The Gemstone that never was

[barks]

I’ve been re-reading most of my Uncle Scrooge comics for the last year starting at Gladstone 1. I just finished with the last Gemstone(383) issue a couple weeks ago. At that point Gemstone was putting a preview of the next issue on the inside cover, and there was a preview for what 384 was supposed to be if they had kept publishing.

I know they had plans to publish a Barks, and Rosa library(Gottfredson too?). I believe that they were going to continue on with the Daan Jippes collection, and Barks/Rosa collection. I was just curious if we have seen most of what Gemstone had planned by now between Boom, Idw, and Fantagraphics.

[Mesterius]

The single biggest loss is that we didn't get Gemstone's planned, English-language edition of Egmont's lavish Carl Barks Library. I would have loved to see that. Via Book Depository, here's the product description for Gemstone's first, 3-book box set, which was slated to come out in November of 2008. Unfortunately, Gemstone went bankrupt just around that time.

The Carl Barks Collection: v. 1


(...)

It's here - a ten-volume hardback set collecting Carl Barks' complete Disney comics cycle! Remastered in more exceptional quality and color than earlier editions, the great tales of Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge McDuck, Gladstone Gander, and Gyro Gearloose are accompanied by a vast selection of archival rarities and fascinating new editorials by lifetime Barks scholar Geoffrey Blum. This initial boxed set includes Barks' very first 1940s adventures, including "Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold," "The Mummy's Ring," and "Pluto Saves the Ship!"


    (Preliminary visual of the first box set.)

[Ramapith]

Nov 20, 2022 18:16:32 GMT barks said:

I’ve been re-reading most of my Uncle Scrooge comics for the last year starting at Gladstone 1. I just finished with the last Gemstone(383) issue a couple weeks ago. At that point Gemstone was putting a preview of the next issue on the inside cover, and there was a preview for what 384 was supposed to be if they had kept publishing.

I know they had plans to publish a Barks, and Rosa library(Gottfredson too?). I believe that they were going to continue on with the Daan Jippes collection, and Barks/Rosa collection. I was just curious if we have seen most of what Gemstone had planned by now between Boom, Idw, and Fantagraphics.

Almost all, but not all.

A few stories we'd planned to include in 2009 Gemstone issues simply wouldn't be allowed in all-ages comics these days (e. g. a moderately censored version of "Mickey Mouse Sails for Treasure Island," intended for WDCS, with the cannibals retouched to be non-black; at Boom this would have conflicted with Fantagraphics' plans too closely, and today, simply showing island cannibals trying to cook Mickey in a pot would realistically cause too many issues).

Quite a lot of intended Gemstone covers were never used elsewhere, in all fairness because I sometimes forgot!

[That Duckfan]

Some of the Gemstone covers for 2009 were up on Amazon for a long time as previews that never were. In fact, some of them are still there!

[twdisneyman]

If I remember correctly, there was also a couple stories that were never concluded in the last few Gemstone issues - WDC&S 698 and Uncle Scrooge 383. Conclusions were planned for next issues but Gemstone either went kaput or the license so those never happened

[Ramapith]

Dec 5, 2022 20:53:55 GMT twdisneyman said:

If I remember correctly, there was also a couple stories that were never concluded in the last few Gemstone issues - WDC&S 698 and Uncle Scrooge 383. Conclusions were planned for next issues but Gemstone either went kaput or the license so those never happened

Scrooge 383 didn't have any unfinished stories, but WDCS 698 indeed started the Gottfredson Mickey Mouse story "Boxing Champion," leaving it unfinished.

My team and I eventually published the complete version—in that same remount, with that same color—in this book at IDW some years later, so readers could see the full thing. (...And yes, the story is also in the Floyd Gottfredson Library in black and white; but I figured people would want to see the color remounted version in full, too, in and of itself.)

[rsjr]

Nov 20, 2022 20:53:27 GMT Mesterius said:

The single biggest loss is that we didn't get Gemstone's planned, English-language edition of Egmont's lavish Carl Barks Library. I would have loved to see that. Via Book Depository, here's the product description for Gemstone's first, 3-book box set, which was slated to come out in November of 2008. Unfortunately, Gemstone went bankrupt just around that time.

The Carl Barks Collection: v. 1


(...)

It's here - a ten-volume hardback set collecting Carl Barks' complete Disney comics cycle! Remastered in more exceptional quality and color than earlier editions, the great tales of Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge McDuck, Gladstone Gander, and Gyro Gearloose are accompanied by a vast selection of archival rarities and fascinating new editorials by lifetime Barks scholar Geoffrey Blum. This initial boxed set includes Barks' very first 1940s adventures, including "Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold," "The Mummy's Ring," and "Pluto Saves the Ship!"


    (Preliminary visual of the first box set.)

Why didn't fantagraphics not just go this path? seems superior to their current product?