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| The Carl Barks Fan Club Pictorial vol.9 |
I got The Carl Barks Fan Club Pictorial vol.9 in the mail today. For those unfamiliar with this publication it's a fanzine (I think I would call it that) mainly about Carl Barks' work, but with some other Disney-related articles too. It’s published by Event Horizon Press for the Carl Barks Fan Club, but you don’t need to be a member of the fan club to get these. They are published using Amazon’s CreateSpace self-publishing service, and are pretty easy to get not just on Amazon but from various online book sellers. Also, I believe this is a print on demand service, so there’s no problem getting back issues.
Even if I’d call this a fanzine; the editing, reproduction quality of scanned items and printing is better than any other fanzine I’ve seen! So it’s really a professional made product you’ll get. In addition to articles, scanned letters and other rarities we’ve also got a fair deal of comics printed in this series. Not just Disney ducks but also some of Barks’ non-Disney work have been reprinted. My favorite issue so far is volume 3 I think, where we got scans of the original script for The Candy Kid side by side with the comic pages. That was really fun to read, even if Carl Barks’ handwriting is not always that easy to decipher…
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| "The Candy Kid" (script and comic) from The Carl Barks Fan Club Pictorial vol.3 |
What I find most interesting in vol.9 is Kim Weston’s new take on restoring Kite Weather to a 3-tier format. That’s the format Carl Barks originally drew the story, but due to paper restrictions and less pages in each comic the story was edited to a 4-tier format for Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #42. Gladstone already did a restoration to the 3-tier format and that’s the most common version of the story being reprinted I believe. But now we have another version by Kim Weston that he thinks is closer to how the story originally looked. Exactly how the original art looked, we’ll probably never know. It’s going to be interesting to see how Fantagraphics will reprint this story in their collection.
The image under is a comparison with the Western layout to the left, Gladsone’s restoration in the middle and Kim Weston’s restoration to the right. (click on the image to get it a bit larger)
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| "Kite Weather" by Carl Barks |
Why does Weston think his new mounted version of "Kite Weather" is more accurate than Gladstone's?
ReplyDeleteIn an accompanying article he points out two main problems with the Gladstone remount; the lettering is too large and much of Barks' art have been cut.
ReplyDeleteIf we compare the size of the lettering in the 4-tier version of "Kite Weather" to earlier 3-tier stories they are about the same size. So it seems the lettering remained the same size while the art has been shrunken in the 4-tier version. Gladstone didn't do anything about this, so both the art and the lettering were blown up. One problem with keeping the lettering+speech balloons the same size, but enlarging the rest is that you'll get empty space and actually have to add new art yourself. You can see Weston had to do that in ex. panel 4 on the first page (part of the window is redrawn). And in my opinion none of the two 3-tier remounts got the roof (i.e. lack of roof) right in panel 3.
Gladstone also cut a lot of art compared to the 4-tier version, but some of this was probably added in the first place. By studying each panel closely Weston think he did a better remount by keeping most of Barks' art and at the same time cutting what looks like added art. Some of this will of course be purely guesswork, but as a hardcore Barks fan I have no doubt Weston used a lot more time than Gladstone analyzing every detail :)
Hex:
ReplyDeleteYou've sold me! I'm gonna fet CBFCP#9 on amazon right now!
Get not fet
DeleteVolume 9 also has an article by a chemist about his history with the story "The Mad Chemist". I thought it was fun and interesting to read, but I guess it’s mostly for people having a special interest in everything related to Carl Barks. The article is a backstory about an editorial page in WDCS #301, so it would have been nice to actually have a scan of that page included too. That’s my little complaint about volume 9.
ReplyDelete