There’s some great conversation about Carl Barks going on over at Michael Barrier’s site. In short, while many (myself included) are trying to find other examples of characters that have consistency in spite of a lack of it, like Barks’s Donald, the answer seems to be there really is none. Perhaps that’s what makes Barks’s genius so unique, because one can’t really find parallels between his and other authors’ worlds.
The following is not my favorite Barks story. It probably wouldn’t even be in my Top 20. But it was definitely one of the first ones I ever read closely (in a Gladstone reprint I received in a trade with Rodney Bowcock), after hearing so much about Barks, and when I was of the mindset of: “OK nobody can be that good.” (I had a similar view of Hitchcock in my mid-teens.) But as I quickly found out, he really does deserve the near-canonization he’s received. I’m surprised that I have never read an overall negative critique about Barks, at least from someone sane. Maybe levelheaded people are afraid of that canonization status, and refrain from criticizing Barks (I know I’m afraid of criticizing Charles Schulz because of him being a patron saint in America), but I’d love to read any, just for a different point of view.
This September 1944 story (from Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories #48) is still early enough in Barks’s oeuvre to show some of the “bugs” that plagued it (a little cruder drawing, too much of the brashness of the animated Donald) while at the same time showing how quickly Barks evolved as an artist and writer (stronger sense of composition and dialog). Browsing through these original 1940s issues, I’m stupefied at how literally none of Barks’s colleagues took it upon themselves to improve their work and follow his example.
(I wonder if it was intentional that the forms Donald and Jones take at the end of this story resemble Al Capp’s Hairless Joe and Lonesome Polecat.)
Thad, I gotta ask. And I’m sure you know. Why was the decision made to color everyone’s shirts black in the comics?
I’m pasting something David Gerstein left as a comment awhile ago… hope it helps.
In cartoons, Donald’s shirt is of course blue. Combined with his white body, it makes for great, visually appealing contrast. When Donald first appeared in comics—in the full-color Sunday funnies—the desire for contrast continued, so the blue was kept. Similarly, when Donald’s nephews appeared in 1937, they got the multi-color treatment you’d expect in terms of both their caps and their shirts.
The problem came when the Ducks entered daily (i.e. non-colored) newspaper comics of their own, in 1938. The shirts that had been colored blue, red, and green would now print as white. No contrast. So the decision came to make Donald’s and his nephews’ shirts black—thus preserving the desired contrast even on a black-and-white newspaper page.
When Western Publishing reprinted these daily newspaper strips in their comic books (starting in 1940), it was easier simply to leave the shirts black—even in full color—than to bleach them out and recolor them blue, red, or green.
And when Western then began to create Donald Duck comic book stories of their own (1942), they wanted them to be of-a-piece with the DD newspaper strips they were then running. The majority of these strips, at the time, were dailies (i.e. black shirt). So Barks and others gave Donald a black shirt in the new comic book stories, disregarding the reason that the black shirt was originally used.
And the tradition continues to this day in a majority of comics, though there have been exceptions now and again.
As a kid I had a couple of Donald Duck/Uncle Scrooge comics, and I’m pretty sure they were both Carl Barks’ work. I loved them, and if they hadn’t disintegrated back in the 90s, I’d probably still be reading them. There was something so coherent about the story lines that you didn’t get in a lot of the other non-super-hero comics, which would just suddenly go wacky for a few pages and then end with everyone getting bags of money.
Hairless Joe and Lonesome Polecat!… Never noticed it before; but now that you mention it, it’s so damn clear that it couldn’t *not* have been intentional.
Suddenly the score to Columbia’s SADIE HAWKINS DAY is invading my head. Make it stop.
Oh, and re: the sanctification of Schulz: here’s my favorite piece on the topic:
• http://nypress.com/article-770-against-snoopy.html
Ironically, I like Snoopy a little more than the author here does. But there’s no question that much of the humor he was utilized for—particularly later on—was relatively repetitive and superficial in nature.
As anyone who’s ever been to my house can attest, I’m a HUGE Peanuts fan, and while the strip certainly had a marked decline (that I feel started in the early 80’s, not when the author of the piece that David quotes says) comparing it to Garfield or Family Circus at any point is completely unfair at best, and utter horseshit at worst.
Peanuts ALWAYS had moments of brilliance, even though they were spread out much further during the 90’s. Those strips weren’t worth a damn after they were more than five years old.
Rodney- I just don’t like Peanuts. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with overexposure and it being shoved in my face wherever I go. I usually find if I don’t watch/read a certain artist’s work for a long time, the appeal comes back (I had similar feelings on Freleng, but I rediscovered his greatness after not watching his cartoons for awhile). Problem is, Schulz is everywhere, so the love probably won’t come back.
While it’s difficult for me to imagine, I can easily accept that. And as I said, it certainly had a peak and a decline, just like most things. The introduction of Spike certainly figured into that, as did Peppermint Patty’s school gags (on par with the endless barrage of spider/lasagna/”Aren’t we bachelors?” jokes in Garfield) and the odd surrealism of Sally’s conversations with the school building. But….I love it. I can’t help it, I always have. Some of my earliest memories ever involve the Peanuts gang.
And whether you like it or not….comparing it to something as vapid and terrible as Family Circus is kind of absurd.
I would never equate it to shit like Family Circus. At it’s best, it’s definitely a classic, regardless of whether I like it or not. So I have no intention of going on a spiel about why I don’t like Peanuts – I just don’t care about it.
I love Peanuts. But even I’ll agree that the strip only really had a little over a decade and a half of truly outstanding material. Although I like the characters, I do find that the introduction of Woodstock and the pairing of Peppermint Patty and Marcie to be the beginning of the end for the strip. I’ve been slowly buying the complete strip collections, but I think I may stop when I reach that point.
To be honest, I’m more of a fan of the specials (at least until the late ’70s, when Guaraldi died) and the first two movies. Those were my first exposure to Peanuts, and like rodney my earliest memories involve the Peanuts gang.
Thad, I do kind of find it strange that you have such a hard time getting away from Peanuts. There was a time up until a year or so where Peanuts wasn’t even on my radar and I forgotten all about it. Sure the specials would pop up on the holidays and I’d see the occasional greeting card, but I never felt assaulted by it. Maybe you’re being stalked.
Sometimes, when watching what has come to be considered an epoch-making film, like King Kong, or Frankenstein or Citizen Kane, I find myself wishing I could see it through the eyes of someone viewing it when it was first released, to know what it was like to see for the first time something that was unlike anything that had come before, or at least to experience it in the context of the times.
I just realized I have done something akin to that, in the thrill I always felt when I’d peruse the comic racks at the local drugstore and find a new one with something by “the good artist” in it, either one of the monthly Walt Disney Comics and Stories, or better yet, an Uncle Scrooge. Something about the anticipation, one month for the former and 3 for the latter, made the eventual reward all the sweeter.
Carl Barks sarks.
Thank you, JV!
Good ol’ Snoozy can always be counted on for words of wisdom.
Anybody else wonder what Donald might have thought about his neighbor sitting down to a dinner of some kind of roast fowl? Imagine barging in on your neighbor, and finding him about to chow down on the corpse of one of your relatives–and then you get said corpse STUCK OVER YOUR HEAD. No wonder Donald is even more obsessed with getting revenge.
Thad, I’d love to see you deconstruct some Peanuts comics and hear your serious thoughts on them. If there are things you don’t like about the strip you shouldn’t be afraid to express your opinion. Lets hear your thoughts!
As far as Barks goes, I think he deserves his reputation as a great comic artist. Certainly moreso then Schultz. I think the majority of America are a bit brainwashed on the subject because of their nostalgia for the Christmas and Halloween TV specials. And that catchy “Linus and Lucy” tune that’s associated with the strip. When speaking of Schultz, you really need to look at THE COMIC STRIP and forget about the TV specials which seems impossible for most people to do. Speaking of the comic alone, if it weren’t for all the other stuff associated with peanuts I think most WOULD HAVE said the strip itself is mediocre.
The only flaw with that thinking is that most of the specials were not very good, aside from the two that you mentioned.
Additionally, the comic was a huge hit for 15 years before the first special was ever made, and those are the years most people agree were the best years of the Peanuts comic, as well as at least 5 years afterward.
I think most will agree that half of Peanut’s existence as a comic strip was mediocre. But the first 15-20 years was very strong. And I think people will agree to that with or without the specials influencing them.
Also, it’s worth pointing out that the Peanuts gang was on the cover of Time in April 1965, a full eight months before the Christmas special first aired, with the tag line “The World According To Peanuts”. So people did think the strip was pretty special in a time when the only animation that the characters had appeared in were Ford Falcon ads.
Charles Schultz problem was he made Charlie Brown far too pathetic to be funny. He makes the entire world against him.
What Barks did with Donald was make the world he lived in as tough as would be on anyone else but he didn’t incessantly beat on him. Donald also had his faults of his own like his ill temper but it didn’t come from being just an ass like in the cartoons, his anger came from just fusteration sticking to menial jobs for little pay and alot of work.
It probably was intentional. Maybe Al Capp was one of Barks early influences in comics.