Barks Notes & Sources

This document dedicated to that bomberguy fella

 0:12 - OK, so here’s my math here. The high estimate of Barks’ readership I’ve found comes from Leonard Maltin’s Winter 83 Disney News Piece (reprinted here: http://www.mainstgazette.com/2008/10/carl-barks-story.html), in which he estimates 22 million global monthly readers. Barrier’s Funnybooks refers to Western paying Disney royalties on more than 2 million issues per month in the late 40s. Now, tracking data for the 60s is not using the same math, but I haven’t seen any numbers that put any Marvel or DC book into even the 7 figures during that period. While it’s easy to say that the characters of Lee or Kirby had greater readership, those actual comics of Amazing Spider-Man or Fantastic Four or Avengers, were not selling nearly the same volume, especially when one considers the global scope of the Duck comics. The only numbers that do come close would be the speculator boom of the 90s, but where the Duck comics were likely read by a multiple per copies sold (see footnote 11in Ault, Conversations, xxxii) a fraction of the copies sold of X-Force 1, or Spider-Man 1 were being read. Because of this I feel comfortable saying that Barks is the most widely read American comic creator, but I’m sure someone out there will have another theory!

0:26 - These images and this story come from The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime by Toshio Ban, translated by Frederik L. Schodt.

0:52 - Quoted here: https://www.tcj.com/tezuka-osamu-and-american-comics/3/

1:25 - Tezuka Osamu’s Ten Cents by Ryan Holmberg. Bubbles Zine #9: https://www.bubbleszine.com/products

1:32 - https://www.tcj.com/tezuka-osamu-and-american-comics/

2:26 - Interesting Market Share Doc for 1959 https://comichron.com/blog/2008/08/06/comics-market-shares-1959-according-to/

2:45 - Willits, Vanguard #2, 1968, quoted in Ault, Conversations, xviii

2:58 - Ault, Conversations, 21 and elsewhere

3:09 - ibid

4:36 - Hey it’s Steamboat Willy

5:00 - George Lucas on Carl Barks: “And most, well maybe not most importantly, but Carl Barks who was the guy that invented Uncle Scrooge, and was a really key figure in my life. He was my hero."
https://kitbashed.com/blog/george-lucas-on-comics

Spielberg on Carl Barks: “Later, Spielberg presents Barks with an E.T. poster which he signs ‘For Carl Barks and Donald Duck – to whom I owe everything, Steven Spielberg.’”
https://stevenspielbergchronicles.tumblr.com/post/152244485341/1954-carl-barks-publishes-the-comic-album-seven

5:30 - https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=40&threadid=27279

5:58 - Quoted in David Stephen Calonne, R. Crumb, Literature, Autobiography, and the Quest for Self, 30

Bonus fact, Barks on Crumb: ““I noticed that Crumb’s underlying message … is that nothing is important enough to be taken seriously. This was a message I often sneaked into my duck stories.” Ibid, 22

6:15 - https://twitter.com/kamenjiro/status/1118464208272629760, translated by Ayakuweb

7:20 - https://www.mouseplanet.com/9969/How_Disney_Fans_Found_Carl_Barks

8:00 - It’s worth noting that Willits claims to have provided Spicer the name in his version of events. https://www.cbarks.dk/themeetingswillits.htm. In Spicer’s version he claims to have discovered it on his own.

8:20 - Full text of both letters letters - https://www.cbarks.dk/thefanletter.htm

9:20 - Ault, Conversations, xxviii

10:03 - This and the following footage does not come from Willits’ interview, but from an interview conducted by Donald Ault and Tom Andrae, which can be seen in full here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_70LrPDN0I&t=1245s. I use it for cinematic effect because it is the earliest filmed interview of Barks I am aware of (and Barks doesn’t seem to age anyway).

10:27 - Most of this biographical portion is sourced from Carl Barks and the Art of the Comic Book, by Michael Barrier. It is sadly out of print, so big thanks to the Lasalle library for allowing me to read their copy, although I had to do it on premises so I don’t have specific page references in front of me. But the same or similar information appears in Ault’s introduction to Conversations as well as Barrier’s later Funnybooks both of which are easily accessible.

11:51 - Barks varies when asked who his influences were, but he most frequently seems to mention Windsor McCay and Hal Foster. I left Foster out of this section because he wouldn’t begin Prince Valiant until the 30s, but it’s influence is evident in his Duck Work.

13:33 - Bark’s Eye Opener work is available in The Unexpurgated Carl Barks, with an intro by Art Spiegelman. I don’t recommend it.

13:50 - I don’t know if it’s this exact article, but I couldn’t find the exact one Barks frequently describes

13:55 - this and the following Disney footage comes from this video on the making of Snow White: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OebUzEhSLBI

16:36 - This video generally does a great disservice to Floyd Gottfredson, the genius behind the Mickey Mouse newspaper strip. He suffered the same fate as Barks, doing fantastic work for decades in complete anonymity. Barks even credits Gottfredson with his approach to turning the Disney shorts into grand adventures. I strongly recommend the first few volumes of Fantagraphics’ Gottfredson library.

17:00 - This letter provides a slightly different account of the role of Pirate’s Gold and the reasons’ for Barks departure from Disney, but it goes against the general depiction of those events, so I’ll just put it here for your consideration:
https://www.disneyhistoryinstitute.com/2009/11/carl-barks-leaves-disney-think-goodness.html

17:31 - This image is from a later Avengers comic, because Marvel/Atlas and DC were not crediting artists either in the 50s, but I think it represents well the approach the “Big Two” would take towards producing their books.

17:54 - these images are actually scripts for Junior Woodchucks comics that Barks’ did late in his career, but since all of his original work was destroyed, I use them here for artistic effect

18:45 - I am repeating here Barks’ own evaluation of the industry, obviously there are other people at the time, like EC or Eisner, who were taking comics seriously

20:00 - Ault, Conversations, 22

20:19 ibid, 67

23:20 - This interview comes from Barks’ 1994 European tour, but I feel it fits the sentiment here.

23:40 - A magazine titled “Chuuni Jidai Volume 10” contained a report about Monkey Punch and Tezuka Osamu’s trip to San Diego Comic-Con (1980), translated by Ayakuweb

24:04 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzlvsPFcES4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rmIXv5i1TA