Walt Disney's Christmas Parade 1963 - Christmas Comic Book Blitz!

Continuing my Christmas Comic Book Marathon, here's a Gold Key gem from the year I was born. Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge and Huey, Dewey and Louie and Christmas all around.

I think I should have mentioned this before, but the mind plays tricks and assumes when it's busy. All the comic book scans I've posted here for the holdiays have been scans I've glommed over the last dozen or so years off of Usenet, or the Internet. The best thing about the digital age to me, is the accessability of all the things I love, even from earlier ages. Old Time Radio, Comic Books, classic Television, classic Film, Comic Strips, Music, etc...I capitalize them all purposefully to underline their importance. All these things were things you could only get hints of in the stone age of pre-1995 unless you were very wealthy or spent vast amounts of time, and even then you would only be privy to a minor percentage of all that's out there.

I want to thank all the original scanners of and posters of the huge digital library of these things who've always been generous enough to share them all with the masses.

And I want to wish a very Merry Christmas to them all. There are some of us out here who truly appreciate it.

And to all the great comic book blogs out there who continue to add to this digital library and add even more with insightful commentary and insight, the same goes out to all of you. I shall be contributing more and more as time goes by. My scans for my Sunday posts of "Nemo: the Classic Comics Library" are only part of my payback to all of you.

Now...dig in!

Talk to you soon.

Nemo #7: Carl Barks part 2...the "Year of the Duck"

"Nemo: the Classic Comics Library" continues it's first year anniversary with more of it's spotlight on "Duck" comic great Carl Barks and the 50th anniversary of Donald Duck.

Talk to you soon.

The GOOD Duck Artist - Carl Barks!

Born March 27, 1901, Carl Barks would have been 109 years old today!

During my series on the "History of Golden Age Comic Books" I am focusing on the super hero genre, but there were a lot of other things happening in other fields of comic books at the time. Like a lot of comics, they were often published without a byline, especially in the field of humor comics. Even more especially in the line of Disney comics.

Walt was after all working hard to "brand" everything that came out of his studio, so most every thing simply said "by Walt Disney". This was a great way to gain a footprint in the publics' consciousness, but the downside was, allot of great artists went unheralded. The deal was though, that even we feeble minded comics readers could tell one issue was drawn by someone different that another issue, and though he was unidentified, Carl became known for his work on Donald Duck stories as "The GOOD Duck Artist". The public discovered his true identity as comics fandom grew in the 1960's and 1970's, and fandom was able to let Carl know how much he was appreciated.

Carl Barks went to work for the Walt Disney studio in 1935 working as an inbetweener animator and eventually a story man, working closely with Donald Duck director Jack Hannah. So closely, in fact, that when Western Publishing was doing it's first Donald Duck comic book for United States publication, it was Jack who did half the book and Carl who did the other.

By 1942, Carl was becoming unhappy with the war time working conditions at the studio (money was tight and the war department took over a lot of the studio to produce content for them), and he had also suffered from am on-going sinus condition which was aggravated by the air conditioning in the studio. He opted to resign his job at Disney and move to Hemet, CA. (still the arm pit of the Inland Empire) and become a chicken farmer.

He didn't do very well as a chicken guy, so to subsidize himself he contacted Western Publishing again to see if they had any more work. Carl went to work on Donald Duck comics and didn't stop until 1966!

Carl's was influenced by adventure story tellers like Hal Foster's work on Prince Valiant, so his duck stories began to more and more incorporate adventure into the humor of Duckburg. His classic stories of Donald Duck and his nephews going on grand adventures are legendary in the world of comics. At one point he invented a one-shot character for a Christmas story, Donald's Uncle Scrooge McDuck. This one-shot character took off and Carl's Uncle Scrooge is probably the most famous Disney character NOT to be created for animation, but who was really born from a Hemet chicken farmers pen.

There are lots of bigger appreciators of Barks than I who know a lot more about the incredibly detailed stories he did. Lots of folks still talking about him 10 years after he passed away too.

Doug Grey over at his great blog "The Greatest Ape" has done a number of postings about Carl, check them here!

Coincidentally, over at the "Ten Cent Dreams" blog, Lysdexicus is focusing this week on comics with giant robot antagonists and protagonists, and just yesterday spotlighted a Barks Uncle Scrooge/giant robot story! Check it out here!

Here's my contribution to the Barks birthday! Click the pics to embiggen...you won't be sorry!

Lots of stuff to see, but hell man, it's Saturday! Take your computer out to the back yard and sit under a tree and have some adventure with Barks' Ducks!

Thanks Carl! For taking the time to fill your comics with so much!