For those who still doubt the fact, Duckburg, Mouseton, and St. Canard MUST be in the same "cartoon universe." The appearance of "Starducks" in DARKWING DUCK #1 was not, as it turns out, the first time the ubiquitous coffee joint of that name has been mentioned in a Disney comic. Pride of (first) place goes to the SUPER GOOF story "Now Museum, Now You Don't" (Gemstone MICKEY MOUSE AND BLOTMAN #2, December 2006). Joe Torcivia gives the following line to Phineas Fawningfan, the would-be curator of the Super Goof Museum:
"What will we do? [Grumpy landlord] Picklepurse will throw us out and bring in another Starducks!"
The coffee in Mouseton is evidently every bit as potent as the brew in St. Canard. Super Goof calls Starducks coffee "thuh coffee so strong it puts feathers on a hairy chest," while Drake Mallard terms caffeine-fueled St. Canard "The City That Never Sleeps Soundly."
Chris:
ReplyDeleteAin’t it grand the way these things work out!
Maybe DW should join Super Goof for coffee someday, and chat about their comebacks in comics.
As you well know, I truly enjoyed working on Super Goof, and hope to have the opportunity to do so again someday!
Thanks for the shout-out!
Joe.
I dunno--this would seem to raise serious epistemological questions. Is the going assumption that every story that's ever been published in a Disney comic book (or broadcast as a cartoon) is absolutely canonical? 'Cause that would make for a pretty incoherent universe, even without taking into account weird crossovers like the Beagle Boys/Madam Mim team-ups. I'm cool with that, I suppose--let semiotic chaos reign!--but it seems like if that's the case, everything's so open there's little point in even talking about it.
ReplyDeleteBut... but... but... I had Donald chasing a traveling circus to St. Canard for my story in WDC 664 ("All Creatures Great and Small").
ReplyDeleteDon't I count? Sniff! (-:
Hmmm..... I am wondering if some term like "dysfunctional continuity" or "high-functioning dichotomy" maybe doesn't fit the bill for an incoherent Disney-verse?
ReplyDeleteGeoX,
ReplyDeletePerhaps we should take a hint from some of the earliest "Donaldists" (and Brent Swanson) and define some stories as "true," some as "plausibly true" (remember the "plausibly live" coverage at the 2000 Sydney Olympics?), and some as "fiction." Starducks is a pretty minor detail so I don't have any qualms about regarding it as a "true" feature of the Mouseton/Duckburg/St. Canard "universe." The Madam Mim/Beagle Boys stories, on the other white-gloved hand...
Chris
GeoX and Chris:
ReplyDeleteSometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence. My use of “Starducks”, as I said to Chirs when I was working out the script to the Super Goof story, was “…like finding a fifty-dollar bill on the sidewalk!” You wonder why no one used such an obvious gag before – and you were darned glad that it would (first?) see print under your own byline!
I would imagine Darkwing Duck writer Ian Brill felt the same way, when HE came up with it some years later. Oh, and didn’t Brill and James Silvani do a GREAT JOB on that Darkwing issue!
Fans like to tie things together in ways that suit their views. I like the fact that “My Starducks” and “Brill’s Starducks”, in some small way, unite Mouseton (and Duckburg) and St. Canard under the same continuity umbrella.
And, sadly, if we were to “throw out” any of the Madam Mim stories, we’d lose PHANTOM BLOT # 4 as well – and there were too few issues of THE PHANTOM BLOT as it was to toss ANY of them! So, in my personal book Mim stays – and enjoys her “Bat-Wing Berry Coolers” at Starducks!
Joe.