The Junior Woodchucks

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In Disney's fictional universe, The Junior Woodchucks are the Boy Scouts of America-like youth organization to which Donald Duck's nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, belong. They have a uniform with a coonskin cap. The Junior Woodchucks were created by Carl Barks in 1951, in the story "Operation St. Bernhard" (Walt Disney's Comics and Stories # 125). Later stories introduced a similar organization for girls, Junior Chickadees, to which Daisy Duck's nieces, April, May and June belong.

The Junior Woodchucks also have Scoutmasters. This role is usually taken by Donald, or Launchpad McQuack in the Ducktales cartoon, where they also had a baseball team, which Launchpad also coached. In some Italian stories the scoutmaster is a tall, strong and wise (but that fears flight) goose called gran mogol (the great moghul), whose name is Bertie McGoose.

Junior Woodchucks always carry with them a copy of the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook, a fictional guidebook filled with detailed and pertinent information about whatever country or situation the Woodchucks find themselves. Its depth of coverage is remarkable, considering that it is a small paperback book.

Fans of Carl Barks's work take a dim view of versions of the Junior Woodchucks not written by either Carl Barks or his successor Don Rosa. For example, the Woodchucks often appeared in the television series Duck Tales, where their slogan, "Wokka-wokka-woodchuck!", was a very unBarks-like chant.

Don Rosa wrote and drew a story about the Junior Woodchucks, "Guardians of the Lost Library", which Comics Buyer's Guide mentioned as possibly the greatest comic book story of all time.

[edit] Comic Books

Most of the early Junior Woodchucks stories appeared in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. They also appeared in Donald Duck and in Uncle Scrooge. In 1966, they got their own title, Huey, Dewey, and Louie and the Junior Woodchucks, published by Gold Key Comics for 62 issues, and then continued by Whitman Comics for another 20 issues until 1983. The stories which Carl Barks wrote for this comic book, some of the last stories he scripted, were drawn by mediocre artists, and fans seek out redrawn versions by Daan Jippes.

When The Walt Disney Company published their own comics they had a Junior Woodchucks 4 issue mini series in 1991 staring Huey Dewey and Louie as the main characters in all the stories except for the last story in the final issue in which Li'l Bad Wolf was the main character.

Today, their stories are printed in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories.