Clan McDuck

The Clan McDuck is a fictional Scottish clan of cartoon ducks from which Disney character Scrooge McDuck is descended. Within the Duck universe, the clan is related to the American Duck family through the marriage of Hortense McDuck and Quackmore Duck, the parents of Donald Duck.

Clan McDuck was created by American comic book author Carl Barks who also created the character of Scrooge McDuck. Barks's 1948 story "The Old Castle's Secret," in which Scrooge and his nephews search for hidden treasure in McDuck Castle, first laid the groundwork for the backstory of the clan. Other authors built on Barks's work, most notably Don Rosa in his 12-part comic saga The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck (1992–94) which introduced Scrooge's immediate family.

Literary origins

In the early 1950s, Carl Barks was in his second decade of creating comic book stories starring Donald Duck and his various relatives. He had personally created several of the latter, including cousin Gladstone Gander and uncle Scrooge McDuck, although the specific relationships between them were still uncertain. To better define these relationships, Barks created a version of the McDuck/Duck/Coot family tree for his own personal benefit, incidentally creating several additional characters.