Duck Meets Dog - A Max Goof/Louie Duck Essay (Disney)
Title: Duck Meets Dog
Author: poisonivory
Fandom: Disney (General - Mickey Mouse and Friends, Disney Afternoon)
Spoilers: General ones for various shorts, Disney Afternoon shows, and direct-to-video movies, I guess. It’s not like this canon has a strong emphasis on plot, really.
Notes: Yes, that is Louie as in “Huey, Dewey, and…” And yes, that is Max as in the dog boy from Goof Troop with the purple pants. I’m so sorry.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to mizzmarvel for listening to my whining and betaing this monster. And thanks to Walt, even though I doubt this is what he had in mind.
Okay. I’m not going to mince words here. These are cartoon characters from sources intended almost exclusively for children. They’re not the same species, there’s not a whole lot of evidence that either is interested in the fellas (although there is some), and though between them they’ve starred in 30 shorts, five TV shows, one theatrically-released film, four direct-to-video movies, and countless comic books, the sum total of their onscreen interaction is probably less than ten minutes long.
See, there’s a lot of TL;DR about to happen here, and I don’t want anyone to struggle through it thinking I’m going to detail a scene where Max and Louie have to snuggle together to keep warm, or pretend to be dating to infiltrate a gay bar, or, you know, exchange more than half a dozen words. You have to understand: I made this pairing up. I was discussing the Disney Afternoon with a friend while thinking of the pairing of Jeff/Byron from the Baby-sitters Club fandom, and the idea of a sarcastic, long-suffering California(ish) boy and a mischievous-yet-sensitive triplet was on my mind; I asked my friend which duckling she thought was the most sensitive and she said Louie, and a pairing was born. (She was horrified by my thought process, incidentally.) There is no real canon basis for putting Maximilian Goof and Louis Duck together.
And yet…good gravy do I love this pairing.
1. Louie Duck
a. Debut/The Shorts
b. The Comics
c. DuckTales
d. Quack Pack
2. Max Goof
a. Debut/The Shorts
a1. A Metatextual Aside: Max’s Mom
b. Goof Troop
c. A Goofy Movie
d. An Extremely Goofy Movie
3. Shared Canon
a. Disney’s House of Mouse/Mickey Mouse Works
b. Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas
c. Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas
4. Meta
a. The Why
b. The Fic
Louie Duck
Louie is, of course, one of the hellion nephews of Donald Duck, everyone’s favorite seminude waterfowl. He and his brothers Huey and Dewey are the children of Donald’s twin sister Della; their father has never been named or shown. According to Quack Pack, their full names are Hubert, Deuteronomy, and Louis; according to comic book artist Al Taliaferro, they were named for politicians Huey Long and George Dewey and animator Louie Schmitt. Huey’s the one in red (the brightest hue), Dewey’s the one in blue (the color of dew), and Louie’s in green (the color of leaves, which also start with an L), although their colors were less standardized earlier in their careers.
Debut/The Shorts
The triplets have two “origin stories,” as it were - one in the comics, and one in the shorts. They originally debuted in the Donald Duck newspaper comic in a storyline starting on October 17, 1937, when their mother sent them to stay with Donald for a month while their father recovered from the firecracker they’d set off under his chair. You can read the whole introductory plotline, where they torture Donald mercilessly in that way we’ve all come to know and love, starting here. Here their mother is named Della and refers to herself as Donald’s cousin.
The Nephews were a big hit, and on April 15, 1938 they appeared in their big screen debut, “Donald’s Nephews.” Here the setup was a little different - their mother’s name was Dumbella, and she was now Donald’s sister (later his twin). (Fans have theorized that “Dumbella” is actually Donald’s nickname for Della.) However, the glorious tone of their harassment of their beleaguered uncle was the same.
Though D[umb]ella wrote that she was only sending her “little angels” for a day, the Nephews quickly reappeared in “Good Scouts” a few months later. From then on, both in the shorts and in the comics, D[umb]ella and her husband were never really mentioned. Donald (who entered the boys on his tax form as “adopted” in “The New Spirit” (1942)) simply stayed in loco parentis, emphasis on the “loco” (these are the jokes, folks).
All in all, the Nephews appeared in 26 shorts between 1938 and 1961, a very respectable showing (way more that their Aunt Daisy, for example). They were voiced by Clarence “Ducky” Nash, who also voiced Donald, and had the same incomprehensible quacky speech. Their appearances almost all depicted the ongoing war between them and Donald. Sometimes the boys would instigate a particular skirmish and sometimes Donald would, but the Nephews would almost invariably emerge triumphant. John Grant in his Encyclopedia of Walt Disney’s Animated Characters summed them up thusly:
"Huey, Dewey and Louie represent mischievous children the world over - which is probably why they have so many staunch devotees today among the kids who read of their exploits in the comic strips as well as seeing the revivals of their classic shorts on television or (very occasionally) in the cinema. Their external appearance is that of angels, belying their malevolent intent. And yet, over the years, they have mellowed a little: they have proved themselves intelligent, resourceful, loyal, brave and, on occasion, even affectionate. Better equipped than 'Unca Donald' to cope with the pressures of the real world, they have often saved him from the consequences of his worst excesses."
The Comics
Donald’s popularity quickly carried over to comic books, where the legendary Carl Barks began shaping his life as an adventurer, treasure hunter, and punching bag for the universe. Disney comics, particularly those by Barks and later Don Rosa, are a vast and complicated fandom all their own, and certainly not my area of expertise, but here are the things I can tell you:
- Donald and the boys live in the bustling city of Duckburg in the west coast state of Calisota, the most geographically-bizarre state ever (which also contains Spoonerville, Goofy’s hometown; St. Canard, setting for the wonderful Darkwing Duck; and Mouseton (guess who lives there!)).
- Everyone’s favorite feathered curmudgeon, Scrooge McDuck, first appeared in the comics, and rocketed to stardom in them, eventually gaining his own title. Many of his comics focused on his attempts to increase and preserve his wealth by gallivanting all over the world in search of treasure, with Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Louie tagging along. Remember this!
- The triplets starred with both Donald and Scrooge in their adventures, proving their intelligence and resourcefulness time and again. The list of their appearances is far too vast to begin to recount here, but if you’re interested, you can check them out at the I.N.D.U.C.K.S.
- The Nephews joined the Junior Woodchucks of America, a Boy Scout-like organization that redirected all their manic energy into a much more positive outlet and provided them with the infallible Junior Woodchuck Guidebook. They were further tamed by the civilizing influence of their great-grandmother, Grandma Duck (Donald’s paternal grandmother), who, along with Donald, refused to give up on them the way their mother had. (Grandma Duck had previously raised Donald and Della after they were likewise abandoned by their mother. This is an incredibly dysfunctional family we’ve got here.)
- Huey, Dewy, and Louie can still be seen in basically this iteration in the comics today, going on various adventures with their uncle and great-uncle, and still pulling the occasional prank. Though the comics are phenomenally successful outside of the States (and those of you who live in Duck-loving countries are probably better equipped than I to figure out where to get current comics), they’re almost unknown here, and the only current titles are Uncle Scrooge and Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, both monthly deluxe-formats published by Gemstone Comics.
(The more you know! In case you’re wondering about the relationships, Scrooge’s youngest sister Hortense is Donald’s mother, making Scrooge the triplets’ great-uncle. Incidentally, the triplets’ unnamed father is - according to some theories - Daisy Duck’s brother, which is why they call her Aunt Daisy, though they’re not as close to that side of the family. Donald and Daisy may or may not be second cousins. It’s best not to think about it.)
DuckTales
In 1987, Disney decided to venture into the realm of weekday afternoon cartoons with DuckTales, which I’m sure you’re all familiar with. An early entry to the much-loved programming block “The Disney Afternoon,” it was inspired by the Carl Barks comics, and starred Scrooge and the Nephews as they adventured all over the world (Donald went off to join the Navy and was replaced by buffoonish pilot Launchpad McQuack, as it was feared that Donald would upstage Scrooge, the intended star). It also had the greatest theme song of all time (“DuckTales! A-whoo-hoo!”). Also: swimming in the money bin. So awesome!
The triplets were more in line with their comics characterization than their animated one, as impish but essentially responsible and extremely resourceful young men and devoted Junior Woodchucks. They were also much easier to understand, adorably voiced by Russi Taylor. Over the course of three seasons and one direct-to-video movie (DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp) they battled the likes of the Beagle Boys, Magica de Spell, and Flintheart Glomgold, hero-worshipped Scrooge and Launchpad, and tried to keep Scrooge’s foster daughter Webby from tagging along on their adventures.
(Huey, Dewey, and Louie also appeared in their DuckTales incarnation in the wonderfully bizarre Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, where they sang about the evils of drugs. Good stuff.)
Quack Pack
In 1996, Donald and the Nephews returned to the small screen in Quack Pack. Quack Pack, unfortunately, was no DuckTales. Instead of high-flying adventure, we had Donald and the boys living in the suburbs outside of Duckburg. Instead of theatrical-release-quality animation, music, and plotting, we had…less than that. And instead of additions like Launchpad, we had Daisy’s pet iguana Knuckles. Weirdest of all, the Ducks rather inexplicably lived in a world populated by humans rather than other anthropomorphic animals, leading many to suggest that Quack Pack does not take place in the same universe as the other Disney Afternoon shows.
Basically, it was a bad show, and it was fittingly cancelled after only one season. However, it is probably the most important piece of Duck canon there is as far as Max/Louie goes. Because in Quack Pack, the triplets were teenagers, and for the first time, they had individual personalities.
Yes! The boys who were forced to finish each others’ sentences since 1937 finally had minds of their own! Huey, voiced by Jeannie Elias, is the charismatic leader, with a tendency towards vanity and greed. Dewey, voiced by Pamela Segall, is the brains of the outfit, somewhat nerdy, and a practical joker.
And then there’s Louie. Voiced by E.G. Daily, best known as Tommy Pickles from Rugrats (there’s some cognitive dissonance for you), Louie is the jock, and, counter-intuitively, the sensitive environmentalist. He relaxes by reading self-help books, lifting weights while jumping on a trampoline (this ends badly), or staring dreamily into space while his brothers read comic books. He likes health food and is disgusted by his brothers’ junk food consumption, and apparently has a habit of borrowing Dewey’s thesaurus to learn new words.
Most interestingly, he’s the moral center of the trio. When things reach their most madcap, mercenary point, he’s always the one slowing it down with lines like: “Hey, you guys ever think maybe success has turned us into heartless greedy villains who only care about money?” or “Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is a bad idea. The last time we became superheroes, the whole universe got destroyed!” or (my favorite): “Well, lads, what important life lesson have we learned today? [Huey: “Don’t leave incriminating evidence.”] No! Don’t lie!” He’s the peacemaker when Huey and Dewey fight, and, perhaps fittingly, he’s the most naïve and gullible of the three.
Louie also tends towards hero-worship. Actually, all the boys do, but both episodes focusing on Louie were about this, while only one of each of his brothers’ was (incidentally, Huey and Dewey each got four starring episodes; Louie totally got the shaft). In “Shrunken Heroes,” Louie worships environmental activist Dr. Ernest Noble (to the point that he has pictures of Noble pinned up in his bunk). Like Noble, he attempts to take the law into his own hands to save the endangered pugduddies from poachers, only to be disillusioned when he discovers that Noble himself is using lethal force against those selfsame poachers. His idealism restores Noble’s, and the pugduddies, presumably, are saved (I hope so, because they’re adorable). In “None Like It Hot,” Louie takes up the violin because his favorite superhero, Mantis Boy, plays it. He’s terrible at first, but saves the day with his playing regardless, and, in a rare nod to continuity, plays it in a later episode and seems fairly dedicated to his practicing.
He’s also pretty darn gay. He requests pajamas for a camping trip to be “made of silk and monogrammed,” and is the odd man out when his brothers court twins. When they become superheroes, his secret identity is the brawny Captain Muscle - far campier than Dewey’s Brain Boy and Huey’s Really Incredibly Fast Guy. And his stabs at heterosexuality fall pretty flat; at a ski resort, he proclaims the delights of “Girls in parkas!” perhaps not understanding that most boys are not intrigued by girls wearing their puffiest, most figure-obscuring clothes.
Max Goof
Maximilian Goof, like his father Goofy Goof (also known as Goofy Geef, George G. Geef, G. G. Goof, and Dippy Dawg), is a dog, sometimes called a dogface. His narrative is much more streamlined that that of the triplets, and certain elements are present in almost all of his appearances: 1) though he adores his father, he is also frequently embarrassed by him and lives in fear of growing up to be just like him, and 2) he has great hair.
He’s also notable for the fact that he is one of the very few animated characters who has aged in close to real time (or at all!): he was 11 in 1992, in high school in 1996, and in college by 2000, possibly graduating in 2004. (Two of his appearances don’t fit the timeline, but the shorts are, as you’ll see, a maybe, and Once Upon a Christmas can be considered a flashback.)
Debut/The Shorts
Max’s origins are a little murky. Though the character named “Max Goof” first appeared in Goof Troop in 1992, Goofy’s son appeared long before that, in a series of shorts in the 1950s and 60s. Here he was called “Junior” onscreen and “Goofy Jr.” by the studio and by fans, and was more in the line of the Adorable Tormentor, like Huey, Dewy, and Louie. He also didn’t look like Max; whereas Max is a miniature Goofy in most ways, Junior had a rounder face, a red parp nose, and a shock of red hair. He was voiced by Bobby Driscoll (probably best known to you as the voice of Disney’s Peter Pan) in all of his shorts except for “Aquamania,” where he was voiced by Kevin Corcoran (understandably so, as “Aquamania” was made a full decade after the first Goofy Junior appearance and Driscoll’s voice had long since changed).
He first appeared in “Fathers Are People” (1951), in which Goofy (as George G. Geef) joyously celebrates his son’s birth, struggles through the hardships of caring for an infant, and then, for the bulk of the short, deals with his rambunctious, mischievous toddler Junior. His other real starring role came in “Father’s Lion” (1952), in which Goofy takes Junior on a hunting trip in the woods, bragging endlessly about his nonexistent hunting prowess (the title’s a pun! Get it?). While Goofy natters on obliviously, Junior fights off a man-eating mountain lion with his pop gun. The cuteness of both shorts is simply mindboggling. Junior retreated into much more supporting roles in his other three appearances, “Father’s Day Off” (1953), “Father’s Week-End” (1953), and “Aquamania” (1961). Here he mostly served as one of the many irritants in Goofy’s life - all with the best intentions, of course!
So, is Goofy Jr. a young Max? Opinion is divided. I tend to incorporate certain aspects of the canon of the shorts into my own personal canon, like the idea that Max’s hair was red like his mother’s (more on that in a minute) when he was a baby. The Goofy Jr. shorts are interesting, as they give us the idea of what Max’s early childhood in a two-parent household might have been like, albeit through the filter of the 1950s and with a Goofy who is far less, well, goofy. But in the end, there’s no definitive answer. You get to pick and choose what you want to keep. The power is yours! (Thanks, Captain Planet!)
A Metatextual Aside: Max’s Mom
Who is she? The answering of this question is made somewhat more difficult by the fact that Goofy is rather inexplicably the stud of the Disneyverse. While Minnie and Daisy generally only have maybe one rival for Mickey’s and Donald’s affections respectively, Goofy’s bedpost is disturbingly well-notched (or, to put it in more Disney-appropriate terms, his dance card is disturbingly full).
Of his major paramours, the two most often suggested as Max’s mom are fellow canines Glory Bee and Penny the Pup (Clarabelle Cow raises too many questions of biology to be a contender). Glory Bee is a comic book character who pursued Goofy to little success throughout a decent handful of appearances, while Penny was a character created for the Minnie ‘n’ Me merchandising line of the 1990s. It focused on Minnie as a little girl and all her alliterative friends, such as Daisy Duck, Clarabelle Cow, and, of course, Penny the Pup. Both Penny and Glory Bee have basically disappeared - just like Max’s mom!
Now. In “Fathers Are People,” Goofy says that his redheaded son has his mother’s hair. Penny was always depicted with red hair; Glory Bee with either red or blonde. So it’s entirely possible that one of them could be Max’s mother. Beyond that, there’s little evidence either way, although Goofy did woo a “Princess Penelope” in the short “A Knight for a Day” (1948) and date a woman suggestively named Miss Pennypacker in the Goof Troop episode “Date With Destiny,” which may have been a hint by the writers.
If you’re like me, you like the symmetry of Max’s mother being the sixth wheel on the Mickey/Minnie/Donald/Daisy/Goofy love wagon, and are fond of Penny’s gangly awkwardness. If you’re like mizzmarvel, you think the name Glory Bee is delightfully hilarious. These are basically the strongest arguments I know in favor of either character. It’s not really an exact science.
Goof Troop
Goof Troop debuted on the Disney Afternoon in 1992 and ran for two rather lengthy seasons (78 episodes total). It focused on the misadventures of Goofy and his 11-year-old son Max (voiced by Dana Hill) as they live their day-to-day lives in Goofy’s quiet suburban hometown of Spoonerville. Max here is a schemer and a dreamer, a fast talker and a get-rich-quicker who is into rock music, skateboarding, and the latest fads. Unfortunately, he’s also as klutzy as his dad and almost as naïve, so his grand plans usually flop.
Pete, the recurring foe of Mickey and the gang from the shorts, shows up as Goofy’s next door neighbor; though Goofy has fond recollections of their shared childhood, Pete despises Goofy. Unfortunately for him, his son P.J. (Pete Junior) and Max immediately become best friends, and Max constantly leads the docile P.J. into mischief. Rounding out the cast are Peg, Pete’s no-nonsense wife who is about a thousand times too good for him; Pistol, P.J.’s brilliant and manic little sister; Waffles, the Goof family’s cat; and Chainsaw, the Pete family’s dog (yes, their last name is Pete).
If I may pontificate about quality a bit more, I have to say the show’s not great, my fond memories of it from childhood notwithstanding (and I must admit that I am far more partial to Donald than I am to Goofy). The animation is sloppy and inconsistent, and a completely inordinate amount of episodes are about Pete, because…emotionally abusive middle-aged used car salesmen are super popular with the kids? I don’t know. All I know is that the show desperately needed to focus more on Max, and I’m only a little bit biased when I say that.
From the Max that we do get, what do we learn? We learn that he had an imaginary pet cow named Moofus when he was little. We learn that his possibly-Freudian attraction to redheads started early. We learn that though he tackles P.J. for saying quite truthfully that Max looks just like Goofy, and is completely distraught when Goofy re-enrolls in Max’s school (a plot which would be rehashed eight years later in An Extremely Goofy Movie, but with more crazy), he adores his father, considers him “the perfect dad” (from the application Max writes for Goofy for a dating service: “Kind, gentle, has a great laugh, always loses at checkers…the perfect dad!”) and would willingly risk his life for him.
Max is also…let’s say he forms strong homosocial bonds. In one episode, P.J. befriends another boy with a freakish 11-year-old body builder physique. Max becomes deeply jealous, and even goes so far as to get himself some inflatable muscles to impress P.J. with. Basically it’s a long Charles Atlas ad, but with added homoeroticism for flavor! In the end, of course, they all become pals. Aww.
Also, there was one episode where everything turned out to be the nightmare of a sentient trumpet. That doesn’t have anything to do with Max being gay; I just think it’s hilarious.
A Goofy Movie
In 1995, Goofy returned to the big screen, this time with Max in tow. Actually, it was more like the other way around; despite the title, Max is the protagonist of the story and it’s his wonderfully relatable teenage hopes and fears which make the movie work. This is, in your humble author’s opinion, the best Max vehicle of them all; it’s smart, funny, touching, and beautifully animated, with a fantastic soundtrack.
Max is now in high school (I’d guess freshman or sophomore year) and past his (first) awkward phase - look how cute he is! And remember when everyone wore shirts like that? Pete and PJ return for this adventure, but Peg, Pistol, and the family pets are nowhere to be seen.
It’s the last day of school before summer vacation, and Max is determined to impress Roxanne, the girl of his dreams. So in the middle of an assembly, he breaks into a high-tech performance of the latest hit by everyone’s favorite rock star, Powerline (with some help from PJ and new friend Bobby). Roxanne, who clearly already liked Max, agrees to go with him to a party to watch the upcoming televised Powerline concert. However, the principal is not amused, and tells Goofy that Max is a hellion bound for the electric chair. Panicked, Goofy decides to take Max on a father-son fishing trip to Lake Destiny, Idaho. To keep Roxanne from going to the party with anyone else, Max tells her that he and his father are going to California to join Powerline onstage at his concert, since Powerline and Goofy used to be in a band together - a patently ridiculous lie, but Roxanne believes it.
The trip starts out horribly, but eventually Max and Goofy bond and start having a good time. However, Max changes the route on the map so that they’re going to California instead of Idaho. When Goofy finds out, he’s hurt and furious, and a fight erupts that climaxes with the two of them careening over a waterfall, and Max saving Goofy’s life using “the Perfect Cast,” the secret Goof family casting technique. They head off to California, and when Goofy crashes onto the stage in his own inimitably goofy way, Max tells him to do the perfect cast, and Powerline assumes it’s a new dance. Max joins them, and back home, Roxanne and the rest are suitably impressed.
When Max returns, he confesses to Roxanne, who tells him she already liked him, from the first time she heard his Goofy “hyuck” laugh (about which Max has always been terribly embarrassed). They kiss. Goofy crashes through the roof. Hooray!
The Max in this movie is neurotic, particularly about his father; when he first “hyucks” in front of Roxanne, he claps his hands over his mouth and runs away, screaming (probably more embarrassing than the original hyuck, but there you have it). He’s not particularly popular, albeit more of a nonentity than a typical nerd. He’s referred to by his classmates as “the Goof kid” and ignored by his more popular peers, and though his Powerline performance is ostensibly a bid merely for Roxanne’s attention, there’s a pretty obvious desire to be noticed by the world at large for who he is (or at least, who he wants everyone to believe he is) as opposed to just another face in the crowd, or, worse, an extension of his father. (The song is called “Stand Out,” for crying out loud, and declares “I’m gonna stand out above the crowd/ Even if I gotta shout out loud/ ‘Til mine is the only face you’ll see/ I’m gonna stand out ‘til you notice me.”)
Ironically, this boy who is so determined to be noticed is not very good at reading other people; he doesn’t pick up on Roxanne’s blatant signals, shanghais PJ into helping him despite the fact that PJ will get into deep trouble if Pete finds out PJ has “borrowed” his camera, and, once appointed official trip navigator, takes his father to a series of rock concerts and amusement parks far too, um, hardcore for the laid-back Goofy. However, once he does notice that Goofy isn’t enjoying himself, he navigates them straight to attractions that are more Goofy’s speed, like the House of Yarn. He’s a sweet boy, once he’s smacked with a two-by-four into paying attention to other people.
The other personality trait of note is that Max is extremely sullen and uncommunicative when upset; unlike the Ducks (and McDucks), who tend to break things until they get their way, Max retreats into himself and snaps at everyone who tries to bring him back. And despite all of this, Max is, as I’ve said, extremely likable and relatable. His character flaws are not a comically explosive temper or the tendency to good-naturedly screw up every single thing he attempts; he’s much more realistic, nuanced, and painfully teenaged in his failings.
Finally, there’s the voice. Max is voiced by Jason Marsden (no relation to James, as far as I know) in all of his teenaged and young adult appearances, and he brings an incredibly amount of charm to the role (as all of Max’s voice artists have). His singing in this movie is performed by Aaron Lohr, who also does a wonderful job, especially on the very sweet (really!) duet with Goofy, “Nobody Else But You.” Max’s vocals contribute in a big way to making him the very lovable character he is.
An Extremely Goofy Movie
In 2000, Disney attempted to capitalize on the success of A Goofy Movie, plus the popularity of extreme sports, with a direct-to-video sequel, An Extremely Goofy Movie. It was nowhere close to as good as its predecessor; the animation was subpar, the story was an emotional rehash of AGM and a narrative rehash of a Goof Troop episode, and the attempt to be XTREEM is just embarrassing. Plus there’s the bizarre decision to set a kids’ movie in college, a completely unrelatable setting for children. And Max is much less appealing (perhaps in part because the focus is much more on his father). Fail, XGM. Fail.
The plot is much simpler than that of AGM. When an older-but-no-wiser Max heads off to college with PJ and Bobby (who was really more of an acquaintance in AGM, but seems to have been elevated to Best Buddy status), determined to make a name for himself in the College X-Games, Goofy is so bereft that he goofs up even more spectacularly than usual at work and loses his job. When he discovers that he can’t get a decent job unless he gets a college degree (he only completed three years his first time around), he joins Max at college. In an attempt to get his more-embarrassing-than-usual father off his back, Max urges Goofy to join the rival X-Game team, the Gammas, led by sneering rich boy Bradley Uppercrust III, whose snootiness is matched only by his GIGANTIC CRUSH ON MAX. Goofy is also distracted from his son by his new girlfriend, the lovely librarian Sylvia Marpole, with whom Goofy can share their mutual love of all things 1970s.
However, Goofy (quite accidentally) beats Max at the qualifying rounds, and suddenly Max is furious with him. Goofy quits, and then finds out that the Gammas plan to cheat, like, duh, Goofy. He tries to warn Max, and, when the Gammas eliminate PJ by, um, strapping rockets to him, joins Max’s team, and naturally the good guys win through perseverance and fair play and other Disney values. Goofy graduates and drives off into the sunset with Sylvia.
Meanwhile, PJ falls in love with a beatnik.
If you’re interested in a more in-depth look at this movie (plus screencaps and mocking a-plenty), I recapped it over at my journal in this four part series: [ One] [ Two] [ Three] [ Four]. Suffice to say that it’s not very good, and Max does not come off very well.
In large part this is because he’s not being used as the quintessential Everykid he is. Max has always been into extreme sports, particularly skateboarding; this was used as a plot point regularly in Goof Troop, and one of my favorite incidentals in AGM is when Max shows off his ability on a skateboard during the “Stand Out” reprise, skating through moving pipes and over trucks and rescuing babies and whatnot. Max can be phenomenally good on a skateboard - it’s a great character note, in fact - but once that becomes the lynchpin of the plot, he becomes Extraordinary rather than Ordinary, and is simply no longer as interesting or relatable.
The most important aspect of XGM, as far as this manifesto is concerned, is the homoeroticism. The villain, Bradley Uppercrust III, is all over Max the second he spots him, and Max…does not entirely fail to reciprocate. Bradley and his fellow Gammas first notice Max when he, Bobby, and PJ skate by the Gamma House while the frat boys are playing shirtless volleyball; Bradley is, rather unsettlingly, the only character in this universe with nipples. “Well, well, well, look what the freshman cat dragged in, baby,” says Tank, Bradley’s completely delightful and equally gay second-in-command. “Some new meat!” “Hey, hey, easy, big fella, that new meat looks like Gamma material.” Bradley replies. “Let’s check him out.” The Gammas’ dialogue is like this throughout the whole movie. It’s weird.
The Gammas meet up with Max and his friends at a coffeehouse where, after complimenting Max’s skating prowess, Bradley invites him to join the Gammas. Max, upon realizing that the invitation is for him alone, not PJ and Bobby, turns Bradley down. After telling Max to stop toying with his emotions (seriously! he actually says that!), Bradley turns mean and a rumble breaks out. Max discovers that Bradley hates being called “Brad” and proceeds to call him that for the rest of the movie. Finally, Max and Bradley decide that “loser of the [X-Games] finals will be towel boy to the other.” Because it was the most homoerotic thing they could think of, apparently. Seriously, what?
Brad’s role for the rest of the movie basically consists of popping up and purring things like “We’re going to eat you alive, freshman,” and tapping Max on the shoulder and then looking away when Max turns around. It’s a very fifth-grade courtship. Finally, during the climax, Bradley leaves Tank to his fate in a fiery deathtrap. Max rescues Tank, of course, and beats Bradley in the finals. Bradley stiffly (ha!) tells Max that he hasn’t “forgotten [their] agreement,” but Max magnanimously declares the bet to be off and leaves Bradley to be beaten to a pulp by a very angry Tank. (Bradley’s protests: “Hey! Tank! Baby! Who loves ya, baby, huh?...You and me, baby, all the way!” I’m pretty sure they were a couple.)
All of this is of course not to suggest that Max and Bradley were having passionate hatesex in the student center broom closet (although if they weren’t, you know, dogs, I’d be firmly in favor of that being written). But their relationship was…fraught. It was…sexually charged. And though it’s hard to express it through dialogue and screencaps, it was not entirely on Bradley’s side. Mostly, yeah. But not entirely.
Shared Canon
Disney’s House of Mouse/Mickey Mouse Works
Okay, a show about sentient ducks living in an otherwise-mostly-human world was pretty weird; a show with a distinct emphasis on Pete was weirder still. But that wasn’t enough for Disney; no, they had to up the weirdness ante. And so they came up with House of Mouse (2001), wherein Mickey and the gang run a nightclub at which they show cartoons featuring themselves and which is attended by the characters from Disney’s animated features. So you’ll have Winnie-the-Pooh, Ariel, and the Mad Hatter sitting at a table together watching a Goofy cartoon. I suppose we all need a healthy dose of surrealism now and then, no?
The majority of the cartoons shown were recycled from 1999’s Mickey Mouse Works, which was an anthology show featuring Mickey and Co. in short cartoons that were meant to evoke the classic theatrical shorts. It was rather hit-or-miss, but Disney apparently felt that the cartoons would fare better with the framing of the nightclub setting. Each episode, besides showing cartoons, has a very thin plot running through it, like a difficult guest star (the Big Bad Wolf, Timon and Pumbaa, etc.) or a main character’s personal problem (Donald feels unloved, Goofy is too clumsy, etc.). Mickey and Donald are co-owners, and the host and greeter respectively. Minnie is the manager, Daisy the reservation clerk, Goofy the head waiter, Clarabelle Cow the gossip columnist (no, I don’t know why a nightclub has a gossip columnist), Horace Horsecollar the technician/projectionist, Donald’s second cousin Gus Goose the chef, Pete the landlord, and Pluto the mascot.
Most importantly for our purposes, however, Max is the valet, and the triplets are the house band. They’re not major characters: Max is the star of three episodes (more on those later) out of 52 and barely shows up in the others, while the triplets play a major role precisely once that I can think of, but are seen in almost every episode. However, this is the only piece of canon in which Max and Louie are in the same place on a regular basis, in a way that doesn’t break the viewer’s brain (you’ll see what I mean by that when we get to the Christmas specials). It’s also the only place where they actually exchange (sort of) dialogue. It’s very special!
So what’s the status of our heroes when we meet them at the House (which is located “on Main Street,” according to the announcer, but which I generally assume to be situated in Duckburg, as it’s the most bustling city in Calisota)?
Well, the triplets are back to being difficult to differentiate, alas. They keep switching their band name and genre, from “the Quackstreet Boys” to “Quack Sabbath” to “the Splashing Pumpkins,” and their costumes change accordingly - and are not color-coded. When they are in their usual colors, they wear basically their Quack Pack outfits, but switched around (for example, Louie wears a giant green backwards baseball cap in QP, while Huey wears a giant red backwards baseball cap in HoM). Weirdest of all, they’re voiced by Tony Anselmo, successor to Clarence Nash as the voice of Donald Duck, so that they sound just as quacky and nearly-incomprehensible as they did when they were very small. They look to be about the same age as they were in Quack Pack, or maybe a little older. They also appear pretty regularly in the cartoons-within-the-cartoon, where they wear their classic color-coded shirts and hats and seem be about the same age they were in DuckTales; they’re voiced by Anselmo here as well, but it’s far less jarring to hear them sounding like Donald here than it is in the nightclub setting.
The only episode which really featured them in the nightclub setting was “Music Day,” in which the Quackstreet Boys break up on some flimsy pretext. Mickey, Donald, and Goofy desperately try to get them back together, since it’s Music Day and the boys are the main attraction, but the triplets stand firm - that is, until Mickey, Donald, and Goofy attempt to stand in for the Quackstreet Boys and the triplets hurry back on stage before their elders forever sully their good name as musicians. Their appearances in the shorts mostly ran along the same lines as their classic appearances: torturing Donald, albeit in slightly more macabre and off-the-wall ways.
Max, who is described repeatedly on the show as a teenager (he looks about An Extremely Goofy age or maybe a bit younger), is his usual low-key, neurotic self. (He does not appear in the shorts at all, unless you count a split second cameo in a Goofy short by a boy who looked startlingly like the old Goofy Jr.) He stars, as I said, in three episodes:
In “Max’s New Car,” he lobbies for a vehicle of his own, despite the fact that Goofy uncharacteristically doesn’t think he’s responsible enough for one. There’s shenanigans with an evil high-tech car, but of course Max eventually gets his dream wheels.
In “Max’s Embarrassing Date,” he takes Roxanne on a date at the House, despite the fact that he’s terrified that his father will embarrass them. However, it’s the Mice and the Ducks who embarrass him (among other things, Daisy calls Max "Maxikins" and Mickey calls him "our very own little Maxie-Waxie" and shows the audience a picture of him in diapers), and Goofy who finally tells the others to back off and leave Max and Roxanne alone. I’ll elaborate on my fandom timeline and how this fits into it in a later section, but for now I’ll just point out that there’s not even a glimpse of triplets in this episode. Perhaps Louie stayed away from the Max Date Zone deliberately? One can only wonder!
In “Goofy for a Day” we get the only canon dialogue between Max and Louie that I am aware of:
Goofy loses an olive off of Hercules's salad and goes stumbling all over the House trying to retrieve it, eventually ending up outside with Max just as the triplets arrive.
Either Huey or Dewey (they're offscreen): What a goof!
Louie: Not like Uncle Donald.
The triplets walk off. Max glares at them.
Goofy: Aw, don't pay any attention to them.
Max: But Louie's right, Dad! Donald does run the club, and Mickey, he's the host, but you - you just wait tables.
Of course Max then takes over Goofy’s job and discovers just how difficult it really is. The triplets do not reappear, because the HoM writers do not understand narrative symmetry, but that limited interaction between my boys makes me very happy, even if the triplets’ cattiness is bizarre (especially since while they love their uncle, they don’t exactly consider him something to brag about). Perhaps this is lingering resentment over Max’s date? (Huey and Dewey, of course, stand with their brother.)
The only other episode where they interact (sort of) that I know of is “Snow Day,” wherein Donald takes the triplets sledding and Goofy takes Max snowboarding and they all wind up rolled into a giant snowball. Like you do. The episode ends with Salty the Seal performing for the HoM staff and Max joining the triplets at their table out in the audience. See? They’re usually pals!
As you can probably see, House of Mouse is not a fantastic show, nor is it heavy on the characterization. But it is a wonderful - albeit surreal - setting for fic, since Max and Louie can so easily be shoved together, and so it’s become an important cornerstone of the fandom.
Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas
In 1999, Disney put together a direct-to-video anthology of animated Christmas shorts featuring the classic characters. It’s surprisingly cute! Who’d’ve thunk it?
The triplets (voiced by Russi Taylor, as in DuckTales) star in “Stuck on Christmas” (the credited star of the short is Donald, but the triplets are the real focus), a Groundhog’s Day-type story in which the triplets wish for it to be Christmas every day - and then discover that too much of a good thing can be, well, too much. They also realize that Christmas is about family, not material things. You can read a full recap of it on my journal here. It’s pretty much adorable. (The triplets, incidentally, are about their DuckTales age, but this must be post-DT, since they’re with Donald, but Scrooge is there and friendly (he was totally cantankerous in the DT pilot until they melted his heart)).
Max and Goofy, meanwhile, star in the heartbreaking “A Very Goofy Christmas,” in which a very young (I’d guess about five years old) Max frets over whether or not there is a Santa, and Goofy tries to prove to him that there is. This one is also very sweet, and the recap is here.
The whole thing ends with a Mickey and Minnie short (recapped here), followed by all the characters meeting up for a group sing of some public domain Christmas songs. Max gets rather adorably lumped in with the triplets here. Hilariously, even though he’s probably half a decade younger than them here, he’s the same height as them.
Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas
Not to shock you or anything, but Twice is another direct-to-video anthology of Christmas shorts featuring the classic characters. However, there’s one significant difference: the film is computer animated. That means that our old familiar friends are rendered in 3D, which takes a lot of getting used to, and which I still don’t particularly like, although it no longer gives me the screaming willies like it used to.
The triplets (voiced again by Russi Taylor) actually appear in two shorts in this one. They star in “Christmas: Impossible” (recapped here), in which they race to the North Pole to put their names on Santa’s “good” list, but at the last minute decide to put Uncle Scrooge’s on it instead; this one is notable because they seem to be retaining a lot of their Quack Pack personalities in it. It’s also notable because they show off their skateboarding skills in it; Max would be impressed! They also feature in “Donald’s Gift” (recapped here), in which Donald’s quest for peace and quiet leads him to first hurt, then make things up to, Daisy and the triplets. They seem about the same age as they were in Once, but again, Scrooge’s presence makes it post-DT.
Max, meanwhile, stars in “Christmas Maximus” (recapped here), in which he brings his new girlfriend Mona home for the holidays and frets over the kind of impression his father will make. Most of the short is, “Make Me Look Good,” a song Max sings inside his head as his father shenanigates about (his speaking voice is once again Jason Marsden, while his singing voice is Tom Leonard). It’s not great, and the new style of animation does not suit Max in the slightest. Also, is he in college? Why is he apparently so far away, then? His college didn’t seem far in XGM. Has he graduated? It’s all very confusing!
(Mona, weirdly, is voiced by Kellie Martin, as was Roxanne, and she looks strikingly like Roxanne, even down to having a mole on her left cheek. This, plus the reveal of her Goof-like buck teeth at the end of the short, has led me to fear that she is actually Max’s and Roxanne’s daughter from the future, and that she needs to stop dating Max immediately before she erases herself from the timestream, a la Back to the Future; also, gross.)
Again, the stars come together at the end. This time it’s worked into the plot: Mickey’s short is about Pluto going missing, and the other characters show up to help him look (a little late, though, as Mickey and Pluto have already been reunited). Now, instead of a five-year-old Max and nine-year-old triplets hanging out, we’ve got nine-year-old triplets and a twentysomething Max hanging out. Are you seeing why a unified timeline for this pairing is a tricky proposition?
Meta
The Why
So. Clearly I care a lot about this pairing, seeing as how I’ve just babbled on for an ungodly length about it. But why? Aside from the fact that I obviously have decades-old weaknesses for both Max and Louie, why put these two together?
Well, once you get past the part where they’re a dog and a duck, Max and Louie just work well together. They’ve got plenty in common: they both love rock music and extreme sports and have similarly insane upbringings. Who’s going to understand the embarrassment and chaos of being raised by Goofy better than someone who’s been raised by Donald?
But even more important than the things they share are the things they don’t. They complement each other well. Max is used to offering wry, tongue-in-cheek support to loved ones in rose-colored glasses; he can be the ballast to Louie’s idealism without being discouraging or impractical. Meanwhile, Louie can pull Max back down to Earth when Max gets too caught up in a Machiavellian scheme or his own melodramaticness. Max does well with essentially gentle and sensitive characters, like Goofy or PJ, which Louie is as well, but unlike Goofy and PJ, Louie won’t let Max walk all over him or retreat into himself when he’s upset. Louie, though probably the sweetest of the Ducks, is still a Duck, with no time for passive aggression, and his head-on method of approaching emotions will be good for Max.
Plus, Louie undoubtedly has some pretty severe abandonment issues, having been deserted by his parents, then dumped off onto Scrooge by Donald, then sent back to Donald just when he and his brothers had gotten comfortable with Scrooge. Max, on the other hand, forms relationships and sticks like glue forever. He has no concept of loved ones leaving (if we assume that he doesn’t remember his mother very well), and is very capable of providing the steady devotion Louie desperately needs.
But perhaps the main reason I love this pairing so much is that it’s such a happy one. No one is getting thrown out of the house for being gay. Scrooge is not taking away Louie’s inheritance; Max is not getting Roxanne knocked up in a misguided attempt to prove to himself he’s straight. I mean, sure, you could write fanfiction where that happens, but why would you? There are plenty of fandoms for that. This is a fandom where it’s completely believable to say that the worst thing that can happen is that the Beagle Boys steal Max’s and Louie’s wedding rings right before the vows. Sometimes you just need a little joy, you know?
The Fic
Normally I wouldn’t include my own fic in here, because, you know, that’s jerky, but since there’s so little in this fandom, and since some of my fics fall into continuity with mizzmarvel’s…I’m gonna have to be jerky. Sorry!
The first five fics follow a loose continuity and should probably be read in the order I have them listed, although it’s not majorly necessary to do so (and as you can tell by the summaries, it’s order-of-being-written, not chronological order):
Not That Terrible by poisonivory: Max and Louie have their first date…at the House of Mouse, because they are apparently not very bright.
Hyuck by mizzmarvel: Max starts to realize his feelings for Louie.
Recruitment Drive by poisonivory: Max meets the triplets.
Job Prospect by mizzmarvel: The first night on the job at the House reunites Max with someone he hasn’t seen in quite a while.
Fazed by poisonivory: Louie begins to realize that a childhood crush can easily develop into something more.
These two are also loosely connected:
Bros Before Hos by mizzmarvel: Max has a date. Louie is not pleased.
Happily Ever After by poisonivory: In the wake of Max’s and Roxanne’s date, Louie ponders the nature of love in his world.
And now, the unconnected fics:
The Only Face You See by poisonivory: The only time Louie doesn’t like being a triplet is when he’s around Max.
Think Tank by poisonivory and mizzmarvel: Max reflects on Bradley’s attentions and his own sexuality, with a little help from Tank. This is basically gen and Louie doesn’t appear, but it does deal with a potentially-gay-or-bi Max. And this is it from me, I promise!
First Kiss by mizzmarvel: Exactly what it sounds like.
Mistletoe by mizzmarvel: Louie mangles horticulture to his advantage.
Kick by mizzmarvel: It’s cold out in the valet shack…until Louie shows up.
Their First Fight by mizzmarvel: Even the nicest Duck gets angry sometimes.
Devil’s Advocate by appending_doom: Louie has Issues. Max doesn’t always help with those.
Matters of the Heart by appending_doom: PJ and Huey feel left out when Max and Louie start spending more time together…until they realize just what that time together might mean.
No Place For Heroes by appending_doom: With Darkwing Duck (and several other notables) MIA in the middle of a crime wave, the younger generation decides to step in. But can they handle St. Canard’s latest threat? This crossover (obviously) with Darkwing Duck is epic (over 27,000 words, you guys!) and features Huey/Gosalyn as well as Max/Louie.
Something New by appending_doom: Mickey’s and Minnie’s wedding is something of a dismal affair, at least until Max and Louie head off on their own.
Giving Thanks by second_batgirl: Max and Louie face their first Thanksgiving as a couple, as well as their extended “family.”
A final note: If you’re looking to bone up on your canon, the entire run of DuckTales is available on DVD, as are both Goofy Movies. Disney totally skimped on Goof Troop and Quack Pack, though; only three episodes of each are available on DVD. However, though I would never recommend bypassing the legal avenues, the entire run of Quack Pack is floating around out there on torrent sites. I am also loath to link to YouTube videos, since Disney is really good at shutting those down, but if you’re looking for triplets shorts or AGM musical numbers, I’d run a couple of searches. Just saying. And Goof Troop and House of Mouse are both airing in reruns on Toon Disney - check your listings!
Author: poisonivory
Fandom: Disney (General - Mickey Mouse and Friends, Disney Afternoon)
Spoilers: General ones for various shorts, Disney Afternoon shows, and direct-to-video movies, I guess. It’s not like this canon has a strong emphasis on plot, really.
Notes: Yes, that is Louie as in “Huey, Dewey, and…” And yes, that is Max as in the dog boy from Goof Troop with the purple pants. I’m so sorry.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to mizzmarvel for listening to my whining and betaing this monster. And thanks to Walt, even though I doubt this is what he had in mind.
Okay. I’m not going to mince words here. These are cartoon characters from sources intended almost exclusively for children. They’re not the same species, there’s not a whole lot of evidence that either is interested in the fellas (although there is some), and though between them they’ve starred in 30 shorts, five TV shows, one theatrically-released film, four direct-to-video movies, and countless comic books, the sum total of their onscreen interaction is probably less than ten minutes long.
See, there’s a lot of TL;DR about to happen here, and I don’t want anyone to struggle through it thinking I’m going to detail a scene where Max and Louie have to snuggle together to keep warm, or pretend to be dating to infiltrate a gay bar, or, you know, exchange more than half a dozen words. You have to understand: I made this pairing up. I was discussing the Disney Afternoon with a friend while thinking of the pairing of Jeff/Byron from the Baby-sitters Club fandom, and the idea of a sarcastic, long-suffering California(ish) boy and a mischievous-yet-sensitive triplet was on my mind; I asked my friend which duckling she thought was the most sensitive and she said Louie, and a pairing was born. (She was horrified by my thought process, incidentally.) There is no real canon basis for putting Maximilian Goof and Louis Duck together.
And yet…good gravy do I love this pairing.
1. Louie Duck
a. Debut/The Shorts
b. The Comics
c. DuckTales
d. Quack Pack
2. Max Goof
a. Debut/The Shorts
a1. A Metatextual Aside: Max’s Mom
b. Goof Troop
c. A Goofy Movie
d. An Extremely Goofy Movie
3. Shared Canon
a. Disney’s House of Mouse/Mickey Mouse Works
b. Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas
c. Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas
4. Meta
a. The Why
b. The Fic
Louie Duck
Louie is, of course, one of the hellion nephews of Donald Duck, everyone’s favorite seminude waterfowl. He and his brothers Huey and Dewey are the children of Donald’s twin sister Della; their father has never been named or shown. According to Quack Pack, their full names are Hubert, Deuteronomy, and Louis; according to comic book artist Al Taliaferro, they were named for politicians Huey Long and George Dewey and animator Louie Schmitt. Huey’s the one in red (the brightest hue), Dewey’s the one in blue (the color of dew), and Louie’s in green (the color of leaves, which also start with an L), although their colors were less standardized earlier in their careers.
Debut/The Shorts
The triplets have two “origin stories,” as it were - one in the comics, and one in the shorts. They originally debuted in the Donald Duck newspaper comic in a storyline starting on October 17, 1937, when their mother sent them to stay with Donald for a month while their father recovered from the firecracker they’d set off under his chair. You can read the whole introductory plotline, where they torture Donald mercilessly in that way we’ve all come to know and love, starting here. Here their mother is named Della and refers to herself as Donald’s cousin.
The Nephews were a big hit, and on April 15, 1938 they appeared in their big screen debut, “Donald’s Nephews.” Here the setup was a little different - their mother’s name was Dumbella, and she was now Donald’s sister (later his twin). (Fans have theorized that “Dumbella” is actually Donald’s nickname for Della.) However, the glorious tone of their harassment of their beleaguered uncle was the same.
Though D[umb]ella wrote that she was only sending her “little angels” for a day, the Nephews quickly reappeared in “Good Scouts” a few months later. From then on, both in the shorts and in the comics, D[umb]ella and her husband were never really mentioned. Donald (who entered the boys on his tax form as “adopted” in “The New Spirit” (1942)) simply stayed in loco parentis, emphasis on the “loco” (these are the jokes, folks).
All in all, the Nephews appeared in 26 shorts between 1938 and 1961, a very respectable showing (way more that their Aunt Daisy, for example). They were voiced by Clarence “Ducky” Nash, who also voiced Donald, and had the same incomprehensible quacky speech. Their appearances almost all depicted the ongoing war between them and Donald. Sometimes the boys would instigate a particular skirmish and sometimes Donald would, but the Nephews would almost invariably emerge triumphant. John Grant in his Encyclopedia of Walt Disney’s Animated Characters summed them up thusly:
"Huey, Dewey and Louie represent mischievous children the world over - which is probably why they have so many staunch devotees today among the kids who read of their exploits in the comic strips as well as seeing the revivals of their classic shorts on television or (very occasionally) in the cinema. Their external appearance is that of angels, belying their malevolent intent. And yet, over the years, they have mellowed a little: they have proved themselves intelligent, resourceful, loyal, brave and, on occasion, even affectionate. Better equipped than 'Unca Donald' to cope with the pressures of the real world, they have often saved him from the consequences of his worst excesses."
The Comics
Donald’s popularity quickly carried over to comic books, where the legendary Carl Barks began shaping his life as an adventurer, treasure hunter, and punching bag for the universe. Disney comics, particularly those by Barks and later Don Rosa, are a vast and complicated fandom all their own, and certainly not my area of expertise, but here are the things I can tell you:
- Donald and the boys live in the bustling city of Duckburg in the west coast state of Calisota, the most geographically-bizarre state ever (which also contains Spoonerville, Goofy’s hometown; St. Canard, setting for the wonderful Darkwing Duck; and Mouseton (guess who lives there!)).
- Everyone’s favorite feathered curmudgeon, Scrooge McDuck, first appeared in the comics, and rocketed to stardom in them, eventually gaining his own title. Many of his comics focused on his attempts to increase and preserve his wealth by gallivanting all over the world in search of treasure, with Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Louie tagging along. Remember this!
- The triplets starred with both Donald and Scrooge in their adventures, proving their intelligence and resourcefulness time and again. The list of their appearances is far too vast to begin to recount here, but if you’re interested, you can check them out at the I.N.D.U.C.K.S.
- The Nephews joined the Junior Woodchucks of America, a Boy Scout-like organization that redirected all their manic energy into a much more positive outlet and provided them with the infallible Junior Woodchuck Guidebook. They were further tamed by the civilizing influence of their great-grandmother, Grandma Duck (Donald’s paternal grandmother), who, along with Donald, refused to give up on them the way their mother had. (Grandma Duck had previously raised Donald and Della after they were likewise abandoned by their mother. This is an incredibly dysfunctional family we’ve got here.)
- Huey, Dewy, and Louie can still be seen in basically this iteration in the comics today, going on various adventures with their uncle and great-uncle, and still pulling the occasional prank. Though the comics are phenomenally successful outside of the States (and those of you who live in Duck-loving countries are probably better equipped than I to figure out where to get current comics), they’re almost unknown here, and the only current titles are Uncle Scrooge and Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, both monthly deluxe-formats published by Gemstone Comics.
(The more you know! In case you’re wondering about the relationships, Scrooge’s youngest sister Hortense is Donald’s mother, making Scrooge the triplets’ great-uncle. Incidentally, the triplets’ unnamed father is - according to some theories - Daisy Duck’s brother, which is why they call her Aunt Daisy, though they’re not as close to that side of the family. Donald and Daisy may or may not be second cousins. It’s best not to think about it.)
DuckTales
In 1987, Disney decided to venture into the realm of weekday afternoon cartoons with DuckTales, which I’m sure you’re all familiar with. An early entry to the much-loved programming block “The Disney Afternoon,” it was inspired by the Carl Barks comics, and starred Scrooge and the Nephews as they adventured all over the world (Donald went off to join the Navy and was replaced by buffoonish pilot Launchpad McQuack, as it was feared that Donald would upstage Scrooge, the intended star). It also had the greatest theme song of all time (“DuckTales! A-whoo-hoo!”). Also: swimming in the money bin. So awesome!
The triplets were more in line with their comics characterization than their animated one, as impish but essentially responsible and extremely resourceful young men and devoted Junior Woodchucks. They were also much easier to understand, adorably voiced by Russi Taylor. Over the course of three seasons and one direct-to-video movie (DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp) they battled the likes of the Beagle Boys, Magica de Spell, and Flintheart Glomgold, hero-worshipped Scrooge and Launchpad, and tried to keep Scrooge’s foster daughter Webby from tagging along on their adventures.
(Huey, Dewey, and Louie also appeared in their DuckTales incarnation in the wonderfully bizarre Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, where they sang about the evils of drugs. Good stuff.)
Quack Pack
In 1996, Donald and the Nephews returned to the small screen in Quack Pack. Quack Pack, unfortunately, was no DuckTales. Instead of high-flying adventure, we had Donald and the boys living in the suburbs outside of Duckburg. Instead of theatrical-release-quality animation, music, and plotting, we had…less than that. And instead of additions like Launchpad, we had Daisy’s pet iguana Knuckles. Weirdest of all, the Ducks rather inexplicably lived in a world populated by humans rather than other anthropomorphic animals, leading many to suggest that Quack Pack does not take place in the same universe as the other Disney Afternoon shows.
Basically, it was a bad show, and it was fittingly cancelled after only one season. However, it is probably the most important piece of Duck canon there is as far as Max/Louie goes. Because in Quack Pack, the triplets were teenagers, and for the first time, they had individual personalities.
Yes! The boys who were forced to finish each others’ sentences since 1937 finally had minds of their own! Huey, voiced by Jeannie Elias, is the charismatic leader, with a tendency towards vanity and greed. Dewey, voiced by Pamela Segall, is the brains of the outfit, somewhat nerdy, and a practical joker.
And then there’s Louie. Voiced by E.G. Daily, best known as Tommy Pickles from Rugrats (there’s some cognitive dissonance for you), Louie is the jock, and, counter-intuitively, the sensitive environmentalist. He relaxes by reading self-help books, lifting weights while jumping on a trampoline (this ends badly), or staring dreamily into space while his brothers read comic books. He likes health food and is disgusted by his brothers’ junk food consumption, and apparently has a habit of borrowing Dewey’s thesaurus to learn new words.
Most interestingly, he’s the moral center of the trio. When things reach their most madcap, mercenary point, he’s always the one slowing it down with lines like: “Hey, you guys ever think maybe success has turned us into heartless greedy villains who only care about money?” or “Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is a bad idea. The last time we became superheroes, the whole universe got destroyed!” or (my favorite): “Well, lads, what important life lesson have we learned today? [Huey: “Don’t leave incriminating evidence.”] No! Don’t lie!” He’s the peacemaker when Huey and Dewey fight, and, perhaps fittingly, he’s the most naïve and gullible of the three.
Louie also tends towards hero-worship. Actually, all the boys do, but both episodes focusing on Louie were about this, while only one of each of his brothers’ was (incidentally, Huey and Dewey each got four starring episodes; Louie totally got the shaft). In “Shrunken Heroes,” Louie worships environmental activist Dr. Ernest Noble (to the point that he has pictures of Noble pinned up in his bunk). Like Noble, he attempts to take the law into his own hands to save the endangered pugduddies from poachers, only to be disillusioned when he discovers that Noble himself is using lethal force against those selfsame poachers. His idealism restores Noble’s, and the pugduddies, presumably, are saved (I hope so, because they’re adorable). In “None Like It Hot,” Louie takes up the violin because his favorite superhero, Mantis Boy, plays it. He’s terrible at first, but saves the day with his playing regardless, and, in a rare nod to continuity, plays it in a later episode and seems fairly dedicated to his practicing.
He’s also pretty darn gay. He requests pajamas for a camping trip to be “made of silk and monogrammed,” and is the odd man out when his brothers court twins. When they become superheroes, his secret identity is the brawny Captain Muscle - far campier than Dewey’s Brain Boy and Huey’s Really Incredibly Fast Guy. And his stabs at heterosexuality fall pretty flat; at a ski resort, he proclaims the delights of “Girls in parkas!” perhaps not understanding that most boys are not intrigued by girls wearing their puffiest, most figure-obscuring clothes.
Max Goof
Maximilian Goof, like his father Goofy Goof (also known as Goofy Geef, George G. Geef, G. G. Goof, and Dippy Dawg), is a dog, sometimes called a dogface. His narrative is much more streamlined that that of the triplets, and certain elements are present in almost all of his appearances: 1) though he adores his father, he is also frequently embarrassed by him and lives in fear of growing up to be just like him, and 2) he has great hair.
He’s also notable for the fact that he is one of the very few animated characters who has aged in close to real time (or at all!): he was 11 in 1992, in high school in 1996, and in college by 2000, possibly graduating in 2004. (Two of his appearances don’t fit the timeline, but the shorts are, as you’ll see, a maybe, and Once Upon a Christmas can be considered a flashback.)
Debut/The Shorts
Max’s origins are a little murky. Though the character named “Max Goof” first appeared in Goof Troop in 1992, Goofy’s son appeared long before that, in a series of shorts in the 1950s and 60s. Here he was called “Junior” onscreen and “Goofy Jr.” by the studio and by fans, and was more in the line of the Adorable Tormentor, like Huey, Dewy, and Louie. He also didn’t look like Max; whereas Max is a miniature Goofy in most ways, Junior had a rounder face, a red parp nose, and a shock of red hair. He was voiced by Bobby Driscoll (probably best known to you as the voice of Disney’s Peter Pan) in all of his shorts except for “Aquamania,” where he was voiced by Kevin Corcoran (understandably so, as “Aquamania” was made a full decade after the first Goofy Junior appearance and Driscoll’s voice had long since changed).
He first appeared in “Fathers Are People” (1951), in which Goofy (as George G. Geef) joyously celebrates his son’s birth, struggles through the hardships of caring for an infant, and then, for the bulk of the short, deals with his rambunctious, mischievous toddler Junior. His other real starring role came in “Father’s Lion” (1952), in which Goofy takes Junior on a hunting trip in the woods, bragging endlessly about his nonexistent hunting prowess (the title’s a pun! Get it?). While Goofy natters on obliviously, Junior fights off a man-eating mountain lion with his pop gun. The cuteness of both shorts is simply mindboggling. Junior retreated into much more supporting roles in his other three appearances, “Father’s Day Off” (1953), “Father’s Week-End” (1953), and “Aquamania” (1961). Here he mostly served as one of the many irritants in Goofy’s life - all with the best intentions, of course!
So, is Goofy Jr. a young Max? Opinion is divided. I tend to incorporate certain aspects of the canon of the shorts into my own personal canon, like the idea that Max’s hair was red like his mother’s (more on that in a minute) when he was a baby. The Goofy Jr. shorts are interesting, as they give us the idea of what Max’s early childhood in a two-parent household might have been like, albeit through the filter of the 1950s and with a Goofy who is far less, well, goofy. But in the end, there’s no definitive answer. You get to pick and choose what you want to keep. The power is yours! (Thanks, Captain Planet!)
A Metatextual Aside: Max’s Mom
Who is she? The answering of this question is made somewhat more difficult by the fact that Goofy is rather inexplicably the stud of the Disneyverse. While Minnie and Daisy generally only have maybe one rival for Mickey’s and Donald’s affections respectively, Goofy’s bedpost is disturbingly well-notched (or, to put it in more Disney-appropriate terms, his dance card is disturbingly full).
Of his major paramours, the two most often suggested as Max’s mom are fellow canines Glory Bee and Penny the Pup (Clarabelle Cow raises too many questions of biology to be a contender). Glory Bee is a comic book character who pursued Goofy to little success throughout a decent handful of appearances, while Penny was a character created for the Minnie ‘n’ Me merchandising line of the 1990s. It focused on Minnie as a little girl and all her alliterative friends, such as Daisy Duck, Clarabelle Cow, and, of course, Penny the Pup. Both Penny and Glory Bee have basically disappeared - just like Max’s mom!
Now. In “Fathers Are People,” Goofy says that his redheaded son has his mother’s hair. Penny was always depicted with red hair; Glory Bee with either red or blonde. So it’s entirely possible that one of them could be Max’s mother. Beyond that, there’s little evidence either way, although Goofy did woo a “Princess Penelope” in the short “A Knight for a Day” (1948) and date a woman suggestively named Miss Pennypacker in the Goof Troop episode “Date With Destiny,” which may have been a hint by the writers.
If you’re like me, you like the symmetry of Max’s mother being the sixth wheel on the Mickey/Minnie/Donald/Daisy/Goofy love wagon, and are fond of Penny’s gangly awkwardness. If you’re like mizzmarvel, you think the name Glory Bee is delightfully hilarious. These are basically the strongest arguments I know in favor of either character. It’s not really an exact science.
Goof Troop
Goof Troop debuted on the Disney Afternoon in 1992 and ran for two rather lengthy seasons (78 episodes total). It focused on the misadventures of Goofy and his 11-year-old son Max (voiced by Dana Hill) as they live their day-to-day lives in Goofy’s quiet suburban hometown of Spoonerville. Max here is a schemer and a dreamer, a fast talker and a get-rich-quicker who is into rock music, skateboarding, and the latest fads. Unfortunately, he’s also as klutzy as his dad and almost as naïve, so his grand plans usually flop.
Pete, the recurring foe of Mickey and the gang from the shorts, shows up as Goofy’s next door neighbor; though Goofy has fond recollections of their shared childhood, Pete despises Goofy. Unfortunately for him, his son P.J. (Pete Junior) and Max immediately become best friends, and Max constantly leads the docile P.J. into mischief. Rounding out the cast are Peg, Pete’s no-nonsense wife who is about a thousand times too good for him; Pistol, P.J.’s brilliant and manic little sister; Waffles, the Goof family’s cat; and Chainsaw, the Pete family’s dog (yes, their last name is Pete).
If I may pontificate about quality a bit more, I have to say the show’s not great, my fond memories of it from childhood notwithstanding (and I must admit that I am far more partial to Donald than I am to Goofy). The animation is sloppy and inconsistent, and a completely inordinate amount of episodes are about Pete, because…emotionally abusive middle-aged used car salesmen are super popular with the kids? I don’t know. All I know is that the show desperately needed to focus more on Max, and I’m only a little bit biased when I say that.
From the Max that we do get, what do we learn? We learn that he had an imaginary pet cow named Moofus when he was little. We learn that his possibly-Freudian attraction to redheads started early. We learn that though he tackles P.J. for saying quite truthfully that Max looks just like Goofy, and is completely distraught when Goofy re-enrolls in Max’s school (a plot which would be rehashed eight years later in An Extremely Goofy Movie, but with more crazy), he adores his father, considers him “the perfect dad” (from the application Max writes for Goofy for a dating service: “Kind, gentle, has a great laugh, always loses at checkers…the perfect dad!”) and would willingly risk his life for him.
Max is also…let’s say he forms strong homosocial bonds. In one episode, P.J. befriends another boy with a freakish 11-year-old body builder physique. Max becomes deeply jealous, and even goes so far as to get himself some inflatable muscles to impress P.J. with. Basically it’s a long Charles Atlas ad, but with added homoeroticism for flavor! In the end, of course, they all become pals. Aww.
Also, there was one episode where everything turned out to be the nightmare of a sentient trumpet. That doesn’t have anything to do with Max being gay; I just think it’s hilarious.
A Goofy Movie
In 1995, Goofy returned to the big screen, this time with Max in tow. Actually, it was more like the other way around; despite the title, Max is the protagonist of the story and it’s his wonderfully relatable teenage hopes and fears which make the movie work. This is, in your humble author’s opinion, the best Max vehicle of them all; it’s smart, funny, touching, and beautifully animated, with a fantastic soundtrack.
Max is now in high school (I’d guess freshman or sophomore year) and past his (first) awkward phase - look how cute he is! And remember when everyone wore shirts like that? Pete and PJ return for this adventure, but Peg, Pistol, and the family pets are nowhere to be seen.
It’s the last day of school before summer vacation, and Max is determined to impress Roxanne, the girl of his dreams. So in the middle of an assembly, he breaks into a high-tech performance of the latest hit by everyone’s favorite rock star, Powerline (with some help from PJ and new friend Bobby). Roxanne, who clearly already liked Max, agrees to go with him to a party to watch the upcoming televised Powerline concert. However, the principal is not amused, and tells Goofy that Max is a hellion bound for the electric chair. Panicked, Goofy decides to take Max on a father-son fishing trip to Lake Destiny, Idaho. To keep Roxanne from going to the party with anyone else, Max tells her that he and his father are going to California to join Powerline onstage at his concert, since Powerline and Goofy used to be in a band together - a patently ridiculous lie, but Roxanne believes it.
The trip starts out horribly, but eventually Max and Goofy bond and start having a good time. However, Max changes the route on the map so that they’re going to California instead of Idaho. When Goofy finds out, he’s hurt and furious, and a fight erupts that climaxes with the two of them careening over a waterfall, and Max saving Goofy’s life using “the Perfect Cast,” the secret Goof family casting technique. They head off to California, and when Goofy crashes onto the stage in his own inimitably goofy way, Max tells him to do the perfect cast, and Powerline assumes it’s a new dance. Max joins them, and back home, Roxanne and the rest are suitably impressed.
When Max returns, he confesses to Roxanne, who tells him she already liked him, from the first time she heard his Goofy “hyuck” laugh (about which Max has always been terribly embarrassed). They kiss. Goofy crashes through the roof. Hooray!
The Max in this movie is neurotic, particularly about his father; when he first “hyucks” in front of Roxanne, he claps his hands over his mouth and runs away, screaming (probably more embarrassing than the original hyuck, but there you have it). He’s not particularly popular, albeit more of a nonentity than a typical nerd. He’s referred to by his classmates as “the Goof kid” and ignored by his more popular peers, and though his Powerline performance is ostensibly a bid merely for Roxanne’s attention, there’s a pretty obvious desire to be noticed by the world at large for who he is (or at least, who he wants everyone to believe he is) as opposed to just another face in the crowd, or, worse, an extension of his father. (The song is called “Stand Out,” for crying out loud, and declares “I’m gonna stand out above the crowd/ Even if I gotta shout out loud/ ‘Til mine is the only face you’ll see/ I’m gonna stand out ‘til you notice me.”)
Ironically, this boy who is so determined to be noticed is not very good at reading other people; he doesn’t pick up on Roxanne’s blatant signals, shanghais PJ into helping him despite the fact that PJ will get into deep trouble if Pete finds out PJ has “borrowed” his camera, and, once appointed official trip navigator, takes his father to a series of rock concerts and amusement parks far too, um, hardcore for the laid-back Goofy. However, once he does notice that Goofy isn’t enjoying himself, he navigates them straight to attractions that are more Goofy’s speed, like the House of Yarn. He’s a sweet boy, once he’s smacked with a two-by-four into paying attention to other people.
The other personality trait of note is that Max is extremely sullen and uncommunicative when upset; unlike the Ducks (and McDucks), who tend to break things until they get their way, Max retreats into himself and snaps at everyone who tries to bring him back. And despite all of this, Max is, as I’ve said, extremely likable and relatable. His character flaws are not a comically explosive temper or the tendency to good-naturedly screw up every single thing he attempts; he’s much more realistic, nuanced, and painfully teenaged in his failings.
Finally, there’s the voice. Max is voiced by Jason Marsden (no relation to James, as far as I know) in all of his teenaged and young adult appearances, and he brings an incredibly amount of charm to the role (as all of Max’s voice artists have). His singing in this movie is performed by Aaron Lohr, who also does a wonderful job, especially on the very sweet (really!) duet with Goofy, “Nobody Else But You.” Max’s vocals contribute in a big way to making him the very lovable character he is.
An Extremely Goofy Movie
In 2000, Disney attempted to capitalize on the success of A Goofy Movie, plus the popularity of extreme sports, with a direct-to-video sequel, An Extremely Goofy Movie. It was nowhere close to as good as its predecessor; the animation was subpar, the story was an emotional rehash of AGM and a narrative rehash of a Goof Troop episode, and the attempt to be XTREEM is just embarrassing. Plus there’s the bizarre decision to set a kids’ movie in college, a completely unrelatable setting for children. And Max is much less appealing (perhaps in part because the focus is much more on his father). Fail, XGM. Fail.
The plot is much simpler than that of AGM. When an older-but-no-wiser Max heads off to college with PJ and Bobby (who was really more of an acquaintance in AGM, but seems to have been elevated to Best Buddy status), determined to make a name for himself in the College X-Games, Goofy is so bereft that he goofs up even more spectacularly than usual at work and loses his job. When he discovers that he can’t get a decent job unless he gets a college degree (he only completed three years his first time around), he joins Max at college. In an attempt to get his more-embarrassing-than-usual father off his back, Max urges Goofy to join the rival X-Game team, the Gammas, led by sneering rich boy Bradley Uppercrust III, whose snootiness is matched only by his GIGANTIC CRUSH ON MAX. Goofy is also distracted from his son by his new girlfriend, the lovely librarian Sylvia Marpole, with whom Goofy can share their mutual love of all things 1970s.
However, Goofy (quite accidentally) beats Max at the qualifying rounds, and suddenly Max is furious with him. Goofy quits, and then finds out that the Gammas plan to cheat, like, duh, Goofy. He tries to warn Max, and, when the Gammas eliminate PJ by, um, strapping rockets to him, joins Max’s team, and naturally the good guys win through perseverance and fair play and other Disney values. Goofy graduates and drives off into the sunset with Sylvia.
Meanwhile, PJ falls in love with a beatnik.
If you’re interested in a more in-depth look at this movie (plus screencaps and mocking a-plenty), I recapped it over at my journal in this four part series: [ One] [ Two] [ Three] [ Four]. Suffice to say that it’s not very good, and Max does not come off very well.
In large part this is because he’s not being used as the quintessential Everykid he is. Max has always been into extreme sports, particularly skateboarding; this was used as a plot point regularly in Goof Troop, and one of my favorite incidentals in AGM is when Max shows off his ability on a skateboard during the “Stand Out” reprise, skating through moving pipes and over trucks and rescuing babies and whatnot. Max can be phenomenally good on a skateboard - it’s a great character note, in fact - but once that becomes the lynchpin of the plot, he becomes Extraordinary rather than Ordinary, and is simply no longer as interesting or relatable.
The most important aspect of XGM, as far as this manifesto is concerned, is the homoeroticism. The villain, Bradley Uppercrust III, is all over Max the second he spots him, and Max…does not entirely fail to reciprocate. Bradley and his fellow Gammas first notice Max when he, Bobby, and PJ skate by the Gamma House while the frat boys are playing shirtless volleyball; Bradley is, rather unsettlingly, the only character in this universe with nipples. “Well, well, well, look what the freshman cat dragged in, baby,” says Tank, Bradley’s completely delightful and equally gay second-in-command. “Some new meat!” “Hey, hey, easy, big fella, that new meat looks like Gamma material.” Bradley replies. “Let’s check him out.” The Gammas’ dialogue is like this throughout the whole movie. It’s weird.
The Gammas meet up with Max and his friends at a coffeehouse where, after complimenting Max’s skating prowess, Bradley invites him to join the Gammas. Max, upon realizing that the invitation is for him alone, not PJ and Bobby, turns Bradley down. After telling Max to stop toying with his emotions (seriously! he actually says that!), Bradley turns mean and a rumble breaks out. Max discovers that Bradley hates being called “Brad” and proceeds to call him that for the rest of the movie. Finally, Max and Bradley decide that “loser of the [X-Games] finals will be towel boy to the other.” Because it was the most homoerotic thing they could think of, apparently. Seriously, what?
Brad’s role for the rest of the movie basically consists of popping up and purring things like “We’re going to eat you alive, freshman,” and tapping Max on the shoulder and then looking away when Max turns around. It’s a very fifth-grade courtship. Finally, during the climax, Bradley leaves Tank to his fate in a fiery deathtrap. Max rescues Tank, of course, and beats Bradley in the finals. Bradley stiffly (ha!) tells Max that he hasn’t “forgotten [their] agreement,” but Max magnanimously declares the bet to be off and leaves Bradley to be beaten to a pulp by a very angry Tank. (Bradley’s protests: “Hey! Tank! Baby! Who loves ya, baby, huh?...You and me, baby, all the way!” I’m pretty sure they were a couple.)
All of this is of course not to suggest that Max and Bradley were having passionate hatesex in the student center broom closet (although if they weren’t, you know, dogs, I’d be firmly in favor of that being written). But their relationship was…fraught. It was…sexually charged. And though it’s hard to express it through dialogue and screencaps, it was not entirely on Bradley’s side. Mostly, yeah. But not entirely.
Shared Canon
Disney’s House of Mouse/Mickey Mouse Works
Okay, a show about sentient ducks living in an otherwise-mostly-human world was pretty weird; a show with a distinct emphasis on Pete was weirder still. But that wasn’t enough for Disney; no, they had to up the weirdness ante. And so they came up with House of Mouse (2001), wherein Mickey and the gang run a nightclub at which they show cartoons featuring themselves and which is attended by the characters from Disney’s animated features. So you’ll have Winnie-the-Pooh, Ariel, and the Mad Hatter sitting at a table together watching a Goofy cartoon. I suppose we all need a healthy dose of surrealism now and then, no?
The majority of the cartoons shown were recycled from 1999’s Mickey Mouse Works, which was an anthology show featuring Mickey and Co. in short cartoons that were meant to evoke the classic theatrical shorts. It was rather hit-or-miss, but Disney apparently felt that the cartoons would fare better with the framing of the nightclub setting. Each episode, besides showing cartoons, has a very thin plot running through it, like a difficult guest star (the Big Bad Wolf, Timon and Pumbaa, etc.) or a main character’s personal problem (Donald feels unloved, Goofy is too clumsy, etc.). Mickey and Donald are co-owners, and the host and greeter respectively. Minnie is the manager, Daisy the reservation clerk, Goofy the head waiter, Clarabelle Cow the gossip columnist (no, I don’t know why a nightclub has a gossip columnist), Horace Horsecollar the technician/projectionist, Donald’s second cousin Gus Goose the chef, Pete the landlord, and Pluto the mascot.
Most importantly for our purposes, however, Max is the valet, and the triplets are the house band. They’re not major characters: Max is the star of three episodes (more on those later) out of 52 and barely shows up in the others, while the triplets play a major role precisely once that I can think of, but are seen in almost every episode. However, this is the only piece of canon in which Max and Louie are in the same place on a regular basis, in a way that doesn’t break the viewer’s brain (you’ll see what I mean by that when we get to the Christmas specials). It’s also the only place where they actually exchange (sort of) dialogue. It’s very special!
So what’s the status of our heroes when we meet them at the House (which is located “on Main Street,” according to the announcer, but which I generally assume to be situated in Duckburg, as it’s the most bustling city in Calisota)?
Well, the triplets are back to being difficult to differentiate, alas. They keep switching their band name and genre, from “the Quackstreet Boys” to “Quack Sabbath” to “the Splashing Pumpkins,” and their costumes change accordingly - and are not color-coded. When they are in their usual colors, they wear basically their Quack Pack outfits, but switched around (for example, Louie wears a giant green backwards baseball cap in QP, while Huey wears a giant red backwards baseball cap in HoM). Weirdest of all, they’re voiced by Tony Anselmo, successor to Clarence Nash as the voice of Donald Duck, so that they sound just as quacky and nearly-incomprehensible as they did when they were very small. They look to be about the same age as they were in Quack Pack, or maybe a little older. They also appear pretty regularly in the cartoons-within-the-cartoon, where they wear their classic color-coded shirts and hats and seem be about the same age they were in DuckTales; they’re voiced by Anselmo here as well, but it’s far less jarring to hear them sounding like Donald here than it is in the nightclub setting.
The only episode which really featured them in the nightclub setting was “Music Day,” in which the Quackstreet Boys break up on some flimsy pretext. Mickey, Donald, and Goofy desperately try to get them back together, since it’s Music Day and the boys are the main attraction, but the triplets stand firm - that is, until Mickey, Donald, and Goofy attempt to stand in for the Quackstreet Boys and the triplets hurry back on stage before their elders forever sully their good name as musicians. Their appearances in the shorts mostly ran along the same lines as their classic appearances: torturing Donald, albeit in slightly more macabre and off-the-wall ways.
Max, who is described repeatedly on the show as a teenager (he looks about An Extremely Goofy age or maybe a bit younger), is his usual low-key, neurotic self. (He does not appear in the shorts at all, unless you count a split second cameo in a Goofy short by a boy who looked startlingly like the old Goofy Jr.) He stars, as I said, in three episodes:
In “Max’s New Car,” he lobbies for a vehicle of his own, despite the fact that Goofy uncharacteristically doesn’t think he’s responsible enough for one. There’s shenanigans with an evil high-tech car, but of course Max eventually gets his dream wheels.
In “Max’s Embarrassing Date,” he takes Roxanne on a date at the House, despite the fact that he’s terrified that his father will embarrass them. However, it’s the Mice and the Ducks who embarrass him (among other things, Daisy calls Max "Maxikins" and Mickey calls him "our very own little Maxie-Waxie" and shows the audience a picture of him in diapers), and Goofy who finally tells the others to back off and leave Max and Roxanne alone. I’ll elaborate on my fandom timeline and how this fits into it in a later section, but for now I’ll just point out that there’s not even a glimpse of triplets in this episode. Perhaps Louie stayed away from the Max Date Zone deliberately? One can only wonder!
In “Goofy for a Day” we get the only canon dialogue between Max and Louie that I am aware of:
Goofy loses an olive off of Hercules's salad and goes stumbling all over the House trying to retrieve it, eventually ending up outside with Max just as the triplets arrive.
Either Huey or Dewey (they're offscreen): What a goof!
Louie: Not like Uncle Donald.
The triplets walk off. Max glares at them.
Goofy: Aw, don't pay any attention to them.
Max: But Louie's right, Dad! Donald does run the club, and Mickey, he's the host, but you - you just wait tables.
Of course Max then takes over Goofy’s job and discovers just how difficult it really is. The triplets do not reappear, because the HoM writers do not understand narrative symmetry, but that limited interaction between my boys makes me very happy, even if the triplets’ cattiness is bizarre (especially since while they love their uncle, they don’t exactly consider him something to brag about). Perhaps this is lingering resentment over Max’s date? (Huey and Dewey, of course, stand with their brother.)
The only other episode where they interact (sort of) that I know of is “Snow Day,” wherein Donald takes the triplets sledding and Goofy takes Max snowboarding and they all wind up rolled into a giant snowball. Like you do. The episode ends with Salty the Seal performing for the HoM staff and Max joining the triplets at their table out in the audience. See? They’re usually pals!
As you can probably see, House of Mouse is not a fantastic show, nor is it heavy on the characterization. But it is a wonderful - albeit surreal - setting for fic, since Max and Louie can so easily be shoved together, and so it’s become an important cornerstone of the fandom.
Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas
In 1999, Disney put together a direct-to-video anthology of animated Christmas shorts featuring the classic characters. It’s surprisingly cute! Who’d’ve thunk it?
The triplets (voiced by Russi Taylor, as in DuckTales) star in “Stuck on Christmas” (the credited star of the short is Donald, but the triplets are the real focus), a Groundhog’s Day-type story in which the triplets wish for it to be Christmas every day - and then discover that too much of a good thing can be, well, too much. They also realize that Christmas is about family, not material things. You can read a full recap of it on my journal here. It’s pretty much adorable. (The triplets, incidentally, are about their DuckTales age, but this must be post-DT, since they’re with Donald, but Scrooge is there and friendly (he was totally cantankerous in the DT pilot until they melted his heart)).
Max and Goofy, meanwhile, star in the heartbreaking “A Very Goofy Christmas,” in which a very young (I’d guess about five years old) Max frets over whether or not there is a Santa, and Goofy tries to prove to him that there is. This one is also very sweet, and the recap is here.
The whole thing ends with a Mickey and Minnie short (recapped here), followed by all the characters meeting up for a group sing of some public domain Christmas songs. Max gets rather adorably lumped in with the triplets here. Hilariously, even though he’s probably half a decade younger than them here, he’s the same height as them.
Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas
Not to shock you or anything, but Twice is another direct-to-video anthology of Christmas shorts featuring the classic characters. However, there’s one significant difference: the film is computer animated. That means that our old familiar friends are rendered in 3D, which takes a lot of getting used to, and which I still don’t particularly like, although it no longer gives me the screaming willies like it used to.
The triplets (voiced again by Russi Taylor) actually appear in two shorts in this one. They star in “Christmas: Impossible” (recapped here), in which they race to the North Pole to put their names on Santa’s “good” list, but at the last minute decide to put Uncle Scrooge’s on it instead; this one is notable because they seem to be retaining a lot of their Quack Pack personalities in it. It’s also notable because they show off their skateboarding skills in it; Max would be impressed! They also feature in “Donald’s Gift” (recapped here), in which Donald’s quest for peace and quiet leads him to first hurt, then make things up to, Daisy and the triplets. They seem about the same age as they were in Once, but again, Scrooge’s presence makes it post-DT.
Max, meanwhile, stars in “Christmas Maximus” (recapped here), in which he brings his new girlfriend Mona home for the holidays and frets over the kind of impression his father will make. Most of the short is, “Make Me Look Good,” a song Max sings inside his head as his father shenanigates about (his speaking voice is once again Jason Marsden, while his singing voice is Tom Leonard). It’s not great, and the new style of animation does not suit Max in the slightest. Also, is he in college? Why is he apparently so far away, then? His college didn’t seem far in XGM. Has he graduated? It’s all very confusing!
(Mona, weirdly, is voiced by Kellie Martin, as was Roxanne, and she looks strikingly like Roxanne, even down to having a mole on her left cheek. This, plus the reveal of her Goof-like buck teeth at the end of the short, has led me to fear that she is actually Max’s and Roxanne’s daughter from the future, and that she needs to stop dating Max immediately before she erases herself from the timestream, a la Back to the Future; also, gross.)
Again, the stars come together at the end. This time it’s worked into the plot: Mickey’s short is about Pluto going missing, and the other characters show up to help him look (a little late, though, as Mickey and Pluto have already been reunited). Now, instead of a five-year-old Max and nine-year-old triplets hanging out, we’ve got nine-year-old triplets and a twentysomething Max hanging out. Are you seeing why a unified timeline for this pairing is a tricky proposition?
Meta
The Why
So. Clearly I care a lot about this pairing, seeing as how I’ve just babbled on for an ungodly length about it. But why? Aside from the fact that I obviously have decades-old weaknesses for both Max and Louie, why put these two together?
Well, once you get past the part where they’re a dog and a duck, Max and Louie just work well together. They’ve got plenty in common: they both love rock music and extreme sports and have similarly insane upbringings. Who’s going to understand the embarrassment and chaos of being raised by Goofy better than someone who’s been raised by Donald?
But even more important than the things they share are the things they don’t. They complement each other well. Max is used to offering wry, tongue-in-cheek support to loved ones in rose-colored glasses; he can be the ballast to Louie’s idealism without being discouraging or impractical. Meanwhile, Louie can pull Max back down to Earth when Max gets too caught up in a Machiavellian scheme or his own melodramaticness. Max does well with essentially gentle and sensitive characters, like Goofy or PJ, which Louie is as well, but unlike Goofy and PJ, Louie won’t let Max walk all over him or retreat into himself when he’s upset. Louie, though probably the sweetest of the Ducks, is still a Duck, with no time for passive aggression, and his head-on method of approaching emotions will be good for Max.
Plus, Louie undoubtedly has some pretty severe abandonment issues, having been deserted by his parents, then dumped off onto Scrooge by Donald, then sent back to Donald just when he and his brothers had gotten comfortable with Scrooge. Max, on the other hand, forms relationships and sticks like glue forever. He has no concept of loved ones leaving (if we assume that he doesn’t remember his mother very well), and is very capable of providing the steady devotion Louie desperately needs.
But perhaps the main reason I love this pairing so much is that it’s such a happy one. No one is getting thrown out of the house for being gay. Scrooge is not taking away Louie’s inheritance; Max is not getting Roxanne knocked up in a misguided attempt to prove to himself he’s straight. I mean, sure, you could write fanfiction where that happens, but why would you? There are plenty of fandoms for that. This is a fandom where it’s completely believable to say that the worst thing that can happen is that the Beagle Boys steal Max’s and Louie’s wedding rings right before the vows. Sometimes you just need a little joy, you know?
The Fic
Normally I wouldn’t include my own fic in here, because, you know, that’s jerky, but since there’s so little in this fandom, and since some of my fics fall into continuity with mizzmarvel’s…I’m gonna have to be jerky. Sorry!
The first five fics follow a loose continuity and should probably be read in the order I have them listed, although it’s not majorly necessary to do so (and as you can tell by the summaries, it’s order-of-being-written, not chronological order):
Not That Terrible by poisonivory: Max and Louie have their first date…at the House of Mouse, because they are apparently not very bright.
Hyuck by mizzmarvel: Max starts to realize his feelings for Louie.
Recruitment Drive by poisonivory: Max meets the triplets.
Job Prospect by mizzmarvel: The first night on the job at the House reunites Max with someone he hasn’t seen in quite a while.
Fazed by poisonivory: Louie begins to realize that a childhood crush can easily develop into something more.
These two are also loosely connected:
Bros Before Hos by mizzmarvel: Max has a date. Louie is not pleased.
Happily Ever After by poisonivory: In the wake of Max’s and Roxanne’s date, Louie ponders the nature of love in his world.
And now, the unconnected fics:
The Only Face You See by poisonivory: The only time Louie doesn’t like being a triplet is when he’s around Max.
Think Tank by poisonivory and mizzmarvel: Max reflects on Bradley’s attentions and his own sexuality, with a little help from Tank. This is basically gen and Louie doesn’t appear, but it does deal with a potentially-gay-or-bi Max. And this is it from me, I promise!
First Kiss by mizzmarvel: Exactly what it sounds like.
Mistletoe by mizzmarvel: Louie mangles horticulture to his advantage.
Kick by mizzmarvel: It’s cold out in the valet shack…until Louie shows up.
Their First Fight by mizzmarvel: Even the nicest Duck gets angry sometimes.
Devil’s Advocate by appending_doom: Louie has Issues. Max doesn’t always help with those.
Matters of the Heart by appending_doom: PJ and Huey feel left out when Max and Louie start spending more time together…until they realize just what that time together might mean.
No Place For Heroes by appending_doom: With Darkwing Duck (and several other notables) MIA in the middle of a crime wave, the younger generation decides to step in. But can they handle St. Canard’s latest threat? This crossover (obviously) with Darkwing Duck is epic (over 27,000 words, you guys!) and features Huey/Gosalyn as well as Max/Louie.
Something New by appending_doom: Mickey’s and Minnie’s wedding is something of a dismal affair, at least until Max and Louie head off on their own.
Giving Thanks by second_batgirl: Max and Louie face their first Thanksgiving as a couple, as well as their extended “family.”
A final note: If you’re looking to bone up on your canon, the entire run of DuckTales is available on DVD, as are both Goofy Movies. Disney totally skimped on Goof Troop and Quack Pack, though; only three episodes of each are available on DVD. However, though I would never recommend bypassing the legal avenues, the entire run of Quack Pack is floating around out there on torrent sites. I am also loath to link to YouTube videos, since Disney is really good at shutting those down, but if you’re looking for triplets shorts or AGM musical numbers, I’d run a couple of searches. Just saying. And Goof Troop and House of Mouse are both airing in reruns on Toon Disney - check your listings!