Family Fun is a comic story written by Carl Fallberg, penciled by Tony Strobl and inked by Steve Steere. It features Donald Duck, Scrooge McDuck, Gyro Gearloose, Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck, Elvira Duck, Gladstone Gander, the Beagle Boys, Gus Goose, April, May and June and, in his debut, the Prehistoric Duck. Also mentioned are three forebears of the Duck family Ebenezer Duck, 2-Gun Duck and Blackduck.
Description[]
When a tornado picks up Grandma Duck's Farm during a family reunion, taking the whole extended Duck clan off to a lost world full of dinosaurs, little do the Ducks suspect that the Beagle Boys are here too with plans of their own… or that an ancient family secret is about to be solved!
References[]
The Chart of the Duck Family Tree.
- Elvira Duck possesses a Chart of the Duck Family Tree, in which “every duck but one” is accounted for. Interestingly, Gyro Gearloose is present on the tree, on a branch connected to that of Donald Duck. The tree also shows Scrooge McDuck and Grandma on the same branch, Gladstone Gander and Blackduck both on another, separate branch, and 2-Gun Duck and Ebenezer Duck on yet another.
- Gyro Gearloose attempts to rig up an Anti-Gravity Gadget out of Uncle Scrooge's portable tape machine and Grandma's old cylinder phonograph. As the resulting machine isn't powerful or reliable enough, he keeps working on it throughout the story, lamenting his lack of access to such components as a Supergizmo Oscillator and a Self-Reciprocating Condensibobble.
- The Ducks find the Prehistoric Duck trapped inside a gigantic egg, from which he "hatches" fully-clothed. Scrooge speculates that he must have been cooped up in that egg for centuries.
- The Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook contains information on Brontosauruses, one of whom the Ducks encounter in the lost world. It describes them as very stupid, shy and gentle despite their huge size, and also states that their favorite food is artichokes.
- The Guidebook also contains a chapter on hypnotism.
- Gyro triangulates the lost world to be located deep in the Amazon; one can reach civilization by following the canyon due east for a few weeks.
- Gyro offers the Prehistoric Duck a Language Pill which instantly allows him to speak English.
Continuity[]
- Seven years earlier, in a story simply known as Family Tree (1953), Carl Fallberg had already become the first writer to feature an in-universe Duck Family Tree.
- Donald Duck, Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck already discovered a lost world in the Amazon in Forbidden Valley (1958). Although they do not explicitly refer to the events of the 1958 story in Family Fun, Huey, Dewey and Louie's oddly quick acceptance that they have just encountered a Brontosaurus is consistent with the lost world here being none other than the 1958 story's Forbidden Valley.
- Don Rosa's Escape From Forbidden Valley (1999), a sequel to the 1958 story, features what is explicitly identified as Scrooge McDuck's first visit to Forbidden Valley. This would necessarily place the events of Rosa's story between 1958 and 1960.
- Despite Elvira's claims otherwise, her Chart of the Duck Family Tree does not contain "every Duck" by far; aside from the numerous other Duck relatives who appear in various stories, many Duck family trees feature relatives not present here, starting with Carl Barks's first Duck Family Tree from the 1950's.
- Although it does not explicitly identify them as siblings, the story concurs with a small but significant minority of accounts of Duck genealogy in placing Scrooge and Elvira as close relatives, rather than in-laws as would later become the norm. The same year as Family Fun, though in what can only have been a coincidence, Grandma Duck Oblivious To Her Brother (1960) became possibly the first story to explicitly establish this notion.
- Previously, the American Livestock Show (1953) from Vacation Parade #4 has featured Elvira and Scrooge as cousins, instead, which is also consistent with the family tree in Family Fun.
Behind the scenes[]
This story was first published in November of 1960 in Dell Giant #48, which bore the title of Family Fun on its cover. It has never been reprinted in the United States of America, but is also available in English in the Australian Jumbo #22.