Cartoonist Carl Barks's work on Donald Duck comic books for Western Publishing from the 1940s to 1960s is almost unanimously considered one of the best comic book runs in the medium's entire history. Fantagraphics Books has been compiling his complete Duck oeuvre in a multi-volume set of gorgeous hardcovers, released every few months, but out of chronological order. This week, after publishing 27 volumes, they are finally publishing the set's chronological Volume 1: the very first comic book work by Carl Barks, from 1942 and 1943, titled Donald Duck: "Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold.
It's a fascinating look at Barks's development as an artist and a writer, starting with collaborations, and very quickly being trusted by Western to write and draw his own stories. As always, Fantagraphics does a fantastic job of providing context and analysis in text provided helpfully but unobtrusively in the back of the book.
The first comic book story Barks did was "Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold." Barks at the time was employed as a gag man by Disney Studios and raised his hand when Western Publishing (aka Whitman, aka K.K.) was looking for studio employees to moonlight as comic book creators. Western chose an abandoned Disney Studios cartoon script that would have featured Donald, Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Pluto, had it re-written to feature Donald and his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and gave the drawing chores to Barks and his Disney Studios colleague Jack Hannah.
Barks and Hannah went through the 64 pages of the script and chose which 32 pages each wanted to draw. This gives a great insight into the different approaches each artist brought. And Barks's facility with storytelling, characterization, and action through illustration is already evident.
In Barks's next comic book assignment as artist, "Donald's Victory Garden," published in 1943, he was given some latitude to make changes to the script, and impressed Western enough to be given full writer/artist responsibilities on his next story, "The Rabbit's Foot." By this time he had already quit the Disney animation studio, "unhappy at the emerging wartime working conditions at Disney, and bothered by ongoing sinus problems caused by the studio's air conditioning" (Wikipedia).
From Maggie Thompson's essay in the book, "Comics Readers Find Comic Book Gold," Barks is quoted as saying about his decision to leave Disney animation:
"I was going to raise chickens and do anything that I could down here in San Jacinto, where the air was kind to my sinuses, so I came down there, and right away I found out that Whitman was pretty anxious to have a ten-page Donald Duck story, so I submitted some. I had done a little bit for them in that 'Pirate Gold' story in the summer of 1942, while I was still working in the Studio. I happened to be in the Duck unit — and they needed somebody who was used to drawing the Ducks, and the animators were too busy, so it just fell on a storyman."
And Barks's storied comic book career was off and running.
The volume includes these and subsequent stories, and Barks's storytelling and comedic themes and style emerge quickly.
Only a year after starting in comic books and basically illustrating storyboards from an unfilmed animation project, Barks was using the comic book medium to full effect.
The volume is also so thorough, it includes some ancillary Barks Disney comics work: A 1942 comic book story, "Pluto Saves the Ship," drawn by Bruce Bushman, but co-written by Barks, Hannah, and Nick George; and 1939 Donald Duck newspaper comic strips drawn by Al Taliaferro and scripted by Bob Karp, plotted by Barks.
As always with the Fantagraphics's Complete Carl Barks Library, this volume features the artwork beautifully reproduced and tastefully colored, with tons of incisive commentary and extra art, such as comic book covers, publicity artwork, even three pages that Barks drew in 1943 but then re-inked 1965 for a reprint.
These books are so great, both for people interested in seeing comic book history being made, and for people (including kids, of course!) who just want to read exciting, funny, wonderfully drawn stories created by a true master of the craft.
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By the way, Fantagraphics is having a "We've Been Robbed" 30%-off sale through August 25, because its former distributor, Diamond Comics Distributors, declared bankruptcy and JP Morgan Chase Bank, a secured debtor of Diamond, is trying to seize all of Fantagraphics's book inventory held by Diamond.
