Huey, Dewey, & Louie: The Nephews
rich.be...@amail.amdahl.com
You asked how to tell the difference between the Nephews. This is a fun
question which Disney seems to want to ignore. I was reading in the letters
pages of one of the Disney Comics a response to this very question. The
person's reply was too generic. Something more to the effect, "The three
are really "one character" and by assigning colors to identify them you
are attempting to separate them into disticntly different characters." Para-
phrased at best. The truth is is that they *are* seperate characters. Each has o
has only a slightly different characteristic, but different none the less.
There was an episode of Ducktales (I forget the title) where Dewey got tired
of being confused with his brothers and screamed "I'm Dewey! The one in
bluey." Apparently the only ones who can really tell the three apart are
Donald, Daisy, Uncle $crooge, Launchpad, Mrs. Beakly and Webby. I don't
know if Fenton "Gizmo-Duck" Crackshell can.
That same episode established that Dewey definitely is the one in "blue."
Several years ago a comic book story had Grandma Duck knitting sweaters
for each of the ducklings. One each she knitted the first letter of their
names. H = Red, D = Blue and L = Green. This story was written back in
the sixties so the link between the Grandma Duck story and the Ducktales
story verifies that Dewey is still in blue.
This past month the latest issue of DISNEY NEWS came out. In the center of
the book is a nice painting of the Nephews asleep by the fireplace with
their stockings hanging for Christmas, Each is name is colored differently.
Huey is Red, Dewey is Blue and Louie is Green.
I think it is safe to believe that despite the "official word" from disney
the kids are definitely distinguishable.
Only problem is, sometimes the kids change their colors to "yellow", "orange"
and "purple." Then no one knows who they are. :(
Now for a real toughie. How do you tell the difference between Daisy's
neices? April, May & June. I have a theory that it is by the order of
thier names. Since they too wear Red, Blue & Green, I imagine they correspond
identically in the same order as Huey, Dewey & Louie.
Also, how do you tell the difference between Morty & Ferdie (Mickey's
Nephews)? Red & Blue, and sometimes Yellow & Green.
oy!
-Rich
Russell I. Dyreng
rich.be...@amail.amdahl.com writes:
>Huey is Red, Dewey is Blue and Louie is Green.
>
>I think it is safe to believe that despite the "official word"
>from disney the kids are definitely distinguishable.
>
>Only problem is, sometimes the kids change their colors to
>"yellow", "orange" and "purple." Then no one knows who they
>are. :(.
To make things even harder, I was watching an old Donald Duck
cartoon with my kids a few days ago. In this particular
cartoon Huey, Dewey and Louie *all* wore red! Try to tell
them apart on that one.
--
Russ
bd...@cleveland.freenet.edu
Remember-any advice that I give you may be worth exactly what
you paid for it.
Harry Fluks
>Mr. Kester-
>You asked how to tell the difference between the Nephews.
>(..) The truth is is that they *are* seperate characters. Each
>has only a slightly different characteristic, but different none the less.
Nonsense. You can't tell the character of an individual by the color of
his shirt. H, D and L are fully interchangeable. Their cloth colors fully
depend on the (dozens) different color artists (especially in the comics).
>Several years ago a comic book story had Grandma Duck knitting sweaters
>for each of the ducklings. One each she knitted the first letter of their
>names. H = Red, D = Blue and L = Green. This story was written back in
>the sixties so the link between the Grandma Duck story and the Ducktales
>story verifies that Dewey is still in blue.
Pure coincidence.
>oy!
>-Rich
Quack.
Harry Fluks
PTT Research, Leidschendam, The Netherlands
H.W....@research.ptt.nl
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Per Starb{ck
> [...] The truth is is that they *are* seperate characters. Each has o
> has only a slightly different characteristic, but different none the less.
Harry Fluks <ha...@dnlunx.research.ptt.nl>:
> Nonsense. You can't tell the character of an individual by the color of
> his shirt. H, D and L are fully interchangeable. Their cloth colors fully
> depend on the (dozens) different color artists (especially in the comics).
Of course *everything* about them "fully depend on" the different
artists, including their looks, their clothes, their lines and their
personalities.
The problem with the colouring in the comics is that it's so
inconsistent. Maybe the nephews exchange their caps between panels,
but even that won't explain the whole of it, as they sometimes
exchange colours when they are apart from each other. 8-)
The colouring in the animated shorts have always been better, but the
red-blue-green thing was invented in comics, so you won't find it in
the classical cartoons. Instead they wore different colours in
different cartoons, very often red. In their first cartoon ("Donald's
Nephews") they wore red, orange and green. In DuckTales they are
consistent about it, as Steven P. Calica <spc5...@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>
already has pointed out: Huey red, Dewey blue, and Louie green.
Different character or not? Of course they are *supposed* to be
exactly like one another, but if you look through several episodes
where they do different things and you know which one does what, maybe
you could find some unintentional (on the part of the writers)
different character traits anyway?
This is what Dan Haley tried to do in "A Who's Who of Huey, Dewey &
Louie" published in the fanzine The Barks Collector #11 (1979). He
doesn't only use those situations where one of the boys is explicitly
named, but all of that story as well, as he assumes that they wear the
same colours throughout a story at least. I wouldn't trust the
colourists that much...
When he initially looked through his Barks collection to find
instances where a nephew with a cap or outfits of some particular
colour was named, he found the following:
Huey Dewey Louie
Red 5 6 8
Green 5 4 6
Blue 1 8 3
(He only used stories by Carl Barks, but of course Unca Carl didn't
colour his stories himself.)
Rich again:
> Several years ago a comic book story had Grandma Duck knitting sweaters
> for each of the ducklings. One each she knitted the first letter of their
> names. H = Red, D = Blue and L = Green. This story was written back in
> the sixties so the link between the Grandma Duck story and the Ducktales
> story verifies that Dewey is still in blue.
Harry again:
> Pure coincidence.
Maybe, but I'm not totally convinced. It wouldn't surprise me if at
least some of the colourists had their opinions on what colours the
boys wear, and it would be very easy to follow that opinion in the
sweater example. I guess the problem for the colourists was that they
didn't have the time to actually read the stories, and you had to do
that to keep track of the boys. I'd like more data on the colouring
in scenes such as the sweaters episode Rich mentioned where the
colourists are bound to have noticed which boy the gave which colour.
-- "
Per Starback, Uppsala, Sweden. email: star...@student.docs.uu.se
Disney comics mailing list administrator.
"Life is but a gamble! Let flipism chart your ramble!"