Magnus Carlsen to Feature in Norwegian Donald Duck

Magnus Carlsen will soon feature in the Norwegian Donald Duck magazine. The Norwegian chess player will be part of a story in the magazine to be released in November. This was reported by NRK.

This nice story was picked up by Chessbase earlier this week, and the impact was such that members of Chess.com started commenting about it right away under one of our Tashkent reports! 

And since José Diaz's latest cartoon was inspired on it as well, we decided that the story should definitely be mentioned in our news section too!

Teaming up with writer Knut Nærum and Donald illustrator Arild Midthun, Magnus Carlsen will feature in an upcoming Donald Duck strip in Norway — he'll be involved as a writer but, more importantly, as a character in the magazine!

“Makspuls Klarsyn” is the name of the character, which is based on an anonymous dog in Duckburg. Carlsen said he would rather have been a pig: “The mayor of Duckburg is a pig.”

Carlsen also stated that he only had one demand: that he could play some pranks on his chess colleagues in the story. We'll have to wait and see what he did there!

The illustrator created the Carlsen character in a remarkable way. “He has a distinctive profile, so I took the basis of a peanut. And then I broke the peanut a little extra in the middle,” said Midthun.

“Is this better than winning at chess?”, Carlsen was asked by NRK in their article, to which the world champion responded, somewhat jokingly: “Yes, absolutely! Now I have achieved two of my biggest goals in life. The first was to be in a Donald story, and the second was to be in "Nytt på Nytt" [a satirical VT show - PD], so now I don't know what else there should be.”

The above images were taken from NRK's news report which is recommended, even though it's in Norwegian. Just click on the link and start the video, which automatically begins with the item on Carlsen & Donald Duck.

Update: the news is now also mentioned on the Norwegian Donald Duck website. “Magnus has been a Donald Duck fan since he was three years old, and during his last World Chess Championship he used Donald Duck to relax between games of chess. Moral of the story: Read Donald Duck, a become wiser in the world.”