Donald Duck: The Hard-Boiled Duck
Storycode: D2000-047 · Pages: 10
Script: William Van Horn · Art: William Van Horn
U.S. publications: WDC 634
Characters: Donald Duck, Huey Duck, Dewey Duck, Louie Duck, Scrooge McDuck, Magica De Spell, Gladstone Gander
Donald, as a private eye, is the hero in his own detective novel. Strange things are happening in the house next door, so he tiptoes there the next night. However, a sinister-looking guy catches the snooper and drags him to his boss. Donald is flabbergasted when he faces his cousin Gladstone. Before Gladstone has the unwanted witness thrown into the sea he takes his mask off. Donald is scared, because the boss is nobody else but Uncle Scrooge. Private detective Donald swims back to the shore and hastens directly to the mysterious house, but it has disappeared. When even Magica De Spell arrives, turning into a menacing machine, the tangled story ends. Donald just cannot think of an appropriate end for his novel.
Donald as a detective is a spoof on Philip Marlowe, the hero of the hard-boiled detective novels by American writer Raymond Chandler (July 23,1888 – March 26, 1959).
Four curious flying insects are attracted.
William Van Horn: “This is the most unusual story I ever made. A parody of the hard-boiled detective genre. I just started to write, to improvise, without knowing what would come out of it. It was that off-the-wall funny that I began to realize after five finished pages that I had better think of a plot and an end. Unfortunately I could not think of anything at all! Finally I decided everything was just a story Donald had written. And he could not think of a plot, either. So I had just shifted my own little problem onto Donald and now everything fit into place.”