If you want a full library of Carl Barks' Disney comics in English, you don't have a lot of options to choose from. But here are some ways:
Original 1st print comics – this is my dream collection, but it's time consuming and expensive to complete.
Any reprint of all stories – Most are not hard to find, and it could be done on a budget. But time consuming to keep track of everything if you don't go for any of the library collections. And if you only get "floppies" (not album and hardcover) and pay more than $2 for each comic it will probably be more expensive than just getting the Fantagraphics hardcovers.
Der Comic-Buch-Club's Carl Barks Gesammelte Werke – This doesn't sound like an English collection, but it actually is. It was published in Germany as a portfolio edition (loose sheets in b/w) in the 1970's. Not sure how complete this edition is, but I think it's close. Each volume is limited to 300 or 500 copies, and very hard to find.
Another Rainbow's Carl Barks Library – 10 box sets with a total for 30 books. All stories in black and white. Prices for these vary a lot, but being a bit patient, it's not going to be too much of a difference from getting the Fantagraphics books, and probably cheaper than all Gladstone albums. I paid about $950 for a complete AR collection a few years ago, while it will be about 30x29.90 ≈ $900 for the Fantagraphics set. One complete set is listed with starting bid at €999 on eBay right now.
Gladstone's Carl Barks Library – Album format with nice coloring. Pricey if you go for a complete collection. Generally I'm a big fan of this format for comics, but for Carl Barks I personally prefer a hardcover collection over these.
Fantagraphics' Carl Barks Library – Not completely published yet. But probably the easiest way to get a complete collection, and what I'd recommend for most people.
Size comparison:
From the left: regular comic book, Fantagraphics, Gladstone, Another Rainbow, Der Comic-Buch-Club
There's been changes to the back end system creating the database tables and such the last days, and the webpage needs a few adjustments too. It will probably be fixed soon.
This information combined with my hunt for the last Barks box released in October makes me believe they have restricted the distribution outside USA.
Now I'm even more sure. When checking out the second box set when logged in to Amazon it looks like they don't have it in stock. But using this trick, then I can see that Amazon themselves (and not the affiliated stores) actually have it in stock. But it looks like you can't order it to an address outside USA.
Thanks for this information. I now see that some American bookstores (searching on Abebooks.com and affiliated stores listed on Amazon) actually have them in stock. But I didn't find any shipping to Europe for less than the actual price for the box...
This information combined with my hunt for the last Barks box released in October makes me believe they have restricted the distribution outside USA. The regular Disney comics from IDW was put on restricted distribution after a couple of years, making comic stores outside of USA unable to order the comics through the Diamond distributors. But hardcovers haven't been affected by this until now. I really hope this isn't the case for the upcoming Disney Masters books and such!
I got real lucky with the Rosa boxsets, I had a bunch of alerts out on sites and the moment they got reprinted last year I grabbed the 3 I needed.
Did the reprinted box sets really get released??
I had the following pre-ordered at my local comic shop, but they never recieved any:
OA SEP181786 DISNEY ROSA DUCK LIBRARY HC BOX SET VOL 01 & 02 (O/A) (C: 1-0-0) 10/10/18 SRP: $49.99 = $ SS SEP181787 DISNEY ROSA DUCK LIBRARY HC BOX SET VOL 03 & 04 (SEP151345) (C: 1-0-0) 10/17/18 SRP: $49.99 = $
These newspaper collections I pre-ordered or got right after release when they were easy to find.
But the Fantagraphics Don Rosa library I waited a couple of years before finally deciding to start collecting. But then the first two box sets was already impossible to find. And for that reason, I still haven't bought any of the volumes. So they lost a customer for the entire series because of the limited number of box sets produced.
Also, the last Barks box set (The Lost Peg Leg Mine/The Black Pearls of Tabu Yama) is hard to find anywhere else than on Amazon. None of my usual go-to online bookstores has it. I've stopped using Amazon for books as most arrive damaged, but I gave up on finding the last Barks box anywhere else. It's on its way in the mail now, hopefully surviving.
Just ordered the hardcover Return of the Gremlins from Dark Horse books. Despite the fact that it came out in 2015 (itself reprinting a series from 2008), it's virtually impossible to find. I could have skimped a bit by buying the three issues elsewhere, but single issues tend to end up in a drawer somewhere -- and neither the paperback collection of 2008 nor the hardcover are on index, something that clearly needs rectifying. I'm looking forward to it!
But seriously, why are these books all so hard to find???
I only have the 3 single issues, but I've seen the hardcover on eBay now and then. But I've never ever seen the 2008 paperback editon anywhere. I see it's listed some places like on mycomicshop.com, but there without an image. Can anyone here confirm that the 2008 TPB actullay was published? (I have my doubts)
But it turns out there is one issue which is even rarer. A second #297 issue was published, discovered in 2011. Only one copy is known to exist.
[...] The issue must come from the printer as it is not cut.[...]
It doesn't sound like this one was published, so I'm not sure I'd count it as a rare comic. I guess there are a lot of proof and test copies sent to editors that only exists in a couple of copies around.
A more recent example is the American Mickey Mouse Classics: Mouse Mayhem where the final book was printed but is not known to have been distributed anywhere. But at few copies were sent to the editors.
I think the reason you don't find I TL 1411-BP with "Ululand" is that there are two descriptions in the same language (Italian) and the search query only search in one of the two descriptions. So a bug in the programming (it probably wasn't intended for a story to have several different descriptions in the same language).
I'm not 100% sure about this, but got the same result trying to search for other stories that have two different descriptions in the same language. Ex. I TL 2346-1. Searching for keywords in one of the two Italian descriptions work, but not for the other one.
Edit: and the reason you find I TL 1464-BP using "Ululand" and phrase-seach, is that there it's part of the word "Ululandsbyen" in the Norwegian description. It doesn't find the word even if it is used in one of the two Italian descriptions for that story.
Curious if anyone knows when the next set of box sets will be available? We’ve got a lot of releases coming up but no word as to more box sets after 7-10 came out. I don’t want to buy material twice and prefer the box set but I’ll start buying single releases if that’s all we’re going to get.
The box sets have been released in October every year, but nothing from Fantagraphics so far ahead is announced yet. They will probably continue with box sets, but they won't be listed online for another few months I guess (for an October 2021 release)
Question to hex : How do you find out when new Fantagraphics books are added to Amazon?
I just do a seach now and then to see if I find new Disney comics being added on Amazon. But depending on what Amazon site you use and your location settings you won't find all books in the search. So what I do to serach for American books is:
- go to amazon.com (and not co.uk, .de, .fr etc.) in private mode in the web browser (= not being logged in, and no cookie data being used)
- Up in the left corner it might still say "Deliver to <your counrty>" based on what IP you have. So I click this and type in a random American zip-code to change the shipping settings the USA (ex. 91521 for Burbank)
- THEN I can start searching
Easy-peasy
ps. If anyone have a tip on how to exclude the gazillion of unlicenced coloring books and other self-published junk from the seach result, please let med know!
That was just the last updated date listed by the distributor that they kept changing. The book was announced in the January 2018 Previews catalog, then for a May 2018 release – but is now removed completely from PreviewsWorld. It should be listed here (where Forbidden Planet got the date from):