Carl Barks is largely responsible for the Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck comics as we know them today. We were lucky enough to also have the amazingly talented Don Rosa pick up where Barks left off, and I am truly in awe of both their efforts.
You'll hear of Carl Barks referred to as "The Good Duck Artist" as, back in the day, all the comics put out by Disney obfuscated the names of the creators. But fans knew there was one artist working on those comics who was particularly great as artist and storyteller. They just didn't know the name of the man behind the pen. Thus, he became known as "The Good Duck Artist".
Born this day in 1901, Barks created great Duck stories, and also worked on other characters, including Barney the Bear.
In recent decades, Barks' name became known and he's now a legend among comic aficionados. We're lucky to have had Gemstone, Boom! and Fantagraphics collecting his work the past few years, in increasingly lovely volumes.
Here's a bit from "Lost in the Andes".
8 comments:
I love me some Carl Barks. I'm so happy that Fantagraphics is collecting his work in those hard bound volumes. I'm into the third book now and looking forward to the fourth. These are the comics of my youth back when they weren't collectables and you used to draw, trace, silly putty and generally have a great time with them.
For some reason I never got my hands on Disney comics until I was... geez, 28? I remember reading Woody Woodpecker and Bugs Bunny, but it really took me noticing all the Barks and Rosa chatter on the internets about that time, so I picked up some Don Rosa issues from Gemstone, then picked up some older stuff in reprint, and I was hooked. I won't buy the back issues because that way leads to madness. There's just too much.
I used to remember picking up issues of Super Goof, Uncle Scrooge and Donal Duck from the corner store out by our cottage. Those were some great days and dovetails nicely into your recent post on what's wrong with comics.
I wish someone had known to point me at those comics, or they'd been better stocked. I do remember having a major aversion to what I'd now call licensed properties translated into comics, even as a kid. I sort of always felt like it was a Z-squad of talent working on something I saw as a cash grab, and I likely lumped those comics in with what I saw from Star at Marvel. I think the only comic I felt was better than the TV show, etc.. was GI Joe. But I think we ALL felt that way about Larry Hama.
I was a Disney fan, and maybe I just saw those items as "not really Disney", which... super unfortunate.
I think a lot of my comic reading back in those days was my Dad randomly grabbing comics off the rack on his way home from work. I agree that property based comics were really bad back in the 80's of course GI Joe was the exception that proved the rule. For some reason I never thought of Disney comics as licensed properties cause it just seemed kinda natural for Disney to have comics.
I suspect the half-assedness of some Woody Woodpecker comics and some others just spoiled me on the idea of cartoons to comics. I guess I knew Super Friends started in comics, but it took a long time for me to make the transition from that cartoon to the comics.
The back issues are too many and really expensive. However, a managable goal as a collector would be to collect the Gladstone issues starting in the mid 80s. That was about the time when Barks appreciation hit its peak, so all the most classic stories are reprinted along with the new stuff from Don Rosa. Donald Duck Adventures and Uncle Scrooge Adventures especially have some of the best long-form stories. And those issues are easy to find for around a buck each.
@Stuart - yeah, I'm satisfied with the collections. They're coming out at enough of a decent interval that I haven't felt a huge gap in my duck intake between books. But it's great to have a starting point for picking up reprints when the Fantagraphics well runs dry or when I'm thumbing through the back issue bins. Right now I'm mostly picking up Superman and DC military back issues - when I do pick up back issues. Which, really, I haven't done since the fall.
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