Donald's Nephews
Donald's Nephews (1938) is a Donald Duck animated cartoon which features Donald being visited by his three nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. This cartoon is Huey, Dewey, and Louie's very first appearance in animation. The short, and the three nephews, was the idea of Al Taliaferro, the artist for the "Silly Symphonies" comic strip, which featured Donald Duck. The Walt Disney Productions Story Dept. on February 5, 1937, sent Taliaferro a memo recognizing him as the source of the idea for the planned short. Taliaferro subsequently introduced the nephews in his comic strip, which by this time had been renamed "Donald Duck", on Sunday, October 17, 1937, beating the theatrical release of "Donald's Nephews" by almost six months.
Donald Duck in comics
Donald may well have made another early printed appearance in "Mickey Mouse Annual" #3 (published 1932; the annual for 1933), a 128-page British hardback. This book included the poem "Mickey's Hoozoo, Witswitch and Wotswot", which listed all of Mickey's then-current barnyard animal friends. Among them was a duckling named Donald Duck. Besides the name, however, there is little similarity between this character and the one introduced in "The Wise Little Hen" during 1934. "Mickey Mouse Annual" 3 was drawn entirely by Wilfred Haughton.