I wonder if there's a market for a facsimile collection of Barks' work: high-resolution scans of the original printings, like the ones that exist for the European magazines and the first two issues of WDC&S. This would make the increasingly scarce and brittle original printings available to collectors, without necessarily abandoning the casual reader. It might also help prevent possible censorship, because you can't go and edit decade-old comics.
It would also help preserve censorship, precisely because you can't go in and edit decade-old comic books if you're doing exact facsimiles of them. Barks' "Back to the Klondike" and "Trick or Treat" couldn't be printed in their uncensored form.
I don't think such an edition of the complete Barks would be a good alternative... at least, I wouldn't want it myself. I also remember back when Fantagraphics announced their Library, it was mentioned that neither Disney nor Fanta were interested in a Barks edition using direct facsimiles from the old printed comics. As long as unaltered, original proofs exist, you're generally doing the art a disservice by using such an approach.
I think a fascimile edition of the early years of, for example, WDC&S is much more interesting to picture than a fascimile of JUST the Barks stories. Then you are at least getting the full comic books just as they were once presented.
No way any Barks fan specifically suggested the old Dell coloring. They probably simply suggested flat coloring, which Kim Thompson misunderstood.
Look here at this announcement from Danish Barks scholar Matthias Wivel, written at the start of Fantagraphics' series. After criticizing computer-colored Egmont and Gladstone editions, Wivel says of the Fantagraphics edition that "Most significantly—thankfully—it will be recoloured in its entirety in flat colours, to match as closely as possible the colouring of the original comics."
The flatness is emphasized, but fidelity to the original comics is seen as just as praiseworthy—and mentioned in the same breath in the context of being a valuable goal.
I don't know Wivel well, but since he has ended up writing for the Fanta Barks books under Thompson and his successor, Mike Catron, it wouldn't surprise me if he were one of the people who urged Kim to mimic the Dell color. Either way, it shows that that sentiment was alive and well when Fanta's series was originating.
Even if Dell color isn't what I like best, myself, it's fair to allow that someone wanted it. Caballero, please try not to take the attitude that anyone scholarly has to agree with you (or with me—I don't think I like later Dell color any more than you do)...
Thank you for that link to Matthias Wivel's commentary on the previous color re-issues of Barks' comics. He argues that he wants flat coloring back (with some hand drawn gradients here and there). And he'd like the orig. Dell colors back. At first I thought that he meant the color of Uncle Scrooge's coat etc. (see furtheron), which was different in the early days from what we've come accustomed to. The examples of good old coloring that he used on his web page are indeed nice: they don't show white wood or red fish. I don't know for sure if - in the end - he likes what Fantagraphics has done (see further-on: apparently he does). They took his "advice" literally and reproduced every color mistake Dell made. As well as shortcuts like not coloring wood (Dell left it white/uncolored). It's a matter of taste but I think gradient coloring with the right colors for everything is better than flat coloring with plainly wrong colors. It's becoming a pet peeve of mine, just like gradient coloring is for mr. Wivel, ha ha.
High time that the eloquent mister Wivel speaks out again! Because I've got a sneakin' suspicion that we owe the off-coloring of the Fantagraphics series to him.
I did find a discussion of his about the first released Fantagraphics volume ('Lost in the Andes'). He didn't notice that the "found original artwork" for 'Race the the South Seas' is mistakenly again the Daan Jippes version (yep: Fantagraphics claims to have found the orig. artwork and to have printed it but in this forum we've had somebody admit they printed the Jippes version nonetheless). He even posted two pictures (one from Jippes and one from Fantagraphics) next to each-other that are exactly the the same Jippes versions. This is supposed to illustrate that Fantagraphics "found" and printed the orig. version. What a buffoon! This self-acclaimed Barks expert is obviously not the person to take seriously concerning Barks' work.
In the same article he talks about the all new and improved flat coloring. I've browsed through the volume that Wivel discusses ('Lost in the Andes') and the weird off-coloring is there already, be it not as intelligence insulting as in some other volumes. Take a look, for instance, at the story 'Too many pets' from page 187 onwards. The very first panel shows the low-buget Dell "choice" to make all wood white (i.e. no color at all). Further-on we see that they color each wall in a different contrasting color (page 194). With an all time low in panel 2-1 (row 2, panel 1) on page 194. One of the walls is light sky-blue. It makes you think there's no wall at all. On the last panel on page 192 you can see that Dell was too cheap, back in the day, to give the piece of furniture any color shading other than dark green. No accents on the handles, knobs etc. It looks flat instead of a 3D object. They butchered Barks' work.
He says about this: "The fundamentalist choice adopted here at least has the virtue of staying true to the original comics as they were read and appreciated by hundreds of thousands of readers.". No! Nobody in the whole wide world appreciated the weird off-color choices that were made by Dell out of budget concerns and time constraints. Dell's comics were appreciated because there was no other printing than Dell's yet.
Wivel continues: "Besides, the original coloring is generally quite good, [...]". Where he got that idea is a mystery to me. It is not true. The orig. coloring was done hastily and cheap (no color variants in objects for example). He says: "But if an image pops better with a pink brick wall, then the brick wall is pink. And in defiance of naturalism, backgrounds often change color between panels enlivening the storytelling in a way uniformly colored neutrality would not". This is exactly the problem most people have with Dell's choices. And apparently there's one single person in the world that thinks the color-blind contrasting-colors choices were on purpose: mr. Matthias Wivel. They weren't on purpose: Dell had only 4 colors to choose from, hence the name 4 color comics. And the offset printing technique wasn't accurate enough to color in small objects. Notice that in all old 2nd hand color comics the colors are not exactly within the lines.
Summarizing I find it very unfortunate that Fantagrphics listened to self-acclaimed "Barks scholar" Matthias Wivel. The man is plain wrong.
Last Edit: Oct 8, 2022 12:29:02 GMT by meneerjansen
High time that the eloquent mister Wivel speaks out again! Because I've got a sneakin' suspicion that we owe the off-coloring of the Fantagraphics series to him. [...] There's one single person in the world that thinks the color-blind contrasting-colors choices were on purpose: Mr. Matthias Wivel.
Please be merciful—in the course of a single posting, you at once assumed Wivel was the sole reason for Fantagraphics' choice, then endlessly clobbered him. Even if I might disagree with Wivel on an aesthetic, I almost feel sorry for him now...
A slight elaboration of what I wrote above: I didn't work on that primordial stage of the Fanta Barks books at all; I have no idea how many others agreed with Wivel, or how many others Kim might have consulted with, or even for certain whether Wivel was a major Kim-contact on the subject—I just assume he had to be.
In all fairness: I personally like late 1940s Dell color. It's inconsistent and has a lot of mistakes (which, after the first Fanta volume, Fanta did generally try to fix rather than copy accurately), but at least the color choices are often rather appealing to the eye.
I'm not saying I wouldn't personally rather see softer colors with light gradients in the backgrounds; I would! But I can at least see why some people could think an accurate 1940s-facsimile was a good thing to shoot for—without considering the much poorer color choices of the late 1950s and onward.
[Wivel] didn't notice that the "found original artwork" for 'Race the the South Seas' is mistakenly again the Daan Jippes version (yep: Fantagraphics claims to have found the orig. artwork and to have printed it but in this forum we've had somebody admit they printed the Jippes version nonetheless).
And that somebody was me! It was less "pure Jippes" than a mix of Jippes and what Barks art I was able to restore (same "combination" as in this earlier album), but the actual intent had been to use a Barks version that ended up not being accessible until it was too late. When we were unable to do that, the text describing the version we were using wasn't altered as it should have been.
High time that the eloquent mister Wivel speaks out again! Because I've got a sneakin' suspicion that we owe the off-coloring of the Fantagraphics series to him. [...] There's one single person in the world that thinks the color-blind contrasting-colors choices were on purpose: Mr. Matthias Wivel.
Please be merciful—in the course of a single posting, you at once assumed Wivel was the sole reason for Fantagraphics' choice, then endlessly clobbered him. Even if I might disagree with Wivel on an aesthetic, I almost feel sorry for him now...
A slight elaboration of what I wrote above: I didn't work on that primordial stage of the Fanta Barks books at all; I have no idea how many others agreed with Wivel, or how many others Kim might have consulted with, or even for certain whether Wivel was a major Kim-contact on the subject—I just assume he had to be.
In all fairness: I personally like late 1940s Dell color. It's inconsistent and has a lot of mistakes (which, after the first Fanta volume, Fanta did generally try to fix rather than copy accurately), but at least the color choices are often rather appealing to the eye.
I'm not saying I wouldn't personally rather see softer colors with light gradients in the backgrounds; I would! But I can at least see why some people could think an accurate 1940s-facsimile was a good thing to shoot for—without considering the much poorer color choices of the late 1950s and onward.
[Wivel] didn't notice that the "found original artwork" for 'Race the the South Seas' is mistakenly again the Daan Jippes version (yep: Fantagraphics claims to have found the orig. artwork and to have printed it but in this forum we've had somebody admit they printed the Jippes version nonetheless).
And that somebody was me! It was less "pure Jippes" than a mix of Jippes and what Barks art I was able to restore (same "combination" as in this earlier album), but the actual intent had been to use a Barks version that ended up not being accessible until it was too late. When we were unable to do that, the text describing the version we were using wasn't altered as it should have been.
Thank you for your reply.
You rightly say that I might have unjustly insinuated that we owe Fantagraphics' coloring to Matthias Wivel alone. I don't work at Fantagraphics so I cannot know what their exact reasoning was for choosing this way of coloring.
Also, thank you for reminding me that it was you who told us about the 'Race to the South Seas' in the volume "Lost in the Andes". Can you elaborate a bit more about it? I take it that Daan Jippes "re-draw" the orig. artwork by tracing it in some way for the Dutch 'Donald Duck weekly' issue of week 25, July 4 1975 (I must have that issue in the basement of my parents house: I'm Dutch and we were subscribed to 'Donald Duck weekly'). You say you re-created a version of it in 2006 because you were able to restore part of Barks' work. I do not work in comics but from what I understand there were photocopies (roto-scope) made of the orig. artwork to get rid of the blue (draft) pencils. The penciled/inked artwork was then thrown away and the roto-scopes were kept (forever) and sent to the various publishers in the world that publish Walt Disney comics. What exactly was the problem with 'South Seas'? Were the 1st generation roto-scopes misplaces by Dell and did you use a (good) roto-scope from an other country in 2006? And what happened in the end? Did Dell (or it's follow up company...) found the originals again?
Interesting info on 'South Seas' can be found in the Carl Barks Guide Book. Quote: "Originally, the natives all had black hair (except the mayor on page 14) while Jippes left their hair blank.". And indeed, the natives in the Fantagraphics volume have blank hair that's colored in.
Also, thank you for reminding me that it was you who told us about the 'Race to the South Seas' in the volume "Lost in the Andes". Can you elaborate a bit more about it? I take it that Daan Jippes "re-draw" the orig. artwork by tracing it in some way for the Dutch 'Donald Duck weekly' issue of week 25, July 4 1975
That's right.
You say you re-created a version of it in 2006 because you were able to restore part of Barks' work. I do not work in comics but from what I understand there were photocopies (roto-scope) made of the orig. artwork to get rid of the blue (draft) pencils. The penciled/inked artwork was then thrown away and the roto-scopes were kept (forever) and sent to the various publishers in the world that publish Walt Disney comics. What exactly was the problem with 'South Seas'? Were the 1st generation roto-scopes misplaces by Dell
Sadly, yes. (Though we use the term "proofs," not "rotoscopes"; and they're photoprints, not photocopies.)
and did you use a (good) roto-scope from an other country in 2006?
In 2006, I had no new proof source—but I used new technology (e. g. Photoshop and other graphic software) to very carefully erase the color from certain panels of an authentically-Barks early French printing, where the reproduction was better than in the USA, enabling the software to work... but only some of the time, and better on the Ducks' white heads/faces than on other surfaces. I cut and pasted as much Barks as possible over the Jippes art, creating a composite that was probably around 1/3 Barks, and that's what we published in 2006...
Did Dell (or it's follow up company...) found the originals again?
No, though a *partial* proof set later surfaced in Europe. Not all the pages, but most. (I hope we'll use it to restore more of the story for a later printing, but we're still several years away from one.)
Ramapith : Thank you for clearing that up. A real labour of love to restore Bark's work. Thanks for the work and I hope that the orig. will be published some day.
Ok, so much reading here it will take me hours to read it all, so I hope I won't write anything that said over and over before.
Personaly I enjoy the Fantagraphic edition a lot! I don't know what it is about their choice of colors but they work realy well for me (maybe they just feel "old-timy") The only time I found it distracting was in the Philosopher stone story, where Scrooge glasses don't turn gold and Scrooges eyes don't turn "lemon" despite characters commenting on it. Felt like a simple thing for editors to nices and do something about it.
However one thing that tad disapoiting for me is that in "The Twenty-Four Carat Moon" the titlular story is BEFORE "The Fabulous Tycoon", since that story is introduction to Longhorn Tallgrass, who appears in the Moon in a way the script expect us to know him. For most part I'm not that bother by some small liberties with story order since in Barks case continnuity is such a rare case but here it didn't work for me.
Frankly I would prefer if they would just stick to chronological order and didn't toy with it to much. In Poland where I'm from we didn't got Barks long stories since recently [seriously entire 90's and early 200's was just the 10-pagers, with very rare exeptions] so it was fun expirance for me to read these stories in order they appeared in, especialy Uncle Scrooge ones, so while I don't mind some liberties - like puting the onepagers after the long story (even if there was often one one pager before the long story) - I think if they stick 100% to chronology, it would be welcome sight. I seriously don't see that much of a point of changing it.
I still have few recent books missing from my collection and I hope to get them soon. My usual comic book supplier had hard time geting them during covid so I will look for new way of geting them but I will get them eventuality.
It is an overall a great collection and I would wish they could put out more then two a year.
Last Edit: Oct 16, 2022 14:10:09 GMT by Pan Maciej
Know as Maciej Kur, Mr. M., Maik, Maiki, Pan, Pan Miluś and many other names.
BTW - As much I enjoy Don Rosa reimagining of "The Pied Piper of DuckBurg", I think it would be interesting if volume 24 had insted the Daan Jippes version
Simply do to the fact I never seen it (I don't have the Polish issue sadly) and I would love to see a difrent take then Rosa's (who's version we have already in a diffrent colection) just to expirance a difrent perspective on a Gyro story Barks set-up so long ago. It would be fun to compare for sure.
Last Edit: Oct 15, 2022 23:25:57 GMT by Pan Maciej
Know as Maciej Kur, Mr. M., Maik, Maiki, Pan, Pan Miluś and many other names.
Ok, so much reading here it will take me hours to read it all, so I hope I won't write anything that said over and over before.
Personaly I enjoy the Fantagraphic edition a lot! I don't know what it is about their choice of colors but they work realy well for me (maybe they just feel "old-timy") The only time I found it distracting was in the Philosopher stone story, where Scrooge glasses don't turn gold and Scrooges eyes don't turn "lemon" despite characters commenting on it. Felt like a simple thing for editors to nices and do something about it.
However one thing that tad disapoiting for me is that in "The Twenty-Four Carat Moon" the titlular story is BEFORE "The Fabulous Tycoon", since that story is introduction to Longhorn Tallgrass, who appears in the Moon in a way the script expect us to know him. For most part I'm not that bother by some small liberties with story order since in Barks case continnuity is such a rare case but here it didn't work for me.
Frankly I would prefer if they would just stick to chronological order and didn't toy with it to much. In Poland where I'm from we didn't got Barks long stories since recently [seriously entire 90's and early 200's was just the 10-pagers, with very rare exeptions] so it was fun expirance for me to read these stories in order they appeared in, especialy Uncle Scrooge ones, so while I don't mind some liberties - like puting the onepagers after the long story (even if there was often one one pager before the long story) - I think if they stick 100% to chronology, it would be welcome sight. I seriously don't see that much of a point of changing it.
I still have few recent books missing from my collection and I hope to get them soon. My usual comic book supplier had gard time geting them during covid so I will look for new way of geting them but I will get them eventuality.
It is an overall a great collection and I would wish they could put out more then two a year.
Wow! You really missed out on something if you haven't red the long stories. Must be a very pleasant first introduction for you. I wish you much enjoyment with the Fantagraphics series.
BTW - As much I enjoy Don Rosa reimagining of "The Pied Piper of DuckBurg", I think it would be interesting if volume 24 had insted the Daan Jippes version
Simply do to the fact I never seen it (I don't have the Polish issue sadly) and I would love to see a difrent take then Rosa's (who's version we have already in a diffrent colection) just to expirance a difrent perspective on a Gyro story Barks set-up so long ago. It would be fun to compare for sure.
Yeah, it feels strange that Fantagraphics' edition only included the Rosa version of the story. It's almost as if someone thought it would be stepping on Rosa's toes to include the alternative take by Jippes... but would it really? It's just interesting to compare two different interpretations of Barks' idea. And of course, Jippes' artwork is much closer to Barks' style.
So, in short, I think Fantagraphics should have included BOTH versions of the story. Alternatively, it makes sense to use the Jippes version since the Rosa version is already included in his own library... but why not both? I feel the same way about the late-90s story "Somewhere in Nowhere", which has a much more convoluted backstory than "The Pied Piper of Duckburg".
Wow! You really missed out on something if you haven't red the long stories. Must be a very pleasant first introduction for you. I wish you much enjoyment with the Fantagraphics series.
Thank you To be fair over the years before Fantagraphics edition I manage to read a some of Barks most important long stories in difrent non-Polish sources (not to mention some where FINALY published in Poland) but It is an enjoyment to finaly read them all at once in proper (mostly) order and It is fun to discover some gems I never know about.
For example two weeks ago I FINALY read "The City of golden roofs". I was 100% sure I read that one somewhere, since the I keep hearing the title over and over and I was convince it was some standard treasure hunt story... But nope! It's not and it was new to me. And what fun story it was, great idea for a Donald vs. Scrooge arc and I think it was interesting how titular city don't appear untill the last third and how it was used.
For few years Poland is now geting a Bark Libary style series (I belive it's base on Norway's edition) but I personaly prefer to discover these thing in orginal language, to fully appriciate them in their orginal context. I still got most of Polish edition, I just prefer to read them in orginal English.
Hello, I'm sorry I haven't read all 29 pages of this thread before making this post. I searched for some key phrases to see if the topic was discussed but haven't seen it actually commented on, just mentioned
But from this thread I learned about them using modern standarized coloring for ducks' clothing in recent years
Still, though, it's weird. Fantagraphics bases their coloring directly on the originally published comic books (excluding the modern-day colors for Scrooge and Donald's clothes, which they have started using in the last few years). So how could the colorist NOT notice the changes to the artwork, especially in the panel where we see the village warriors in detail?
Last half of page 7, original 1960 version:
Last half of page 7, censored Gladstone version (reused by Fantagraphics) - natives' hair redrawn:
First half of page 8, original version:
First half of page 8, censored Gladstone version (reused by Fantagraphics) - dialogue changes in panels 1 and 3, plus redrawn natives in panel 2 (this last change actually isn't mentioned on Inducks, which only says that panels 7.7, 8.1 and 8.3 were censored):
And I am disappointed with that direction. I love this publishing series in very large part for it's coloring (I could not love it otherwise). The colors chosen now stick out badly within the retro technicolor. It would be so easy to leave it alone
I really want to get volumes 1-4 when they finally get released and if this means that Donald will get bright distracting yellow cuffs in those, I'm just tiny bit regretful that it was conscious change. It might be a little thing, but damn, why add the bright yellow where there weren't any
I only gathered up courage to make an account here and voice my opinion because I'm not criticising anyone's personal creativity. Only an executive choice. Did it come from Disney or is was it on Fanta's side? Is it permament? I have read on here that at some point the censorship went rampant and then got scaled back down.
PS!!! After studdying all inducks first page samples I could find I realized that isn't even standarised at all! I misinpreted the post I quotet earlier, about them using those colors, as it meaning they started using the colors consistently. Bunch of stories in the latest volume still don't have these changes, at least based on the digital version whoever uploaded pictures to inducks had! It seems like the editors aren't really deadset on this choice then? So here's hoping for white/blue/whatelse cuffed 40s Donald in the future
I could've missed someone else posting about but 2nd Edition of both "Christmas in Duckburg" and "Under the Polar Ice" have dialogues restored. When I read about those changes I hoped 2nd Edition would restore and waited for those specific volumes and my patient was repaid. Even though I imagine must be frustrating to have 1st Edition censored without no means of changing to the restored books. Not sure if they'll fix Bongo in the Congo but having bought it in 1st Edition I feel the same kind of frustration as they're not exactly easy to sell back. I'll think how to handle when they'll reprint "The Golden Nugget Boat" and if they'll fix it. By the way, this massive change between editions made me wonder which other relevant changes exist in other volumes which one could consider about updating. For once I would've updated "Under the Polar Ice" in a blink as it was a disaster both in censorship and in lettering editing.
Where did you pick up the restored second editions? Was it through the new boxset of the two censored volumes? If Fantagraphics has actually listened to the fans and course-corrected on this, I want to encourage them by buying the restored copies; thanks for letting us know.
I could've missed someone else posting about but 2nd Edition of both "Christmas in Duckburg" and "Under the Polar Ice" have dialogues restored. When I read about those changes I hoped 2nd Edition would restore and waited for those specific volumes and my patient was repaid. Even though I imagine must be frustrating to have 1st Edition censored without no means of changing to the restored books. Not sure if they'll fix Bongo in the Congo but having bought it in 1st Edition I feel the same kind of frustration as they're not exactly easy to sell back. I'll think how to handle when they'll reprint "The Golden Nugget Boat" and if they'll fix it. By the way, this massive change between editions made me wonder which other relevant changes exist in other volumes which one could consider about updating. For once I would've updated "Under the Polar Ice" in a blink as it was a disaster both in censorship and in lettering editing.
Really?? That's amazing... I had never expected they would actually get to change the dialogue back.