Carl Barks

Celebrating The Work And Legacy of Carl Barks, The Good Artist
Celebrating The Work And Legacy of Carl Barks, The Good Artist
Celebrating The Work And Legacy of Carl Barks, The Good Artist
Comics as a medium has no shortage of good artists. But to those in the know, there's only one man they mean when they say “the Good Artist” with a capital G and a capital A, and that's Carl Barks, Disney's duck man. In the earliest days of Disney comics, writers and artists worked anonymously, with all stories being signed with Walt's name. But fans could tell a difference in the Donald Duck stories written and drawn by a certain artist — the one who introduced Scrooge McDuck, Magica DeSpell, the Beagle Boys, Gladstone Gander, Gyro Gearloose, and many more — and they would refer to him among themselves as the Good Duck Artist, and would continue to do such even after some enterprising fans uncovered his identity in the late 1950s.
Cast Party: Who Should Star in an 'Uncle Scrooge' Movie?
Cast Party: Who Should Star in an 'Uncle Scrooge' Movie?
Cast Party: Who Should Star in an 'Uncle Scrooge' Movie?
Welcome to Cast Party, the feature that imagines a world with even more live action comic book adaptations than we currently have, and comes up with arguably the best casting suggestions you’re ever going to find for the movies and shows we wish could exist. This week we're doing one that's been in the back of my mind for a while: A Disney Uncle Scrooge movie. This movie will of course be an epic, globe-trotting adventure for the whole family. It'll be based primarily on the comics by Carl Barks and Don Rosa, but I've incorporated elements and characters from the classic Ducktales TV series, mostly because they already solved some of the problems of adaptation. Uncle Scrooge himself would be the first to point out that it's wasteful to reinvent the wheel.
Bizarro Back Issues: Donald Duck and the Tear-Harvesting Christmas Witch (1948)
Bizarro Back Issues: Donald Duck and the Tear-Harvesting Christmas Witch (1948)
Bizarro Back Issues: Donald Duck and the Tear-Harvesting Christmas Witch (1948)
Last week, I mentioned that Lost in the Andes, Fantagraphics' amazing new book Donald Duck stories by Carl Barks, had one of the weirdest Christmas stories I've ever read. And for me, that's saying something: Christmas comics are one of the few things I go out of my way to collect regardless of who the creators are and who puts them out. I love the darn things, and over the years, I've read hundreds of 'em, going back through my favorites every year. And even with all that, The Golden Christmas Tree might just take the fruitcake. After alll, most of the other Christmas stories I've read don't involve a harvest of tears or someone turning into a woodchipper.
Bizarro Back Issues: Donald Duck In ‘A Christmas For Shacktown’ (1952)
Bizarro Back Issues: Donald Duck In ‘A Christmas For Shacktown’ (1952)
Bizarro Back Issues: Donald Duck In ‘A Christmas For Shacktown’ (1952)
If you're a regular ComicsAlliance reader, then you already know that I'm pretty fascinated by the weirder comics of the past, but at Christmastime, my thoughts turn to more heartwarming tales. As soon as that calendar flips over to December, 'tis the season for Santa Claus, presents, the occasional talking Christmas tree that Wonder Woman rescued from the Nazis by holding a door shut and talking about how it felt like being spanked. I mean, yeah, they're still pretty weird, but they've got that Christmas spirit! Case in point: "A Christmas For Shacktown," the title story in the latest Fantagraphics collection of Disney Duck tales by the legendary Carl Barks. At 32 pages, it's a sprawling epic (By Barks' standards, anyway) that hits those beautiful Holiday themes of altruism and the spirit of giving. Although to be fair, it does get a little closer to cannibalism than most other Christmas comics.Our story begins as Donald Duck's three nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, are taking a shortcut home from school through Shacktown, the hard-luck side of Duckburg where Calisota's poor gather together in sub-Dickensian poverty. Now, you'd think that a city built around the most successful businessman in the history of the world would be prosperous enough that even the bad neighborhoods would be doing all right, but apparently McDuck industries isn't the proven job creator that you might expect. If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably because its owner keeps three cubic acres of cash in a gigantic bin on top of a nearby hill, but I'm no economist. That's a different Chris Sims.
IDW Artist's Editions For Barks And Rosa 'Uncle Scrooge' Comics
IDW Artist's Editions For Barks And Rosa 'Uncle Scrooge' Comics
IDW Artist's Editions For Barks And Rosa 'Uncle Scrooge' Comics
IDW seems dead set on taking as much of my money as it possibly can. Not only has the publisher produced high-end 'Artist's Editions' of some of my favorite comics, including Jack Kirby's Fourth World, Frank Miller's Daredevil and Walt Simonson's Thor, but as part of this year's New York Comic-Con, it's announced upcoming Artifact and Artist's Editions respectively for Carl Barks' and Don Rosa's Uncle Scrooge stories. The announcement comes as part of a resurgence of interest in the creators' work on the World's Richest Duck, which also includes new hardcover collections of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge from Fantagraphics. The IDW collections, however, will print the original art at its original size.
Link Ink: Comics, Film/TV and Gaming News Links 07.11.14
Link Ink: Comics, Film/TV and Gaming News Links 07.11.14
Link Ink: Comics, Film/TV and Gaming News Links 07.11.14
Each weekday, ComicsAlliance brings you a carefully selected variety of links from around the web about comics and comics-related media, including movies, video games, toys, and whatever else might be worth noting. Quite frankly, these are items you may just need to know about to have a productive day. Take a look at today's hand-picked links after the jump.
Ask Chris #202: Scrooge McDuck Is America
Ask Chris #202: Scrooge McDuck Is America
Ask Chris #202: Scrooge McDuck Is America
Q: Aside from Superman and Captain America what hero is the most fitting representation of The United States? -- @white_dolomite A: You know, just before I sat down to write this, I was reading some Judge Dredd comics and thinking about how fascinating the idea of Dredd as this distinctly, explicitly American icon, covered in eagles and flags and badges and guns and riding on a motorcycle that is also covered in eagles, flags, badges and guns is when you consider that he's a view of America created by people who aren't Americans. There's a lot that goes along with that, and it's fun to think about when you're reading through those stories and figuring out what defines them. But when you get down to it, that doesn't mean that he's the best representation of the good ol' USA. Assuming you mean "hero" as in "protagonist" and not just as in "masked crimefighter," then the answer's easy. The quintessentially American comic book character is Scrooge McDuck.
Link Ink: Comics, Film/TV and Gaming News Links 07.04.14
Link Ink: Comics, Film/TV and Gaming News Links 07.04.14
Link Ink: Comics, Film/TV and Gaming News Links 07.04.14
Each weekday, ComicsAlliance brings you a carefully selected variety of links from around the web about comics and comics-related media, including movies, video games, toys, and whatever else might be worth noting. Quite frankly, these are items you may just need to know about to have a productive day. Take a look at today's hand-picked links after the jump.
Best Art Ever (This Week) - 04.18.14
Best Art Ever (This Week) - 04.18.14
Best Art Ever (This Week) - 04.18.14
  We make a regular practice at ComicsAlliance of spotlighting particular artists or specific bodies of work, as well as the special qualities of comic book storytelling, but because cartoonists, illustrators and their fans share countless numbers of great pinups, fan art and other illustrations on sites like Flickr, Tumblr, DeviantArt and seemingly infinite art blogs that we’ve created Best Art E
10 Surprising Comic Book Appearances by Santa Claus (et al.)
10 Surprising Comic Book Appearances by Santa Claus (et al.)
10 Surprising Comic Book Appearances by Santa Claus (et al.)
Two of my greatest loves in life are Christmas and comics, and so it's always a treat for me when the two cross over in that most wonderful of things: the holiday special. Even when those things are bad, they're still kind of good, because it's Christmas, and you're feeling charitable. But sometimes the introduction of Christmas-themed elements are not what you expect. Here are ten appearances by Christmas folk that might confound you, and that's even without mentioning that time Aquaman saved the baby Jesus from pirates by mind-controlling a giant squid.

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