Fantagraphics has been publishing a complete multi-volume set of of what is widely regarded as one of the best runs in comic book history: cartoonist Carl Barks's 1942-1966 work on Donald Duck comics for Western Publishing. The volumes are not published in chronological order; Volumes 4-28 have already been published, and the latest book published, Mystery of the Swamp, is Volume 3 in the collection, containing comics from very early in Barks's run, 1945 and 1946.
I'm told by Fantagraphics that the next published volumes will be Volume 2 (Frozen Gold) and Volume 1, publishing Barks's very earliest work from 1942-1945, then the program will continue into the 1960s with Volume 29.
Comics writer Matthias Wivel explains in the volume's extensive and informative Story Notes that the title story is an example of Barks's early experimentation with long form comics and adventure stories. Donald and his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie explore the Everglades and run into a lost tribe of mischievous fantasy creatures, Gneezles. It has the humorous yet galloping adventure, gorgeous landscape backgrounds, and perfectly rendered slapstick action that would become Barks trademarks.
Animation historian Thad Komorowski notes that the comic "The Tramp Steamer" is a milestone in Barks's development as a comic book artist.
Carl Barks's ten-pagers in 1943 and 1944 still have remnants of Barks's work as a Disney [animation] storyboard artist in staging, composition, and characterization. In "The Tramp Steamer," however, he makes a breakthrough. Barks creates, as historian Michael Barrier writes in Funny Books (University of California Press, 2015), 'a comic-book adventure, like none before it. There are no echoes of film, no suggestion that Barks's panels are awaiting conversion into a more appropriate medium.' Barks is finally thinking in terms of what's good for a comic book, rather than an animated cartoon.
I especially enjoyed Barks's brilliant action sequences, which are complex but rendered with deceptive simplicity and great humor.
—
And as always, Fantagraphics does a great job with the meticulously faithful restoration, with tasteful coloring and crisp lines. With one story, "The Firebug," Barks scholar Kim Weston notes that Barks's originally drawn ending, with Donald in jail, had been replaced by his editor at the time with a panel showing that the entire episode had been a dream. In his volume, Fantagraphics replaced this dream ending with panels subsequently created by writer Geoffrey Blum and artist Daan Jippes to recreate the ending that Barks intended, with Donald imprisoned.
But in the Restoration Notes, Fantagraphics also presents the ending as readers first saw it in 1946.
One other note: These comics were ostensibly for children, although the brilliance with which they were written and drawn would make them enjoyable for any age. But these stories might strike children of today's world as jarring, and not at all like the humorous stories they are used to: almost all the comics have to do with employment loss, money troubles, or scarcity of food. And in many of them, the story is driven by Donald threatening to beat his nephews with a switch or chasing them down to do so.
But these comics are rightly considered some of the best ever made. You'd be hard-pressed to find a cartoonist of any genre today who doesn't regard the Carl Barks Donald Duck comics as masterpieces.
