Duck family (Disney) strip, Della writes to Donald that the boys had placed a firecracker under their father's chair as a prank and that their father had been sent to the hospital. This was the reason why the boys first showed up at Donald's house. Thereafter the father is generally assumed to have disappeared. In "The Richest Duck in the World", when Scrooge mentions that the few family members he had had disappeared, the boys respond "We know how "that" feels!" Donald's cousin Fethry Duck was created for the Disney Studio Program by Dick Kinney and Al Hubbard and was first used in
Donald Duck famously drawn by Al Taliaferro, Carl Barks, and Don Rosa. Barks, in particular, is credited for greatly expanding the "Donald Duck universe", the world in which Donald lives, and creating many additional characters such as Donald's rich uncle Scrooge McDuck. Donald has been a very popular character in Europe, particularly in Nordic countries where his weekly magazine "" was the most popular comics publication from the 1950s to 2009. Donald is also very popular in Italy, where he is major character in many comics in which his juvenile version Paperino Paperotto and his superhero alter-ego "Paperinik" ("Duck Avenger" in the