cw@vaxwaller.UUCP (Carl Weidling) (08/29/84)
Carl Barks was the artist who drew the Donald Duck comic books in the 40s, 50s and part of the 60s. Now a company is releasing a Carl Barks Library in 10 boxed sets. The plan is to release two a year over 5 years. I just received my 2nd set, which inspired this item. It was supposed to arrive last Feb. The company says they have ironed out their production problems and such delays shouldn't happen in the future. I really like the sets I've got, but I should warn anyone interested that they are not in color. They are reproductions from the original black and white drawings as done by Barks. Actually one story was done in color in my 2nd set, and the covers of the magazines the stories appeared in are done in color on slick paper, many of these covers were drawn by Walt Kelly of Pogo fame. There is a lot of background material also included. The company is: Another Rainbow Publishing, Inc. Box 2206 Scottsdale, Arizona 85252 Tel (602) 949-0337 I don't believe I've ever seen anything in net.comics except stuff about super-hero types (I've been on the net for a couple of months) so perhaps I should say a few words about Barks' work. There is no sex or sexual romance but there is a lot of adventure. Donald has saved North America from enslavement by Azure Blue in action off of Labrador, and from an evil scientist in old Persia where an ancient King (King Nevvawaza of Itsa-Faka and adjoining suburbs) was resurrected. Uncle Scrooge has taken the Duck Clan many places, to King Solomon's mines, the seven cities of Cibola, to the Labyrynth of the Minotaur where they found the Philosopher's Stone, and up into the Himalayas to recover the crown of Genghis Khan from an abominable snowman. When the pressures of business became too much for Scrooge he went into the Himalayas to Tra-la-la to get away from it all. (the place is suspiciously like Shangri-la). Barks apparently yearned to do a realistic comic, using human characters, but he was type-cast as a "funny animal" artist. The result is that his comics are somewhere in between, and this gave him a vast territory pretty much to himself. He could exaggerate the foibles of his heroes, their greed, vanity, temper, but also their virtues, the way the Duck Clan stuck together despite their frailties, and he could send them on a wide variety of adventures, they could encounter the Phantom of Notre Duck right there in Duckburg as well as go on a gold rush to the Moon. I'll add one other little anecdote: Someone applied for a patent for a technique for salvaging ships by injecting styrofoam into them. He had used the method success- fully but the patent application was rejected because Donald had already used a similar technique (with ping-pong balls) in a story in which he was conned into salvaging a ship by Uncle Scrooge. Regards, Carl Weidling