From my understanding, the Carl Barks books are really trying to reach a more general readership than the Rosa and Gottfredson books, which are aimed more at collectors. The latter two series started at the chronological beginning and ran until the end, where with the Carl Barks books, they’re skipping around and presenting the cover story out of order to get the most popular material out first.
Ah, there you are, Thadwell! We were wondering — since the release of Uncle Scrooge #41 once again included a discrepancy between the title-page title and the one given in the table of contents — do you know whether the title supposed to be The Time Vortex, or The Vortex of Time?
I don't know. Neither were the title in my script.
I have to agree with what Mesterius said about the general quality of the Fantagraphics' Carl Barks Library. I agree that it is not near as good as the Gottfredson ones or the Rosa ones. I have equal exposure to all three series. I have read two volumes of the Carl Barks Library, two volumes of the Don Rosa Library, and two volumes of the Floyd Gottfredson Library, and, at least for me, the experience was much better with the latter two. That's not to say I find the Barks ones bad, I just didn't enjoy the reading experience quite as much. That's also not to say that I think Barks is inferior to Rosa or Gottfredson or that Barks' stories just aren't good. It really comes down to the essays, extra material, and the way the book is made.
In the ones from the Rosa Library, I sort of feel like I'm talking to a fellow fan and reading his incredible fanfiction. It's fun to read the notes and comments by Rosa himself, as he tells us all about how he made the story and all the little references in there. It's fun, and it really feels like I'm just chilling with this fellow Duck-fan, reading fanfiction, talking about how awesome history and ducks are.
When reading the Gottfredson Library, there's really a feeling that I would maybe describe as magical, even if that does a sound a little cheesy. I feel like I'm looking back at history in a really enjoyable way. In the volumes I own, one of the first pages is a panel from one of the comics in the library that is made bigger and takes up about the whole page, if I remember correctly. I can't remember if it's the next page after that or a couple pages later, but eventually there is the big Mickey Mouse silhouette, which really just adds to the sort of feeling that I'm reading something big, something important. This is eventually followed by very well-written essays that prepare me for what I'm about experience. At the end, there's all kinds of fun supplemental material. Really, it's a fun experience overall.
The Barks Library is, overall, good and fun. The stories are great. Barks was a great writer and artist. I like it quite a bit and would recommend it. Still, there's just not as strong of an appeal outside of the stories as there is for the Gottfredson Library and Rosa Library. The essays and notes are not as well-written or entertaining. There's not quite the feeling of importance that I found in the Gottfredson Library or the feeling of chatting with someone about their stories as the Rosa Library. It's good, it's just not as well-made or as enjoyable of an experience as the other two.
I generally agree with you on the feeling that I have when handling the three libraries. But I am not sure that they could have done much more for the Barks library.
The peculiarity of Rosa's library is that Rosa himself provides us with a detailed explanation of the process of creation of each story, with full disclosure of the nerdness involved in such a process. And the man does it with his own peculiar charming prose. (For a comparison, see Milton's essays at the end of volume 3 of Disney Masters on the creation of the clock story with Jippes: extremely interesting and detailed, but not as funny as Rosa's explanations of his stories.) You could not have that in Barks's library even if Barks was here alive to comment his own stories.
Gottfredson's library is just amazing, with a quantity and quality of contents that surprises me. But keep in mind that it was the one occasion that Ramapith had to present a lot of material and historic information about a comics creator whose working environment and artistic context is not much known (not even in Italy, where his stories have been reprinted every seven-eight years for all over the 20th and 21th centuries). In other words, Gottfredson's library also want to tell the story of how the world influenced Gottfredson's career and vice versa how Gottfredson's Mickey influenced the world. For Barks that feels less necessary, since that story has been told even too much in the last fifty years! So a pure austere library, strictly focusing on Barks's material and with no much reference to the impact of Barks's work on the world, makes quite sense. By the way, in pushing on the "impact on the world" side, Gottfredson's library becomes not immune to criticisms. In particular, the choice of stories representing "Gottfredson's heirs" provides the reader with a bit deformed view, disproportionately presenting Egmont's authors like Van Horn, Erickson, Markstein, Ferioli - who are in my opinion not much heirs of Gottfredson's tradition. While the main followers along the the line of Gott-Walsh, the Italians, are almost forgotten, with the exception of Scarpa and Casty. Where are Cavazzano, Marconi, De Vita, Faraci, Mezzavilla? In what universe these people come after Noel Van Horn when it comes to Gott's heirs? Why for instance in the second volume there is space for a lame sequel to bargain castle from an una tantum contributer and not the sequel to Crazy Crime Wave by Cavazzano and Faraci, two comics creators who dedicated a life to study Gottfredson's stories and reason about how to update respectively his graphic and narrative style in modern age? And did we need to have Barks's not so interesting story featuring Mickey in volume 6? It's the only little fault that I find to a series that I have already praised a lot in the past and will never stop praising. I am just telling this to give an idea of what you risk when you "open" too much the contents of the library to external contributions, opinions, reports of influences, and so on. With Barks's it could have been even more controversial. Surely, they could have given space to more written contributions by Disney comics creators in the library: in thirty-and-more volumes there was space to have introductions by Jippes, Cavazzano, Chendi, Milton, Artibani, Korhonen, or any other with something interesting to say. Or even better, it would have been very cool and refreshing if they would have continued to have "guest forwards" by important people influenced by Barks inside or outside the comics world, along the line of George Lucas in the first volume. Yet, someone could have complained that this deserved to have space more than that and so on.
From my understanding, the Carl Barks books are really trying to reach a more general readership than the Rosa and Gottfredson books, which are aimed more at collectors. The latter two series started at the chronological beginning and ran until the end, where with the Carl Barks books, they’re skipping around and presenting the cover story out of order to get the most popular material out first.
I guess this kind of makes sense, though if the Barks books really are trying to appeal to more people than the other two mentioned, then why would they use the color schemes they did? Their choice of color schemes is something that would, at least in my mind, seem more appealing to collectors who want to see it like it was originally published as opposed to a "general readership." I'm not saying that they failed at reaching people outside of collectors. The "Lost in the Andes" volume was actually one of the first Disney comic books I read when I was first getting into Disney comics, and I enjoyed it. It's just that the color schemes and supposed attempt don't really match up, at least in my opinion. I guess it made sense to those leading the effort.
No matter what I say or do, know that Jesus loves you.
Thank you! This is a lot of great information, and I really appreciate it. I will look into ordering some of these for starters. Ya, Calvin and Hobbes are the best. My father owned all the book collections and I loved them growing up. Maybe I never got into any other comics because everything else in the newspaper paled compared to the brilliance of the C&H books. But I've recently started discovering Pogo and Bloom County, and those are great too. Looking forward to checking out some of these Disney character comics. If the animated adaptations are anything to go by, they will be fun
Since you like Calvin and Hobbes, be sure to find something that contains Silvia Ziche's art - she's influenced by Watterson among others, and the most "cartoonish" of almost all current Disney artists.
Do anyone have any insights in the pricing of the IDW comic books? They seem awfully expensive. Unlike other American publishers they have no writers/artists to pay, so what is it? Licensing costs? Does Disney demand a large share? Small circulation?
Do anyone have any insights in the pricing of the IDW comic books? They seem awfully expensive. Unlike other American publishers they have no writers/artists to pay, so what is it? Licensing costs? Does Disney demand a large share? Small circulation?
Yes, I too think that all American single-issue comicbooks are ludicrously overpriced, but this can be easily explained by exactly the last thing you mentioned, small circulation.
... It also featured a single storyboard page of my 1990 partial recreation (or attempt to re-create) his shelved 1952 story (which he told me would have been titled "Queen of The Apple Festival" - had it been printed during the time WDC&S had printed titles). It was based on everything Carl told me about that story, in our discussions about it. I had significantly more details to use in recreating the story than Michael Barrier's description of what Barks told him. So my 10-page story was more true to Barks' original story than Geoff Blum's 14-pager that added Uncle Scrooge and Magica DeSpell, and drastically changed the storyline...
Have you tried again go get it published? As an old Barks fan and completist I would really like to see this story as close as possible to Barks' original script and for example drawn by Daan Jippes or Pat Block.
The Swedish editors of Carl Barks Ankeborg are real Barks fans, so maybe they would like to publish the story.
... It also featured a single storyboard page of my 1990 partial recreation (or attempt to re-create) his shelved 1952 story (which he told me would have been titled "Queen of The Apple Festival" - had it been printed during the time WDC&S had printed titles). It was based on everything Carl told me about that story, in our discussions about it. I had significantly more details to use in recreating the story than Michael Barrier's description of what Barks told him. So my 10-page story was more true to Barks' original story than Geoff Blum's 14-pager that added Uncle Scrooge and Magica DeSpell, and drastically changed the storyline...
Have you tried again go get it published? As an old Barks fan and completist I would really like to see this story as close as possible to Barks' original script and for example drawn by Daan Jippes or Pat Block.
The Swedish editors of Carl Barks Ankeborg are real Barks fans, so maybe they would like to publish the story.
I submitted mine together with Daan Jippes, first to VNU/Geillustrerde Pers (Dutch Disney Comics) and then to Egmont. But they both rejected it, because Geoff Blum was working on finishing several Barks unpublished, unfinished works. I doubt that Daan would now want to draw a complete 10-page story, unless it is for the kind of pay from a commercial publisher. Can "Carl Barks Ankeborg" pay that kind of money? Or is it more of a "Fanzine"?
Have you tried again go get it published? As an old Barks fan and completist I would really like to see this story as close as possible to Barks' original script and for example drawn by Daan Jippes or Pat Block.
The Swedish editors of Carl Barks Ankeborg are real Barks fans, so maybe they would like to publish the story.
I submitted mine together with Daan Jippes, first to VNU/Geillustrerde Pers (Dutch Disney Comics) and then to Egmont. But they both rejected it, because Geoff Blum was working on finishing several Barks unpublished, unfinished works. I doubt that Daan would now want to draw a complete 10-page story, unless it is for the kind of pay from a commercial publisher. Can "Carl Barks Ankeborg" pay that kind of money? Or is it more of a "Fanzine"?
I think Carl Barks Ankeborg is published by Egmont.
I submitted mine together with Daan Jippes, first to VNU/Geillustrerde Pers (Dutch Disney Comics) and then to Egmont. But they both rejected it, because Geoff Blum was working on finishing several Barks unpublished, unfinished works. I doubt that Daan would now want to draw a complete 10-page story, unless it is for the kind of pay from a commercial publisher. Can "Carl Barks Ankeborg" pay that kind of money? Or is it more of a "Fanzine"?
I think Carl Barks Ankeborg is published by Egmont.
Egmont rejected my story and printed Blums instead, KNOWING that Blum added Scrooge and Magica and Scrooge's #1 Dime, which were NOT in Barks' original story, and that his story had 10 pages, to fit into Walt Disney's Comics & Stories, and that mine had 10, like Barks', and they knew that because of those reasons, and the fact that
i had been given more information about the story from Carl than had been printed in the Mike Barrier interview, that my story would be more true to what Barks had drawn. And yet they printed his, and not mine. So why would they print mine now - especially after they advertised that Blum's was based on Barks' story as he described to Barrier?
Egmont is a very big company, and, unfortunately, the people that take the decisions are not always those who know most about comics.
A big difference between the Danish headquarter of Egmont and the Swedish editor staff of "Carl Barks Ankeborg" is that the two main editors in Sweden are comic enthusiasts and Barks fans. One of them is moderator on the Facebook site "Carl Barks - The Good Artist", and the other one is also active there.
At least they would look seriously at a propose to publish your version of Barks' story, Rob Klein.
When the planned series of 30 volumes of "Carl Barks Ankeborg" is published, there is a small chance that there will be a volume 31 with stories, that have NOT been published in the North European Collections of Carl Barks. Your story would belong in such a volume.
So what is the current state of Disney comics now, in early 2024? I think it's accurate to say that the 1950s were the best decade ever for Disney comics thanks to Carl Barks, and that the 1990 to mid-2000s period were a Disney Comics Renaissance, mainly (but not exclusively) because of Don Rosa. And Disney comics have experienced a constant and marked decline since then, both in terms of sales and in terms of quality. As much as I dislike Italian Disney comics at least they are still producing comics that seem interesting and are popular. The French Glenat albums are another bright spot. (I mean, I am not particularly interested in them but at least they are doing something fresh and noteworthy.) Other than those two categories, the last two decades of Disney comics were pretty bleak. Let's take a look at Inducks! There are only FOUR Disney comics in Inducks' Top 1000 that were produced after Rosa's retirement and aren't Italian Disney comics.
Looking at print media in general, I think the state of Disney comics could be a lot worse. The big publishers have all managed to create an online presence in a way that complements their print publications. The collectors market looks steady enough, given the increasing volume of archival editions. Don Rosa, Gottfredson, and Scarpa have all gotten collected editions in the last decade. The quality of new stories is similar to what it was 10 to 15 years ago, I would say, but there's always room for improvement.