Carl Barks library by Another Rainbow

[rsjr]

why was the decision made to print theses in black and white?

Did he ever color his own issues? who colored his work? who colored don rosa work as well?

[RobbK1]

Dec 26, 2019 21:21:33 GMT rsjr said:

why was the decision made to print theses in black and white?

Did he ever color his own issues? who colored his work? who colored don rosa work as well?

I would guess that Another Rainbow had no idea how many people would buy the set.  And colour printing costs in USA have always been high compared to most other countries.  Comic book - related sales in USA for well-made hardbound series were relatively unknown at that time.  So they probably didn't want to risk the chance of finding out that they couldn't sell enough to even recapture their costs in such a situation.  I think they didn't realise how many European people would want the Barks set.  Carl Barks never coloured his own regular comic book issues, nor did he have any affect on how they were coloured.  Western Publishing had his comic books coloured by printers.  I would guess that they had one of their own employees set the colour schemes to a general format, which was then always followed by the printers, until Western came to them with any requested general changes, such as a change to different colours for regular characters' clothing.  I have no idea who decided to change the general colour of grass from yellow-green to plain yellow in the mid 1950s (e.g. whether Disney, Western, or the printer made that decision). 

[deb]

According to ads for the Barks Library, the stories were printed in black and white to showcase Barks’ artwork without the often sloppy, out of register colors used in newsstand comic books in Barks’ day, that would sometimes obscure his line work.

[Mesterius]

Dec 28, 2019 2:51:54 GMT deb said:

According to ads for the Barks Library, the stories were printed in black and white to showcase Barks’ artwork without the often sloppy, out of register colors used in newsstand comic books in Barks’ day, that would sometimes obscure his line work.

Of course, and that's a great reason. But realistically, you gotta wonder if Rob might not be onto something with his assessment that doing high-quality (i.e. BETTER) colors would also have been very costly. (And speaking of the sales: in an interview with Geoffrey Blum from 1991, I read that AR's Barks Library did NOT sell quite as much as they had initially hoped for. The first few sets sold well enough to continue, but later sets were not printed in the same quantities.)

Barks' work was always intended for color, so ideally, well-done coloring seems to me the best way to reprint his work. Given the choices in Fantagraphics' series, it seems that Gladstone's Carl Barks Library in Color albums from the 90s will be the nicest-looking color edition of his work in English for a long time to come.

[deb]

Just about any long-running reprint series has to deal with diminishing returns, especially when you’ve gotten past the most popular material, so I’m not surprised. Printing the books in black-and-White could very well have been a cost-cutting measure, but is it so difficult to believe that the editors might have appreciated Barks’ black and white line work so much that they wanted to give others a chance to see it that way? For a collector-oriented work such as the original Barks Library, it makes sense to me. The more general audience friendly publications like the comic albums and Fantagraphics’ Barks Library are in color to appeal to a wider audience, but the Another Rainbow books are very academic in nature, and perhaps it was thought that studying Barks’ work and how he constructed the drawings was easier in black and white.

[rodsterrific]

For this format, I still maintain that black and white was the way to go. Barks' art is much easier to study this way. For all of the faults, I still consider the Another Rainbow Barks library to be the best presentation of his work in English.

[Monkey_Feyerabend]

So there is a black and white edition of all stories by Barks?
That's interesting. I suppose it was not digitalised though. It would be nice to have some stories digitally in b/w, to have fun colouring them.

[rodsterrific]

Jan 14, 2020 23:40:02 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

So there is a black and white edition of all stories by Barks?
That's interesting. I suppose it was not digitalised though. It would be nice to have some stories digitally in b/w, to have fun colouring them.

Yes indeed.

CBL

[rsjr]

Hi guys,

Happy new years:)

I have the full run of the Carl Barks library in color but wanted to know if there are stories missing it thay are in the AR collections or the fanatagraphics collections? if yes which volumes would I need to pick up to complete my Barks stories?

Thanks

[bubbles]

This collections also run up against an era of the Russ Cochran boxsets, which did EC Comics also in black and white, it was all about showcasing the art. I sometimes miss the color, but I have the full set of these and they're amazing. The quality of the paper and binding is great. Not to mention the essays included in each book are fantastic, same goes for the essays/quality of the Another Rainbow Little Lulu volumes. Lots of great insight.

[hex]

Jan 2, 2023 19:14:39 GMT rsjr said:

I have the full run of the Carl Barks library in color but wanted to know if there are stories missing it thay are in the AR collections or the fanatagraphics collections? if yes which volumes would I need to pick up to complete my Barks stories?

I don't have a list, and I guess people have different definitions on what to include in a complete Carl Barks collection.

But there are several Daisy Duck's Diary stories not printed in the CBLIC series. Ex.:

The Dainty Daredevil

Ring Leader Roundup

Not all are printed by Fantagraphics yet, but they are collected in one of the AR books in the Donald Duck Family box.

If you want to include stories written by Carl Barks, but not drawn there are a lot missing. Some are partly shown in the AR collection, like Donald Duck - Officer For A Day, and we have newish Egmont produced stores based on ideas by Barks like Donald Duck - Trouble with Double , and a tennis match gag not credited to Barks until some years ago but now included in the Fantagraphics collection. Just to name a few.

And there are Brazilian and Japanese remake stories (written by Barks) that are not printed in English at all.

Also the last years artwork cut from stories drawn by Carl Barks has been found, that are missing in old collections. One was included in the Fantagraphics collection, another discovered a bit too late to be included, but I think it is in the new Diamond Jubilee Collection from Fantagraphics.

My advice for finding stories you are missing is to add your collection in the inducks database and then do a search for stories by Barks not in your collection. Then it's up to you to decide if they are something you want or not

[Mesterius]

Jan 17, 2023 23:16:22 GMT bubbles said:

This collections also run up against an era of the Russ Cochran boxsets, which did EC Comics also in black and white, it was all about showcasing the art. I sometimes miss the color, but I have the full set of these and they're amazing. The quality of the paper and binding is great. Not to mention the essays included in each book are fantastic, same goes for the essays/quality of the Another Rainbow Little Lulu volumes. Lots of great insight.

Unfortunately, though - as I learned a while back - all the 1940s stories in Another Rainbow's Little Lulu library are re-traced versions from the 1980s. So you aren't getting the original artwork by Irving Tripp in those books. Western had thrown out the printing proofs for their early Little Lulu comics at some point before AR's library, so AR had them all traced to be able to print them. These tracings were also used in Dark Horse's black-and-white reprint books of the 2000s. The new Drawn & Quarterly book series which started in 2019 is the first time the 1940s Little Lulu material has been reprinted with Tripp's original art, as they use scanned facsimiles of the printed comics. (On the downside, a few stories have been dropped because they show Lulu and her friends playing indians.)

[rodsterrific]

Jan 18, 2023 6:41:21 GMT Mesterius said:

Jan 17, 2023 23:16:22 GMT bubbles said:

This collections also run up against an era of the Russ Cochran boxsets, which did EC Comics also in black and white, it was all about showcasing the art. I sometimes miss the color, but I have the full set of these and they're amazing. The quality of the paper and binding is great. Not to mention the essays included in each book are fantastic, same goes for the essays/quality of the Another Rainbow Little Lulu volumes. Lots of great insight.

Unfortunately, though - as I learned a while back - all the 1940s stories in Another Rainbow's Little Lulu library are re-traced versions from the 1980s. So you aren't getting the original artwork by Irving Tripp in those books. Western had thrown out the printing proofs for their early Little Lulu comics at some point before AR's library, so AR had them all traced to be able to print them. These tracings were also used in Dark Horse's black-and-white reprint books of the 2000s. The new Drawn & Quarterly book series which started in 2019 is the first time the 1940s Little Lulu material has been reprinted with Tripp's original art, as they use scanned facsimiles of the printed comics. (On the downside, a few stories have been dropped because they show Lulu and her friends playing indians.)

The retraced Lulu material appears exclusively in sets 1 and 2.  The other four are just fine, although you are correct that the first two volumes comprise the 1940's material.  I'm not entirely certain that ALL of set 2 is retraced.  Alas, the D&Q series has ended prematurely after 3 volumes.

[twdisneyman]

Jan 2, 2023 19:14:39 GMT rsjr said:

Hi guys,

Happy new years:)

I have the full run of the Carl Barks library in color but wanted to know if there are stories missing it thay are in the AR collections or the fanatagraphics collections? if yes which volumes would I need to pick up to complete my Barks stories?

Thanks

Grandma Duck stories. All of the Junior Woodchuck stories.

[twdisneyman]

Feb 17, 2023 14:50:13 GMT rodsterrific said:

Jan 18, 2023 6:41:21 GMT Mesterius said:

The retraced Lulu material appears exclusively in sets 1 and 2.  The other four are just fine, although you are correct that the first two volumes comprise the 1940's material.  I'm not entirely certain that ALL of set 2 is retraced.  Alas, the D&Q series has ended prematurely after 3 volumes.

Oh no!  Where did you hear about it ending?