The case

Donald Duck turns 90.

Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine

The commentary

Donald Duck celebrates his 90th birthday – a remarkable achievement for a comic strip character who has been capturing the hearts of both the old and the young since first emerging on 9th June 1934 as a supporting character on a houseboat, at the time with a slightly more pointed beak. His distinctive features – his yellow legs, bis bare tail, his sailor hat and sailor jacket with a bow tie as well as his unique face – have remained unchanged. When he appeared on the scene for the second time, he displayed one of his most striking character traits: His legendary fits of anger.

One may not have expected Donald Duck to mature at such an advanced stage in his life, but nowadays he comes across as very cheerful, charming and surprisingly creative – but he has remained true to his own self: He is lazy bum, a choleric and a scaredy-cat who tends to overestimate his skills and usually gets trapped, more often than not with catastrophic outcomes. It’s these loveable weaknesses that make him “human” despite being a duck – and that’s what we love about him.

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