>>101446128>>despite being able to take on the world with one arm behind his back, without proper motivation Donald is surprisingly easily scared,>Here is a super short Stories that perfectly displays that, "Duck Divers".Donald as coward is really a Floyd Gottfredson thing.
In early 1930s comics like "Editor-in-Grief" and "The Seven Ghosts" Donald is next level terrified, constantly. I think the point's supposed to be that the flip side of him having an awful temper, constantly saying "Wanna fight?" and threatening to beat everyone up in his earliest appearances, ("I'll murder the whole bunch of ya," he says in Orphan's Benefit) is that if anyone actually calls him on his challenges, he's secretly a super panicky weakling just pretending to be tough.
There is one cartoon, Moving Day, that suggests just a little of this, where Donald constantly threatens Pete when Pete isn't there, but the second Pete returns Donald freaks and panics (even if it's just a moment later!).
But then came Alpine Climbers where Donald actually does manage to beat up the mountain goat when it pushes him far enough, and after that Donald wasn't so panicky anymore.
Nevertheless the Gottfredson interpretation not only has been reprinted a lot, but was used as a source for a modern cartoon (The Three Musketeers, where a Seven Ghosts type subplot about Donald being a coward was ripped FROM the Seven Ghosts, or so said the director in some interviews).
If Donald's a coward in these new Musketeers episodes, then that's the source.
