(When Uncle Scrooge decides to take Donald and the nephews...)
When Uncle Scrooge decides to take Donald and the nephews on a world tour to inspect the many businesses in his far-flung empire, he never dreamed he’d wind up uncovering the fabled lost treasure of the even-more fabled King Solomon!
(When Donald decides to let the boys pick their own Christ...)
When Donald decides to let the boys pick their own Christmas present they choose - a Ferris Wheel! Only Uncle Scrooge can pay for a Ferris Wheel, but he’ll only do it if Donald goes to Canada to pick up a 100-foot Christmas tree for the town square.
(In our title story, it’s Christmastime, and Donald, Uncle...)
In our title story, it’s Christmastime, and Donald, Uncle Scrooge, and the nephews are searching for rare black pearls on a remote island. But when their boat is sucked into an underwater cavern, they find themselves facing the fury of the island’s volcano!
(Worried about an earthquake that might swallow his money ...)
Worried about an earthquake that might swallow his money bin, Uncle Scrooge digs deep to secure his fortune - and discovers an underground civilization! Introducing the Terries and Fermies - the subterranean critters who can make earthquakes!
(In our title story, Uncle Scrooge, Donald, and the nephew...)
In our title story, Uncle Scrooge, Donald, and the nephews are hot on the trail of a pair of old saddlebags filled with gold nuggets. Then, Donald dons a suit of armor with a rubber sword for a costume party, but he embarrasses Daisy and becomes the object of scorn and ridicule - until a pair of lions break free!
(When Donald and the boys wind up in Old California, the r...)
When Donald and the boys wind up in Old California, the rush is on - for the gold in them thar hills! Carl Barks delivers another superb collection of outrageous hijinks, preposterous situations, bamboozlement, befuddlement, and all-around cartooning brilliance.
(When Uncle Scrooge loses some vital papers in a plane cra...)
When Uncle Scrooge loses some vital papers in a plane crash in the jungles of Hondorica, he sends Donald and his nephews to rescue them. But wily cousin Gladstone Gander gets wind of the expedition and decides to get there first - to claim the reward for himself!
(Uncle Scrooge takes Donald and the nephews on a perilous ...)
Uncle Scrooge takes Donald and the nephews on a perilous trek in search of the fabled seven cities of gold! This is the Scrooge story famous for providing Steven Spielberg and George Lucas with inspiration for parts of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
(Donald and the nephews embark on an expedition to Peru to...)
Donald and the nephews embark on an expedition to Peru to find where square eggs come from only to meet danger in a mysterious valley whose inhabitants all speak with a southern drawl, and where Huey, Dewey, and Louie save Unca’ Donald’s life by learning how to blow square bubbles!
(Donald and his nephews visit an Old West ghost town that ...)
Donald and his nephews visit an Old West ghost town that was suddenly abandoned when the sheriff vanished while in hot pursuit of a passel of outlaws. Now the remains of the town are haunted - and it’s up to the plucky nephews to solve the mystery of “The Ghost Sheriff of Last Gasp” before it’s too late!
(Our lead-off story, “Trick or Treat,” is the master carto...)
Our lead-off story, “Trick or Treat,” is the master cartoonist’s adaptation of the Donald Duck cartoon of the same name - with nine pages added back in from the originally truncated version! Then, Donald is convinced that Huey, Dewey, and Louie’s toy gun can really put people into a hypnotic spell - so he tries it out on Uncle Scrooge!
(Carl Barks delivers another superb collection of clever p...)
Carl Barks delivers another superb collection of clever plot twists, laugh-out-loud comedy, and all-around cartooning brilliance. Donald gives Uncle Scrooge a parrot for his birthday but the feathered troublemaker escapes with the combination to Scrooge’s safe holding “ninety tons of money.”
(The Duck family works hard to raise money to throw a Chri...)
The Duck family works hard to raise money to throw a Christmas party for the poor children of the city’s slums (depicted by Barks with surprisingly Dickensian grittiness), and climaxing in one of the most memorable images Barks ever created, the terrifying bottomless pit that swallows up all of Scrooge’s money.
(Scrooge McDuck is now such a fixture in the Disney univer...)
Scrooge McDuck is now such a fixture in the Disney universe that few remember Carl Barks had been writing and drawing Donald Duck stories for half a decade before he cooked up the miserly multiplujillionaire - for what he thought would be a one-time Christmas yarn involving Donald, the nephews, Scrooge in a bearskin, and (inevitably) a couple of real bears. “Christmas on Bear Mountain” is one of Barks’s funniest holiday stories and a true landmark in comics history, and offers a fascinating look at a rough-edged, genuinely nasty character whom Barks would soon soften...
(It’s off to Shangri-Lala for Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Lou...)
It’s off to Shangri-Lala for Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, on a perilous expedition to bring back a rare unicorn for Uncle Scrooge! But it’s not as easy as it sounds, with a mysterious stowaway, intrigue, and double-crosses in this land of many secrets. But once you do catch a unicorn, what, exactly, do you do with him?
(The title story, “The Old Castle’s Secret,” is notable no...)
The title story, “The Old Castle’s Secret,” is notable not just for being the first full-length 32-page adventure instigated by Scrooge McDuck (in his second-ever appearance), but for featuring some of Barks’s spookiest, lushest settings in old Clan McDuck castle of Dismal Downs.
(This special graphic novel collects the vintage Carl Bark...)
This special graphic novel collects the vintage Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge stories that DuckTales adapted to animation. This first volume includes "The Lost Crown of Genghis Khan, Land Beneath the Ground," "The Lemming with the Locket" and more!
(It's our second big anniversary book of epic Disney Parks...)
It's our second big anniversary book of epic Disney Parks adventures! In "Plunkett's Emporium," Scrooge and Flintheart Glomgold fight a big Adventureland battle - and Carl Barks' Donald Duck beats the Beagle Boys while "Mastering the Matterhorn"!
(In "The Abominator," a brand-new Daan Jippes adventure, D...)
In "The Abominator," a brand-new Daan Jippes adventure, Donald tries to make a success of Uncle Scrooge's desert oasis cafe. There's just one little catch...! Next, Eisner Hall of Fame artist Floyd Gottfredson continues this month's nefarious clone tales with Part One of the never-before-reprinted epic "Mickey's Dangerous Double!" Then, utilizing Carl Barks' "Eyes in the Dark," omnipresent Donald follows his nephews everywhere they go! Paul Murry's Big Bad Wolf wraps the book.
Carl Barks was a famous Disney Studio illustrator and comic book creator, who invented Duckburg and many of its inhabitants, such as Scrooge McDuck (1947), Gladstone Gander (1948), the Beagle Boys (1951), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Flintheart Glomgold (1956), John D. Rockerduck (1961), and Magica De Spell (1961).
Background
Ethnicity:
Barks was of Scottish lineage on his maternal great-grandfather's side.
Carl Barks was born on March 27, 1901, in Merrill, Oregon, United States, to William Barks (1858-1940) and his wife, Arminta Johnson (1860-1916). He had an older brother named Clyde (1899-1983).
Education
The closest school was about two miles (3.2 km) away and Barks had to walk that distance every day. The rural area had few children, though, and Barks later remembered that his school had only about eight or ten students including him. He had high praise for the quality of the education he received in that small school.
Barks' artistic training consisted of an incomplete mail-order course from the Landon School and the ever-changing lessons of the Sunday comics sections of the newspaper.
Career
In 1928 that Barks sold his first cartoons to the Calgary Eye-Opener, a Capt. Billy's Whizbang imitator out of Minneapolis. A few sales to Judge helped convince him that his dream of being an illustrator had merit. In 1930, he moved to Minneapolis and worked as a staff artist and eventually the de facto editor of the Eye-Opener.
In 1935 barks applied for a job at the Walt Disney animation studio. He was hired as an in-betweener. That's an artist who has the job of drawing the intervening animation frames that make the action flow smoothly between two drawings that were done by a real animator. Needless to say, he was not happy with the work. He had spent five years practically writing and drawing a whole magazine at the Eye-Opener and the menial task of in-betweening must have chafed. After six months, he submitted a story idea for a Donald Duck cartoon (the barber chair climax of Modern Inventions - released in 1937) and was promoted to the story department. There he worked for six years, contributing ideas and sketches to dozens of cartoons.
Disney had licensed Oscar Lebeck of Western Publishing to produce comic books featuring Barks's characters. During one visit to the studio, Lebeck had found a script for an unrealized animated cartoon about Donald and a pirate treasure. He convinced Barks, Bob Clark and Jack Hanna to turn it into a strip for his Four Color comic book series of one-shots. It was published as Donald Duck Finds Pirates' Gold in Four Color Comics #9, August 1942. Carl Barks had found his metier.
In 1942, Barks quit Disney. The air-conditioned offices of the Disney Studios and Barks' allergies and sinuses were no match for each other. Now he wanted to develop a comic book or comic strip character of his own. He was raising chickens in arid San Jacinto when Lebeck decided to add new stories to his flagship Disney title, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. He was currently reprinting material from the Disney newspaper strips that were quite popular at the time.
Up to that point, Donald Duck was a vehicle for the Disney animators. When Barks began his 23-year stint on the comic book, he had three nephews and Daisy, the girlfriend. The nephews were fairly recent additions, created during Barks' stint in the story department at the studio, but beyond that, characters and locales were conjured up to service the gags of the next cartoon. Carl proceeded to flesh out the Duck family.
In quick succession, Barks created Duckburg and populated it with Uncle Scrooge, The Beagle Boys, Gladstone Gander, Gyro Gearloose, Grandma Duck, Gus Goose, Magica DeSpell, and the entire organization of Junior Woodchucks. The dynamics of Donald Duck's life were invented by Carl Barks in the pages of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, Donald Duck Comics, and eventually, in 1952, in Uncle Scrooge Comics. The money bin, the lucky dime, the mythic Junior Woodchuck Guide - all flowed from Barks. He wrote and drew all his stories.
But, during the entire span of his career, he never signed a single story. It was simply not done. Yet, anyone who read the Disney comics knew that there was a "good duck artist" and then there was "everyone else."
With rare exceptions, Barks wrote and drew a monthly 10-page story for Comics and Stories until 1965 as well as most of the Uncle Scrooge stories which were often longer more complex adventures. There were mystery stories, westerns, adventure stories, even political and other satires all masquerading as comic book comedies. He was inventive, clever, dynamic and, above all, an artist of the first rank.
Carl Barks retired in 1966 but was persuaded by editor Chase Craig to continue to script stories for Western. The last new comic book story drawn by Carl Barks was a Daisy Duck tale ("The Dainty Daredevil") published in Walt Disney Comics Digest issue 5 (Nov. 1968). When bibliographer Michael Barrier asked Barks why he drew it, Barks' vague recollection was no one was available and he was asked to do it as a favor by Craig.
Barks wrote one Uncle Scrooge story, three Donald Duck stories and from 1970-1974 was the main writer for the Junior Woodchucks comic book (issues 6 through 25). The latter included environmental themes that Barks first explored in 1957 ["Land of the Pygmy Indians", Uncle Scrooge #18]. Barks also sold a few sketches to Western that were redrawn as covers. For a time the Barkses lived in Goleta, California, before returning to the Inland Empire by moving to Temecula.
To make a little extra money beyond what his pension and scripting earnings brought in, Barks started doing oil paintings to sell at the local art shows where he and Garé exhibited. Subjects included humorous depictions of life on the farm and portraits of Native American princesses. These skillfully rendered paintings encouraged fan, Glenn Bray, to ask Barks if he could commission a painting of the ducks ("A Tall Ship and a Star to Steer Her By", taken from the cover of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #108 by Barks). This prompted Barks to contact George Sherman at Disney's Publications Department to request permission to produce and sell oil paintings of scenes from his stories. In July 1971 Barks was granted a royalty-free license by Disney. When word spread that Barks was taking commissions from those interested in purchasing oil of the ducks, much to his astonishment the response quickly outstripped what he reasonably could produce in the next few years.
When Barks expressed dismay at coping with the backlog of orders he faced, fan/dealers Bruce Hamilton and Russ Cochran suggested Barks instead auction his paintings at conventions and via Cochran's catalog Graphic Gallery. By September 1974 Barks had discontinued taking commissions.
At Boston's NewCon convention, in October 1975, the first Carl Barks oil painting auctioned at a comic book convention ("She Was Spangled and Flashy") sold for $2,500. Subsequent offerings saw an escalation in the prices realized.
In 1976, Barks went to Boston for the NewCon show, his first comic convention appearance. Among the other attendees was famed Little Lulu comic book scripter John Stanley; despite both having worked for Western Publishing this was the first time they met. The highlight of the convention was the auctioning of what was to that time the largest duck oil painting Barks had done, "July Fourth in Duckburg", which included depictions of several prominent Barks fans and collectors. It sold for a then-record high amount: $6,400.
Soon thereafter a fan sold unauthorized prints of some of the Scrooge McDuck paintings, leading Disney to withdraw permission for further paintings. To meet the demand for new work Barks embarked on a series of paintings of non-Disney ducks and fantasy subjects such as Beowulf and Xerxes. These were eventually collected in the limited-edition book Animal Quackers.
As a result of heroic efforts by Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz and screenwriter Edward Summer, Disney relented and in 1981, allowed Barks to do a now seminal oil painting called "Wanderers of Wonderlands" for a breakthrough limited edition book entitled Uncle Scrooge McDuck: His Life and Times. The book collected 11 classic Barks stories of Uncle Scrooge colored by artist Peter Ledger along with a new Scrooge story by Barks did storybook style with watercolor illustrations, "Go Slowly, Sands of Time". After being turned down by every major publisher in New York City, Kurtz and Summer published the book through Celestial Arts, which Kurtz acquired partly for this purpose. The book went on to become the model for virtually every important collection of comic book stories. It was the first book of its kind ever reviewed in Time Magazine and subsequently in Newsweek, and the first book review in Time Magazine with large color illustrations.
In 1977 and 1982, Barks attended the San Diego Comic-Con. As with his appearance in Boston, the response to his presence was overwhelming, with long lines of fans waiting to meet Barks and get his autograph.
In 1981, Bruce Hamilton and Russ Cochran, two long-time Disney comics fans, decided to combine forces to bring greater recognition to the works of Carl Barks. Their first efforts went into establishing Another Rainbow Publishing, the banner under which they produced and issued the award-winning book, "The Fine Art of Walt Disney´s Donald Duck by Carl Barks", a comprehensive collection of the Disney duck paintings of this artist and storyteller. Not long after, the company began producing fine art lithographs of many of these paintings, in strictly limited editions, all signed by Barks, who eventually produced many original works for the series.
In 1983, Barks relocated one last time to Grants Pass, Oregon, near where he grew up, partly at the urging of friend and Broom Hilda artist Russell Myers, who lived in the area. The move also was motivated, Barks stated in another famous quip, by Temecula being too close to Disneyland and thus facilitating a growing torrent of drop-in visits by vacationing fans. In this period Barks made only one public appearance, at a comic book shop near Grants Pass.
In 1983, Another Rainbow took up the daunting task of collecting the entire Disney comic book oeuvre of Barks - over 500 stories in all - in the ten-set, thirty-volume Carl Barks Library. These oversized hardbound volumes reproduced Barks´ pages in pristine black and white line art, as close as possible to the way he would originally draw them, and included mountains of special features, articles, reminiscences, interviews, storyboards, critiques, and more than a few surprises. This monumental project was finally completed in mid-1990.
In 1985, a new division was founded, Gladstone Publishing, which took up the then-dormant Disney comic book license. Gladstone introduced a whole new generation of Disney comic book readers to the wondrous storytelling of such luminaries as Barks, Paul Murry, and Floyd Gottfredson, as well as presenting the first works of modern Disney comics masters Don Rosa and William Van Horn. Seven years after Gladstone's founding, the Carl Barks Library was revived as the Carl Barks Library in Color, a full-color, high-quality square-bound comic albums (including the first-ever Carl Barks trading cards).
From 1993 to 1998, Barks' career was managed by the "Carl Barks Studio" (Bill Grandey and Kathy Morby - They had sold Barks original art since 1979). This involved numerous art projects and activities, including a tour of 11 European countries in 1994, Iceland was the first foreign country he ever visited. Barks appeared at the first of many Disneyana conventions in 1993. Silkscreen prints of paintings along with high-end art objects (such as original watercolors, bronze figurines, and ceramic tiles) were produced based on designs by Barks.
During the summer of 1994 and until his death, Barks and his studio personally assigned Peter Reichelt, a museum exhibition producer from Mannheim, Germany, as his agent for Europe. Publisher "Edition 313" put out numerous lithographs. In 1997, tensions between Barks and the Studio eventually resulted in a lawsuit that was settled with an agreement that included the disbanding of the Studio. Barks never traveled to make another Disney appearance. He was represented by Ed Bergen, as he completed a final project. Gerry Tank and Jim Mitchell were to assist Barks in his final years.
During his Carl Barks Studio years, Barks created two more stories: the script for the final Uncle Scrooge story "Horsing Around with History", which was first published in Denmark in 1994 with Bill Van Horn art. The outlines for Barks' final Donald Duck story "Somewhere in Nowhere", were first published in 1997, in Italy, with art by Pat Block.
While Barks continued drifting through various jobs, he met Pearl Turner (1904–1987). In 1921 they married and had two daughters: Peggy Barks (1923–1963) and Dorothy Barks (1924–2014). In 1923 he returned to his paternal farm in Merrill in an attempt to return to the life of a farmer, but that ended soon. He and Pearl were separated in 1929 and divorced in 1930. After he moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Calgary-Eye-Opener had its offices he met Clara Balken, who in 1938 became his second wife.
As Barks blossomed creatively, his marriage to Clara deteriorated. This is the period referred to in Barks' famed quip that he could feel his creative juices flowing while the whiskey bottles hurled at him by a tipsy Clara flew by his head. They were divorced in 1951, his second and last divorce. In this period Barks dabbled in fine art, exhibiting paintings at local art shows. It was at one of these in 1952 he became acquainted with fellow exhibitor Margaret Wynnfred Williams (1917 - March 10, 1993), nicknamed Garé. She was an accomplished landscape artist, some of whose paintings are in the collection of the Leanin' Tree Museum of Western Art. During her lifetime, and to this day, note cards of her paintings are available from Leanin' Tree. Her nickname appears as a store name in the story "Christmas in Duckburg", featured on page 1 of Walt Disney's Christmas Parade #9, published in 1958. Soon after they met, she started assisting Barks, handling the solid blacks and lettering, both of which he had found onerous. They married in 1954 and the union lasted until her death.