Gee, this is the second consecutive post that I've titled with a question! I've really gotta get back into my old groove of "Comic Box Adventuring" and "Mirth Separation"!
But, to answer that "second consecutive titular question", I must remind you just how much I enjoy reserving Saturday afternoons for reading comic books - and THIS POST will do that nicely!
I don't get to do that as much as I'd like to this days... That old "Horrifically Busy" thing, you know.
But this weekend (Yes, Saturday AND a bonus Sunday - almost wall to wall) reviewing, researching... and, most important of all - READING many Carl Barks stories of early 1960s vintage in order to prepare story notes for a future Fantagraphics volume. ...Talk about combining "business with pleasure"!
6 comments:
So we’re still going forward into the 1960s at Fantagraphics it seems. I was hoping they’d backtrack to the early Donald Duck stories before too long, but it seems like they’re going to put them at the end of the Barks Library run. Other than the Uncle Scrooge issues, Barks’ 1960s output is fairly mediocre. I like how Fantagraphics decided to put the Grandma and Daisy stories in the Donald Duck books, as the material would have made a pretty dull volume on its own. As dated and sexist as they are, I still have a soft spot for the better Daisy Duck’s Diary stories, as I used to have a Dynabrite comic that collected some of Barks’ stories in the series. Grandma Duck and Her Farm Friends was usually interesting to see who was going to show up on the farm: Scrooge, Dumbo, Gyro and the Big Bad Wolf (old Zeke himself) all made appearances. You could see that Barks was mostly just going through the motions when he wrote most of the 1960s Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories 10-pagers, but the Scrooge stories still seemed lively, if not occasionally leaning towards camp.
Well, I’ve got SOME good news for you, Deb… This volume is going to be an Uncle Scrooge – and with some prime stuff in it!
Oh, and I quite disagree that “…Barks’ 1960s output is fairly mediocre”! No, it couldn’t touch the stuff he did circa 1948-1953… but consider having to come up with twelve 10-page gag stories per year for about two decades. I would not want that job!
And, in the sixties, many things “leaned toward camp” – if not outright drowned in it – and Barks simply went along with the flow.
As for the 60's and Barks, the era that gave us "The Hero of the Dike," "Instant Hercules," and "The Not-So-Ancient Mariner" is to my mind a fertile, inventive period. I enjoy Daisy's endless parade of new hairdos 60's style, Donald's emulation of literary classic heroes, and Gladstone's occasional and un-customary setbacks. It's as though Barks was constantly re-inventing his own style. And he kept the Ducks contemporary while maintaining their timelessness, which was certainly no simple feat. I like the design of the ducks in these latter day stories, too. While far apart in design from the 40's and 50's, Barks managed to "own" the characters in any setting and through occasional alterations in their appearance. Barks' stories have a sense of "authenticity" whatever the decade. The artist who comes closest, to my way of thinking, is Tony Strobl, whose artwork always looks classic and on-model. I don't know if Tony wrote any of the stories he drew, but his "authorship" is marked by his drawings of the characters. He and Barks represent a high point in Disney character comic book art, transcending several eras and always delivering the goods.
Scarecrow:
What I said in response to Ryan’s comment in THIS POST, also applies here…
Okay, Scarecrow… fess up! Have you been reading my mind, or my private diaries?
I suppose that repurposing my response to Ryan is just another way of saying “I couldn’t have said it better myself!” …And I DO say that often, don’t I?
It seemed to me that Barks sought to “redesign” his characters every few years or so – and that’s why his different eras looked so… um, looked so… different. My feeling has long been that he was on the verge of redesigning them once again at the point he decided to retire! Look no further than “Hall of the Mermaid Queen”, “The Beauty Business”, and “The Not-So-Ancient Mariner” for proof. But we’ll never know…
Tony Strobl is one of those vastly underrated talents… probably because he neither wrote his stories, nor inked his own pencils. His best inker was John Liggera, but he was subject to more of a variance with Steve Steere and Larry Mayer. When he inked and lettered his own work – as he did in some of those early Bugs Bunny comics – he was up there with the best of them!
Paul Murry was also strictly an artist… but now that he’s been accepted (DESERVEDLY) as a “Disney Master”, with several volumes of that series dedicated to him, we may yet see the same for Tony Strobl.
Daisy Duck’s redesign seems to be something Barks’ editors wanted…but not having access to other Gold Key comics of the time, I don’t know if any other artists used Barks’ “Mod” Daisy or beatnik Gladstone. Although beatnik Gladstone was only in one story, “The Not-So-Ancient Mariner”. While it may have been timely (just barely), it really changed Gladstone a bit too much, going from the aggravatingly lucky pretty boy to a scruffy, poetry-spouting layabout. There is less for Donald to be jealous of with beatnik Gladstone.
The Scrooge stories of the 1960s continued to be inventive, partially because they had to be, as Barks seemed to have exhausted the scenic treasure hunt angle.
Other changes in Barks’ art style he would attribute to the lousy paper they sent him to draw on. As a somewhat lapsed artist myself, I will say that if I have paper that the pencil digs into, or the ink smudges or soaks into it too much, it can make a good drawing end up looking worse.
Paul Murry did some good work. I especially liked the Phantom Blot book, as it gave us a rest from the endlessly similar Carl Falberg serials (which I have to admit, there were some I really liked, especially the railroading stories.). It might be fun to see a book of Super Goof stories by Murry…it would give Mickey’s underappreciated pal the spotlight.
There are a few Tony Strobl stories I remember vividly…”The Weighted Crate Mystery” and “Adventure on Bomb Bird Island”, as well as the back-ups in those two issues, “Friendly Enemies”, in which Donald tries to make money by lobster fishing, and another I’ve forgotten the title of where Donald ends up buying a giant remote-controlled bird at an auction. If there was a Tony Strobl compilation, I hope they’d consider those four stories, plus “This is Your Life, Donald Duck” (which would make a great cover story) and “Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land”.
Deb:
As I understood it, Barks’ editors wanted “more of Daisy” overall, and Barks began this new direction with “The Beauty Business”. The feature was even rebranded from “Donald Duck” to “Donald and Daisy”. This was evident in all the remaining issues released in 1966, thru “The Queen of Quackland” by Vic Lockman, Tony Strobl, and Steve Steere in WDC&S #318 – and set the stage for the later DAISY AND DONALD title that ran for about a decade.
Any redesign was not part of this editorial mandate, as Daisy looked the same as she always did in other artists’ work. Same for Gladstone.
I needn’t restate that the Phantom Blot Disney Masters was WONDERFUL – and I keep prodding for a similar Murry volume for SUPER GOOF #1-6 and the four-page quasi-intro story from DONALD DUCK #102.
The question of contents for a potential Strobl volume of Disney Masters would probably draw many different suggestions. I’d want at least ONE of “The Incredible Golden Iceberg”, “The Battle at Hadrian’s Wall” and “Og’s Iron Bed”, if not all three.
But any such volume would, of necessity, exclude some of his best earlier work on Bugs Bunny, and his best later work on The Jetsons.
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