Donaldism

Fandom
Name(s):	Donaldism
Abbreviation(s):
Scope/Focus:	Disney comics, specifically Donald Duck
Date(s):
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Donaldism is a way of being a Duck universe/Duckburg fan. The fans are called Donaldists. It is most common in Europe where the Donald Duck comics are far more popular than in the US. In part it is about indexing and collecting comic sources as in the Inducks project (when Donaldism first started there weren't any lists available connecting issues and stories with specific artists in Disney comics), in particular those of highly regarded artists such as Carl Barks, but it is also about researching Duckburg. Usually in this research a very strict Watsonian approach is employed for it to count as Donaldistic, i.e. the goal is to reconcile all the comic sources that are considered canonical (which those are may vary, usually at least all of Carl Barks' stories) into coherent theses about the universe we see in them. Obviously there will be many inconsistencies (as in a Doylist approach the comics weren't created with a consistent worldbuilding reference), but then you come up with elaborate theories to fanwank these. For example how to explain that you sometimes see the Ducks' teeth, though usually their beaks don't seem to have any, without resorting to the misguided Doylist copout that they have been simply drawn with teeth sometimes to make emotions clearer.

There are many fan clubs and organizations for Donaldism. Many of these publish zines for Donaldistic research. The birth place of Donaldism was Norway. Its Donaldistic society Gammeldonaldismens Venner (Friends of the Early Donaldism) was founded in 1968, and published zines since 1973.

The German organization was founded in 1977 and is called D.O.N.A.L.D. (Deutsche Organisation nichtkommerzieller Anhänger des lauteren Donaldismus). Donaldism in general is fond of complex backronyms for names and titles. This is done in homage to Carl Barks's Junior Woodchucks' practices in the comics. The German D.O.N.A.L.D. holds a yearly convention ("Kongress") as well as smaller meetings ("Zwischenzeremonien", literally "inbetween ceremonies"), and publishes the zine Der Donaldist.

Zines

• Der Donaldist — German clubzine

Organizations

• DDF(R) (Danish Donaldist zine/organziation)
• Donaldistic research (also in Danish)
• D.O.N.A.L.D. (German Donaldists)
• Donaldistene (Norwegian Donaldists)
• NAFS(K) (Swedish Donaldists)
• Ankkalinnan Pamaus (Finnish Donaldists)

External links

• Donaldism at Wikipedia