Disney comics, beyond Barks - C or D, s&d, etc

I love love love Don Rosa's stuff--I mean, it's obviously VERY much inspired by Barks, but he also does lots of stuff that's all his own, and it's hilarious.

nah, i'm an american and i grew up reading this stuff - kids around my age were lucky enough to have gladstone comics publishing disney comics instead of whitman or whatever, they treated the stories with dignity and they were fun to read. there'd always be like 5 stories packed into one issue!

i have to admit i think (boringly) that barks is about 10 times better than rosa, who's about 10 times better than any other disney comics i've seen.

though i forgot floyd gottfredson - his old adventure-oriented mickey mouse strips are pretty cool, though i haven't read any in years.

I *heart* Don Rosa.

He does wondrously frightening stuff with a densified four color world; something that lives and breathes, and work on so many levels.

Americans always go to Moore or Morríson for mindblowing, subversive comics - Don Rosa does much more in much less space. And with much less publicity.

Hi

For those who love Don Rosa's Duck stories, the following quote from Diamond Previews, for material shipping in America in June, might be of interest:

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE MCDUCK TP
by Don Rosa

All twelve chapters of Don Rosa's celebrated, Eisner Award-Winning series, detailing the history of the World's Richest Duck, are presented here in this affordable trade paperback edition!

SC, 7x10, 256pgs, FC..........$16.99

I'm going to be buying it, that's for sure.

David A

Carl Barks = overrated reactionary-sentimental rub

how is barks a "reactionary"?

"overrated" = only by those people who think his PAINTINGS are any good.

"sentimental" = not compared to, oh, EVERYTHING ELSE DISNEY.

Overrated? Depends on where you live, really. Scandinavians really like their Barks and are perhaps prone to rate him overtly, methinks. Rub, being subjective taste, is fair enough if you feel that way. But reactionary-sentimental?

It sounds like a poorly thought, hasty, unfair judgement to me. Barks stories are versatile, and cannot be singularly contained within that description. There are humorous shorts. There are adventure stories a plenty. And there are humorous adventure stories. And a sense of wonder really infuse the best Barks stories (which usually are the ones that Don Rosa chooses to follow up on in his serializations).

You need to read more varied stories by Barks, I think.

"The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" is indeed very good, the episode where Scrooge learns about his mother's death (this must be the only Disney comic I've ever read where someone actually dies) is one of the few comic books that has made me cry. Don Rosa isn't a particularly good drawer (his characters are somewhat stiff and his art has this sort of a dilettante feel to it), but his stories are very inventive. Rosa has a lot of groovy and fantastic sci-fi ideas, like the one story where Gyro Gearloose invents a liquid that can corrode anything, and it accidentally gets loose and starts to eat it's way towards the Earth's center, and Scrooge and Donald and the Duck kids have to go after it in order to save the Earth from destroying. Rosa, like Barks was, is highly revered in Finland, and he has even written a 30-page Scrooge story based on the Finnish national epic, Kalevala. I'm not sure whether it's available in English, though.

As for other Disney comics, Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse strips are also great. Even though they're basically in the gag form, Gottfredson drew some very long adventure stories, like the one where Mickey gets lost inside a Robin Hood book, or the one where he meets Eega Beeva, the man from the future. The Mickey Mouse sunday strips form the thirties and forties are also good, they relay a warm feel of a bygone era, and show how much has been lost due to the fact that sunday comic strips have been getting smaller and smaller.

The Donald Duck strips (from 1938 to the fifties) by Al Taliaferro and Bob Carp are also worth checking out. They're more like your traditonals gags with few longer stories, but as gags they definitely work. They too reflect their own time in an interesting way, for example there are wartime strips about rationing, the introduction of TV to the American home, etc.

Aforesaid collector's volumes have gotten up to #9 now; the vast majority of 'em are Barks-related, but I have found out that Italy has been responsible for some really good stories, especially as far as crossovers go. So far, they've published two of these, "Operation Quack" and "Searching For The Zodiac Jewel".

"Operation Quack" (1973), written by Guido Martina, is a bit rough around the edges: it was designed purely as a marketing vehicle (a tie-in for a new batch of disney stamps/stickers), and you can very much tell that it was one of the first attempts at having a Mickey Mouse/Donald Duck crossover, in that characters do some very out of character stuff for the story's sake (Scrooge visits Clarabelle Cow at one point for no discernable reason!), but it has its charms (some great Pluto moments!)

"Searching For The Zodiac Jewel" (1988), written by Bruno Sarda and drawn by Massimo de Vita and Franco Valussi, is just plain awesome. It starts with Mickey and Goofy doing some time travelling, which leads to them finding out about the zodiac jewel, an artifact that lets you gain full knowledge of how time works and (presumably) allows you to look into the future. Thing is, the jewel was broken up centuries ago, and now they have to track down all the diferent inheritants of its pieces. I read this already, when I was a very young kid, and it totally kickstarted my love of big epic crossover stories, thus preparing me for future superhero hijinks. The character interaction works a whole lot better this time - since it's more of an adventure story than "Operation Quack" everyone's motivations are a lot clearer (Scrooge wants wealth, Mickey knowledge.) And damn, this thing is just so FUN - circus animals! Hawaii! Aliens! Ghosts! Pirates! Giant scorpions!!!

Also, the Zodiac Stone is sort of Disney's Infinity Glove, isn't it?

I like Dan Jippes stuff; Gottfredson and Taliaferro are both terribly underrated.
Will Van Horn's duckwork is an aquired taste, but I really like it!
Rosa is, of course, genius and Unka Carl is right up there in the pantheon of heroes.