Donaldism - Donaldistic Research

Donaldistic Research

Since donaldism has its roots in Europe and much of the research is carried out there, past and present research mostly focus on Disney comics and comic strips. Some donaldist researchers strive for a scientific approach while others investigate and present matters in a less structured way. Research spans over topics such as religion in Duckburg, cars and bridges in the Duck universe, the rostrilongitudinal coefficient (being the length of Donald's bill compared to the height of his head), identification of uncredited artists and writers, and indexing of stories and comic books.

One of the first, important discoveries was in 1960 when U.S. American fan John Spicer wrote the first fan letter to Carl Barks, to which Barks replied. Until then, Walt Disney was thought to have drawn and written all comics himself, although fans suspected otherwise. It was later discovered that Disney himself had only been involved in the production of a handful of comics.

The first research in the name of donaldism was done in 1973 by Jon Gisle and was presented in his book "Donaldismen". The book has a scientific but humoristic (or perhaps vice versa) approach to the material. In his book, Gisle defines and describes a time table of nine periods. They may be outdated today, but it seems that no one has extended and adjusted this time table to reflect today's situation. The nine periods are:

• Prehistoric donaldism 1949-52, 1957-58
• Early classic donaldism 1951-58
• Late classic donaldism (romance) 1957-63, 1972-
• Commercialism 1963-
• Fethrism 1965-67
• Trivialism 1965-
• Realism 1965-66, 1969-
• Synthetic fethrism 1971-
• Art nouveau 1973-

The Inducks projectis an index of Disney comics. Its goal is to index every Disney comic book in the world, beginning with several European countries and the U.S.A. Since its beginning in or around 1994, it has identified artists for many stories and is still actively doing so.

Donaldistic research is still being performed, although generally at a lower frequency than in the 1970s and 80s. Research results today are typically presented in fanzines or in Internet websites.