Vor fünf Jahren stand der Verleger Benedikt Taschen in seinem Haus hoch über dem San Fernando Valley und zeigte die Aushänger zu einem kommenden Prachtband über eine Figur, die das Leben beider Anwesender geprägt hat: Donald Duck. Taschen kam aus dem Schwärmen über das, was da zu sehen war, gar nicht mehr heraus – es war ja auch seine Erfolgsgeschichte. In den Siebzigerjahren war er noch vor seiner Volljährigkeit als Comic-Händler aktiv geworden, hatte dann mit achtzehn einen eigenen Laden in Köln eröffnet und es sich dadurch mit der damals frisch gegründeten D.O.N.A.L.D. verscherzt, jener Vereinigung von Donaldisten, deren N im Akronym für „nichtkommerziell“ steht.
Die Donaldisten ächteten den geschäftstüchtigen jungen Mann, aber dessen Aufstieg zum Großverleger verhinderte das nicht. Und der Besucher hatte als Teenager die Donaldisten ausgerechnet über eine von deren Zeitschriften kennengelernt, die er aus den Schubladen des von ihnen verfemten Comicladens von Benedikt Taschen gezogen hatte.
Taschen’s love for Donald Duck never grew cold, but before he could get the volume he dreamed of, he had to turn sixty-three and present half a dozen other reference works in comic and animation history: Marvel superheroes and Disney -cartoons. The latter then opened the door to the Donald Duck book. Now it’s finally here, after years of work by editor Daniel Kothenschulte, which primarily consisted of sifting through the abundant Disney archives and then obtaining permission to print the discoveries unearthed there.
What was already hanging on Taschen’s wall in 2019 were proofs of hugely enlarged magazine covers and comic pages by Carl Barks, the most famous of all Donald illustrators, and what they already made clear back then was that a reconstruction and reproduction quality would prevail here that has never been achieved before had not yet given the many collector’s editions of Barks. But what was seen then could be considered known. What else has now found its way into the volume is not.
The most spectacular thing is what Kothenschulte brings to light in terms of preliminary drafts for Donald films: among other things, countless storyboard drawings (i.e. the seeds of later cartoons) that Carl Barks drew in his capacity as a “story artist” in the Disney film studio. This was the training ground for the later unparalleled narrator, because there are already characters and plots that are familiar from his most famous comics. For example, a never-filmed story called “Madame XX” from 1941 about a spying vamp, which expressed the collective fear of foreign agents in the United States at the time and transferred it to Donald Duck as the most popular cartoon character of the time. The American Disney experts JB Kaufman and David Gerstein, whom Kothenschulte was able to win as authors for his book, see the femme fatale title heroine as the precursor for the later character of Gundel Gaukeley, but the plot of this never-finished film is above all a pattern was for Barks’ Duck adventure “Dangerous Disguise” from 1951, in which a “Madame Triple-X” was supposed to appear as the antagonist of the unsuspecting Donald. Triple X sounds better than double.
This makes the New Objectivity look old
This is just one example of the enrichment that even intense Duck enthusiasts will experience through this book. But what is of even greater interest is the extensive selection of images. There are background drawings from the Donald cartoons, whose exaggerated realism makes the New Objectivity look old. And enlargements of individual comic panels that reveal the gestural mastery of an artist like Al Taliaferro, who was the first to use Donald as a comic character – Barks owed him a lot, not just characters like Huey, Dewey and Louie or Grandma Duck, but especially them Expressiveness of his Duckburg residents. Or film posters that almost jump out at the viewer with their aggressive colors. Pop artavant la letter.
There are also knowledgeable texts (veritable monographs in terms of volume) on topics such as unfilmed Donald cartoons, propaganda works from the war years (the analysis of which the Disney company had always been extremely skeptical about) or the international exploitation of the iconic figure, which has hardly ever been discussed before. Ulrich Schröder, one of only three German Donald authors with an international impact, is mentioned here – the other two (unfortunately unnamed in the book) are Volker Reiche, who is well known to readers of this newspaper, and Jan Gulbransson, who draws in Munich. Based in Paris, Schröder was responsible for quality control of depictions of Donald for years. And at the same time he is one of the most elegant draftsmen in this field.
That’s why he will be signing the newly published paperback book next Saturday at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Given the increasing use of artificial intelligence in commercial comic drawing, craftsmanship comparable to Schröder’s skills will soon no longer exist. Daniel Kothenschulte’s band also sets a monument to her. Not just his publisher Benedikt Taschen’s favorite comic character.
Daniel Kothenschulte (ed.): “Donald Duck – The Ultimate History”.
Taschen Verlag, Cologne 2024, 564 pages, illustrations, hardcover, €175.
The German-language edition “Donald Duck – The Ultimate Chronicle” with identical images and price will be published in November.
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