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! 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... . 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. Bona Fide! |
http://www.cbarks.dk/thenephewscharacteristicse.htm | Date 2009-06-11 |