Books about Carl Barks' surviving comic book art

Books by Matti Eronen

Earlier this year Matti Eronen published a new book about Carl Barks' surviving comic book art. It's the second book about this topic he has (self)published, and at the time I'm writing this both are available for sale on eBay directly from the author. The new book is also available on Amazon and Adlibris, or you can find contact information on www.illusi0n.com and I'm sure other arrangements can be made.

Carl Barks' Surviving Comic Book Art – 1994 – ISBN 952-90-5644-3

The first book was published back in 1994 just in time for Barks' European Tour. The main part of the book is a listing of the known pages of surviving comic book art and is the result of years of study in auction catalogs, magazines and with the help of other Barks' fans around the world. From the roughly 6700 pages of comic book production this books is listing about 200 pages of surviving artwork. Not a huge amount of art has surfaced after this book was written, so it's still relevant for anyone interested in the topic.
 

Example from inside the book, just text no illustrations

The book also has an index of all of Barks' comic book production and a listing of the paintings, but those parts are of less interest as they are better covered elsewhere.

A Study from Shadow: Carl Barks' Surviving Comic Book Covers – 2017 – ISBN 978-952-93-8893-6

The new book is just focusing on the surviving art of Barks' covers, including 11 newly discovered covers not mentioned in the previous book. Unlike the 1994 book that just had text, this book is illustrated with both the original artwork and the original published covers.

 

Example from inside the book, illustrated with both the original art and published cover

The most interesting part for me in this book was the analysis of how the editors had removed Barks' inked shadows in a lot of the covers. I have seen examples of this before, but had no idea it was this thoroughly done!
 

Comparison with the removed shadows highlighted

The back of the book also has an interesting article more general about the covers made by Carl Barks and for his stories.

Books collecting Barks’ non-Disney comics

As the title say this is not really about Disney comics, but it’s all about the work of Carl Barks. I recently got the new book The Unavailable Carl Barks (in color) by Kim Weston, and did a little comparison to earlier books collecting the comics.

Barks Bear Book

Published by Editions Enfin in 1979 this book collects all non-Disney comics Carl Barks drew, but not the three Droopy stories he wrote. All stories are black and white facsimile copies from the original comic prints.

Bruno Bjørn og venner/Bruno Björn och vänner
 

In 2010 Egmont published a book collecting Barks’ non-Disney comics in Norway and Sweden as part of a companion series to Egmont's Carl Barks collection. The book collects all stories except the Andy Panda one. Unlike the previous collection that uses facsimile copies, this book is using high quality black and white proofs with new coloring. The exception is one of the Droopy stories (the 1953 one) and the Porky Pig story where no high quality sources seems to exist. The Droopy story is a facsimile copy in this book too, while an attempt to clean up the black lines has been done to the Porky Pig story. In addition to the comic stories the Egmont book has a couple of great articles by Geoffrey Blum and Ulf Granberg. Unfortunaly this book is only translated to Norwegian and Swedish, it would have been great to have the same book with the original English dialogue too!

The Carl Barks Big Book of "Barney Bear"

Published by IDW under the YOE Books imprint in 2011, this book collects all 26 Barney Bear and Benny Burro stories. But does not include the three single Benny stories, or any other non-Disney stories by Carl Barks. But we do have some great articles in the beginning with photos and artwork. Like the Barks Bear Book, all stories in this book are also facsimile copies from the original comics, but this time in color – and in a lot better reproduction quality.

The Unavailable Carl Barks (in color) 

Published in July 2016 by Kim Weston using the self-publishing service CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. The book is aimed to be a companion book to the Barney Bear book from IDW/YOE Books, publishing the stories that are missing in that book plus some extra stuff. The book even has two Disney-stories. One is a restoration of Kite Weather to a 3-tier layout - the same version published in The Carl Barks Fan Club Pictorial, that I made a blogpost about earlier. The other one is a one-pager from Donald Duck #36, that Kim thinks must have been written by Carl Barks. The book is using a mix of sources, some are facsimile copies with various editing work, some are b/w proofs that are colored, and some are restored to a layout closer to how Barks originally drew the stories. As with Kite Weather, the restoration work on the non-Disney comic stories are done with "educated guesswork", but I'm sure a lot of time and effort is used to reconstruct the layot as cloesely as possible. Exactly how Barks’ original art looked like we’ll probably never know. In-between the comics we also have nerdy (but great!) comments and articles by Kim Weston. At the end of the book there’s also a 10 page cross reference index to "everything" in Barks’ non-Disney comics.

Some of the different restorations used in The Unavailable Carl Barks book are previously published in The Carl Barks Fan Club Pictorial. I think most are exactly the same, but the Happy Hound one was not colored in the Fan Club Pictorial. In the picure under you can also see a comparison of the layout used in Our Gang #11 (and the Egmont book) with the 3-tier restoration.

From the Egmont book (left), The Carl Barks Fan Club Pictorial vol.4 (middle) and The Unavailable Carl Barks (right)

 Here's another example of a layout restoration. This time the Barney Bear and Benny Burro story from Our Gang #18 restored from 6 pages to 8 pages but still 4-tier per page.

From IDW's Barney Bear book (left) and The Unavailable Carl Barks (right)

 To have a better overview of which stories are in what book, I made this table:

	Original publication
Andy Panda	New Funnies #76 (1943)
Benny "The Lonesome Burro"	Our Gang #8 (1943)
Happy Hound	Our Gang #9 (1944)
Benny "The Lonesome Burro"	Our Gang #9 (1944)
Benny "The Lonesome Burro"	Our Gang #10 (1944)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #11 (1944)
Happy Hound	Our Gang #11 (1944)
Porky Pig	Four Color/One shots #48 (1944)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #12 (1944)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #13 (1944)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #14 (1944)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #15 (1945)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #16 (1945)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #17 (1945)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #18 (1945)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #19 (1945)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #20 (1945)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #21 (1946)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #22 (1946)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #23 (1946)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #24 (1946)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #25 (1946)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #26 (1946)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #27 (1946)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #28 (1946)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #29 (1946)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #30 (1947)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #31 (1947)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #32 (1947)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #33 (1947)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #34 (1947)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #35 (1947)
Barney Bear and Benny Burro	Our Gang #36 (1947)
Droopy	Tom & Jerry Winter carniva #1 (1952)
Droopy	Tom & Jerry Winter carniva #2 (1953)
Droopy	Tom & Jerry Summer Fun #1 (1954)

"Kite Weather" in The Carl Barks Fan Club Pictorial volume 9

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…
 

"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)

"Kite Weather" by Carl Barks

Unknown British print of "Christmas on Bear Mountain"

Nothing is more irritating than to buy a second hand comic only to discover that some of the content is missing. Usually this is soon forgotten, but one case has been bugging me for years!

As part of a lot, I got this British Mickey Mouse comic published by World Distributors.

World Distributors #13

The front cover was taped on and the back cover was missing. And to compensate for the missing back cover two random page leaves from another comic was taped on (!)

Extra pages taped on at the end

I already got another copy of this comic, so at first it didn’t bother me that much. But curious as I always am, I tried to figure out where the extra pages came from, and that’s where the mystery started.

The stories are easy enough to identify. The Mickey one is The World Under the Sea from Dell Four Color/One Shots #194, and the one with the ducks is the Barks classic Christmas on Bear Mountain. The page numbers are 59, 60, 63, 64 and judging from what pages of the stories they are, both stories seems to be from the same comic; printed after each other. I tried to do a search in the I.N.D.U.C.K.S. database, but no comics are known to have both these stories printed. At least not in English.

While trying to solve the crime done to this comic, I noticed the word "jolly". That got me thinking "did Barks really write that?"  Comparing to the original he sure didn’t, and the dialogue is clearly changed to be more British.
 

British dialogue compared to the original

So, like the issue the pages are taped on to, the extra pages are probably from a British publication too and not from an American import. The dialogue change got me even more curious. Now it’s not enough to just know where the mysterious pages came from, I really want to read the British dialogued version of the story too!

I suspect it’s printed the late 50’s or in the 60’s. The fact that the comic has more than 64 pages got me to think about Giant Super Mag, another British series from this period.
 

Giant Super Mag

But based on size and paper type I think I have to rule out any unknown issues in that series. If anyone got an idea about what comic the orphan pages are from, please let me know!

***

Update Feb 25, 2016: The mystery is solved, check the comments! Apparently the pages are from a British book called The Walt Disney Treasure Book, published by Odhams Press.

The lettering in this book was partly used to restore "Christmas on Bear Mountain" for Fantagraphics’ Carl Barks collection, resulting in one British word being included by accident.
 

The original Dell Four Color print to the left, Fantagraphics' restoration to the right

Grandpa Beagle

Uncle Scrooge #6 (legacy #410) from IDW

Uncle Scrooge #6 (legacy #410) from IDW features "The Bigger Operator" drawn by Marco Rota. Uncle Scrooge gets worried when the most cunning con man in the world moves to Duckburg. But who can outsmart who? It's a fun story, if you haven't got it — go get it! :)

But I’m a bit surprised Scrooge survived this story, and not because of the architect. Louie should have looked up "dollar-hydrogen mix" in the Woodchuck’s Guidebook before trying to poison Scrooge with a mix of dollars and carbon trioxide. Looking at the chemical formula he obviously got the wrong tank!

I’m not sure what the original text say, but I have this story in a German "Lustiges Taschenbuch". There he is given proper treatment with gold dioxide according to the formula.

Probably the same mix as in "Up Against the Wall" where he gets "gold oxygen" (translated from the Norwegian print).

***

But never mind all that. What I’m going to talk about in this blogpost is Grandpa Beagle …or wait, did IDW just call him Blackheart Beagle in "The Bigger Operator"?



So Don Rosa is right, they really are the same person? I guess we’ll have to take a look at this from the beginning…

Grandpa Beagle in Carl Barks’ stories

We first meet Grandpa Beagle in the Carl Barks story "The Money Well". Here he is a bearded older guy, but otherwise he looks the same as the rest of the Beagle Boys, with the same clothes and a number tag (186-802)

That’s the only story Barks drew with Grandpa Beagle, at least looking like that and called "grandpa". We do see him in "Dime and Dime Again", a story based on a plot by Carl Barks. But the plot that can be read in Uncle Scrooge Adventures #42 does not mention Grandpa Beagle specifically, so he was probably added to the story by Geoffrey Blum.

From "Dime and Dime Again" (D/D 2001-004), script by Geoffrey Blum, art by Carlos Mota

In "The Fantastic River Race" we get to see a character called Blackheart Beagle in a memory from Scrooges youth. There’s no information in the story that directly tells us that this is the grandfather of today’s Beagle Boys. But if we assume Scrooge is about the same age as the "brawling sons", and use the fact that the steam boats engineer is Gyro’s grandfather; yes, Blackheart Beagle might be Grandpa Beagle, or at least one of the Beagle Boys’ grandfathers.

Grandpa Beagle in Don Rosa’s stories

In "The Master Of The Mississippi", Don Rosa tell the story about how Blackheart Beagle got to own the riverboat seen in "The Fantastic River Race". We also get to know why they started wearing masks and at the end we even see Blackheart Beagle use the term "Beagle Boys".

In "The Invader Of Fort Duckburg" we see Blackheart Beagle making a reference to what happened in "The Master Of The Mississippi", so we know for sure that this is the same character. But his appearance has changed. Now he has grown a beard and started wearing the prison clothes with the same number as seen in the Barks story with Grandpa Beagle. But he kept his captain hat.

Jumping further into the future, in "The Richest Duck in the World" Blackheart Beagle have grown older looking even more like Barks’ Grandpa Beagle. He is also introducing his grandsons.

We see him again in "A Little Something Special"

The scan above is from the first American print. But when Don Rosa’s collected works were published in Europe, all stories underwent a color revision with input from Don Rosa. Blackheart Beagle in his Grandpa Beagle look was then colored in all blue clothes, making him even more distinct from the other Beagle Boys (and all other Grandpa Beagles)

If anyone still don’t get the riverboat captain Blackheart Beagle and Grandpa Beagle connection, Don Rosa got it all explained one last time in "The Beagle Boys vs. The Money Bin". Here we can see all three generations of Beagles at the same time.

Examples of others using Grandpa Beagle

During Western’s run of Disney comics we can see other artists using the grandpa with different looks, both with a mustache and with full beard. But they are never called by a name other than "grandpa", "gramps" etc.

From "Gramp's Great Gift" (W BB   38-04), drawn by Bob Gregory

From "The Jillion-Dollar Diamond" (W US   77-01), drawn by Tony Strobl

From "Sentimental Journey" (W BB    3-03), drawn by Tony Strobl

In Brazilian stories, the grandpa usually has the chin strip and mustache look as the Strobl-story above.

From "Um Assalto Muito Louco..." (B 850094), drawn by Euclides K. Miyaura

We can see the same in this strange team-up in an "S-coded" story (American stories for the international market)

From "Crime Convention" (S 68006), drawn by Pete Alvarado

Grandpa Beagle is used in a ton of Italian stories, thus in several variants too. But the most common look is with a beard and a smoke pipe.

From "Zio Paperone e la montagna parlante" (I TL  695-A), drawn by Romano Scarpa

Before IDW’s Uncle Scrooge #6 I think we have seen only one single American print with the Italian grandpa. You can find that story in Gemstone's Donald Duck Adventure #19.

From "The Black Sheep" (I TL 2444-3), drawn by Silvia Ziche

Other than the Don Rosa stories, there are not that many Egmont stories with Grandpa Beagle. But the ones that exist use a character that looks kind of a mix between the original Barks grandpa and the Italian one.

From "Glassy-Eyed" (D 90272), drawn by José Colomer Fonts

From "Up Against The Wall" (D 90321), drawn by Tino Santanach Hernandez

To summarize; we’ve seen a lot of different looking grandpas. And looking at the examples in this blogpost they also have different number tags. But most of them are just called "grandpa". The only times we have seen a character named Blackheart Beagle is in one Carl Barks story and in all Don Rosa stories. But all Rosa stories have some kind of reference telling that this grandpa really is the riverboat captain. Any other random grandpas have never been named, at least not in any English translations.  So when IDW does this in "The Bigger Operator", that’s a first as far as I know.

Update from comments below

It was noted in a comment that Don Rosa had an earlier mention of Blackheart Beagle in Cash Flow, where the Beagle Boys tell us they are his grandsons.

From "Cash Flow" (AR 106), by Don Rosa

When checking up on "Dime and Dime Again" for this blog, I overlooked the fact that Grandpa Beagle actually is called Blackheart at the end of that story too. Uncle Scrooge first calls him Sherman, but that is a reference to earlier in the story where he pretended to be Sherman, the jewellers brother-in-law. So that’s not his real name, it’s just the rest of the Beagle Boys being stupid.

From "Dime and Dime Again" (D/D 2001-004), script by Geoffrey Blum, art by Carlos Mota

It seems IDW is not the only publisher that is starting using the name Blackheart Beagle for the Italian-looking Grandpa Beagle. In Nonna Papera e Nonno Bassotto la strana coppia, a story printed in the Italian Topolino (the same week as IDW printed "The Bigger Operator"), he tells Grandma Duck his name. Translated: "Bah! A long time ago I was also known as Captain Blackheart Beagle, but now everyone calls me grandpa."

From "Nonna Papera e Nonno Bassotto la strana coppia" (I TL 3123-2), script by Gaja Arrighini, art by Alessandro Perina