We all know Grandma Duck as a widow, but there have been a few appearances of her husband... Let's compil all of the possible appearances of Grandpa Duck...
 
 

First, in Barks' "The Hard Loser", from 1949 (script from unknown origins), Donald wants to borrow Grandpa's horse. No more informations are given on the character. It's not even sure that we talk about this grandpa : some people even consider that it could be Huey, Dewey and Louie's grandpa (their father's father).

Then, in an untitled story from the Dell giant "Vacation Parade" #2 , from 1951, by Bill Wright, Grandma has recollections of her lover Humperdink. Nothing tells us in the story that he is actually Donald's grandpa...

In Strobl's "The Good Old Daze", from 1964, we can see a bit of Donald's youth, and we see he has been raised at the farm with his grandparents, and this is the first official appearance of a Grandpa Duck...

Then, for his "Duck Family Tree" and episodes of his "Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" series, from 1994, and also in the story "The Sign of the Triple Distelfink", from 1997, Don Rosa needed to create a new Grandpa for Donald, which he first called Dabney, but as he remembered the Vacation Parade story in which Grandma's boyfriend was called Humperdink, he decided to keep this name (although Don Rosa don't show interrest in other creators than Barks in his continuity, he prefers using names that already exist for special characters that inventing another name, even if he changes their design. That's the case for Gus' mother in his tree, he called her Fanny Coot because in the cartoon "Donald's Cousin Gus", Gus' mother's name appears on a letter as being Fanny...). We can assume that Strobl's and Rosa's grandpa Ducks are the same person, and that maybe just after the Triple Distelfink story, he let his beard grow...

 

In the 1955 cartoon "No Hunting", we can meet a wacky duck character referred to by the narrator as "Grandpa". This is a kind of ghost who comes out from a picture on the wall... Rich Bellacerra evocated the possibility of him being Grandma's husband, but I'd prefer seeing it as a more distant (in time) ancestor, like a great-grandfather (to me, he's even his great-great-grandfather). As he isn't given A last name, he could also be Grandma's mother's father, for instance...

 

In Giovan Battista Carpi's Duck Family Tree, from 1994, published in the book "Walt Disney Presenta Paperina e le altre", on pages 42-43, we can see Strobl's Grandpa Duck again. The Grandpa from "No Hunting" has been added on the advice of Luca Boschi, and is considered as Donald's great-grandpa.

 

Gilles MAURICE
goofy313g@free.fr
http://goofy313g.free.fr/calisota_online/