing at an old issue from 1998, it says, "50 years in Norway!" so that would make the Sixtieth anniversary just two years away, in 2008.)
Several things always stay the same - it seems a whole third of the stories begin with Donald losing his job and looking for new employment. Uncle Scrooge is always a tightwad and reluctant to loan his nephew so much as a nickel; Daisy is always temperamental, and Gladstone Gander's filthy luck means he can just stick out his hat and have money fall into it - sometimes literally!
With this loose approach to canon, it's quite easy to have stories set in all sorts of strange and contradictory timelines and continuities right next to each other in the very same issue. A story set in the modern era with Huey, Duey, and Louie talking on cell phones and playing video games goes right next to a story by Don Rosa, set in the 1950's, with them watching black-and-white Cowboy and Indian adventures on a vintage television set, right next to classic stories by Carl Barks himself, both set and written decades ago.
It's kind of strange to think that the collective consciousness of an entire nation, let alone much of an entire Continent, can be transformed by a duck in a sailor's uniform who doesn't wear pants, but still feels the need to wrap a towel around himself when he comes out of the shower.
Donald Duck's extensive Family Tree. All these characters are involved in Donald Duck stories!!!
All the images from comics are © The Walt Disney Company. They are provided here simply as reference material and are not meant in any way to infringe on Disney's Copyright, which I both acknowledge and respect.
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