Welcome to . . . Duckburg? "Duckburg? I thought it was Mickey's Birthdayland!?" That was a comment I heard more than once when I visited the Magic Kingdom back in 1988 and 1989. As the Mickey?s Birthdayland Express rolled into a newly built train station just beyond Tomorrowland, guests first caught sight of this interesting billboard: "Duckburg? Mickey's a mouse! Shouldn't this be Mouse Town? Mouseville? Mouseburg?" Even the most out-of-touch tourist in 1988 could surmise that Duckburg was clearly the home of Donald Duck. And they would be right. Duckburg had sprang from the imagination of comic book writer/artist extraordinaire Carl Barks, over forty years before Imagineers hastily built Mickey?s Birthdayland to celebrate the mouse?s 60th birthday. In the comics, Duckburg was the home of Scrooge McDuck, Huey, Dewey and Louie, Daisy Duck, Gyro Gearloose and numerous other colorful characters. Except Mickey Mouse. In fact, according to the mouse?s most famous comic book adventure, "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot", Mickey resides in the town of Mouseville. It?s no wonder poor Donald resorted to vandalism when he first beheld that sign honoring Duckburg's "most famous citizen."
More...