EPILOGUE

 

GENERAL REMARKS

Barks had a very relaxed attitude towards the order in which the three nephews' names should be mentioned. Especially in the first third of his story years he referred to them as Huey, Louie, and Dewey, but he slowly 'converted' the sequence to Huey, Dewey, and Louie, which is also the most common juxtaposition. Barks' failure to go for one of the versions collided in WDCS160 'The Christmas Camel' (page 1, last panel), in which he uses both versions! An even stranger occurrence is seen in WDCS215 'Echo Ridge', where the echo returns the nephews' names in a faulty order!
In one single story Barks also turned to the well-known abbreviation for the nephews - HDL. It happened in WDCS191 'The Uranium Caps', page 2, in which Donald refers to them as H, D, and L.

The nephews' age (they are supposed to be identical twins) has always been somewhat of an enigma, as Barks portrayed them as ducklings suggesting that they were around 10 years of age. However, this pseudo-deduction based on pure graphics was shot down in WDCS042 Kite Weather, in which they are mentioned as 5-year olds!!! Hardly a thought through statement from Barks, as the nephews most often act as if they are teenagers, although he did once place them in Kindergarten (WDCS235 Want to Buy an Island?)!

It is anticipated that the nephews' presence in a story should contribute to the overall plot, but this was not always the case. In U$35 The Golden Nugget Boat they are present most of the time, but they play no roles whatsoever, in fact, they could easily have been omitted!

One might expect the nephews to refer to each other as Brothers (if they are not using their given names), but this is not so. Surprisingly, they only use this otherwise logical term when they are emotional such as in FC0203 The Golden Christmas Tree (page 9), brusque as in U$37 Deep Down Doings (page 6), or fired up as in FC0108 The Firebug (page 10). No, Barks mainly puts the word Men into their mouths, a choice of word that hardly seems crystal-clear...

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CONCLUSION

It is obvious, judging from the three detailed pages, that Barks always treated the nephews as one organism, that none of them had any specialties or peculiarities, and that he just picked a name when he needed one in the panels. As you can count from the pages Barks favoured the name Dewey followed by Louie, whereas Huey was the least often chosen name.
Therefore, no credible conclusion as for the nephews' possible individualities, distinctions, or characteristics can be drawn.

Bona Fide!

 

 

 

http://www.cbarks.dk/thenephewscharacteristicse.htm   Date 2009-06-11