AJD

anyways, 108 is a nice enough cover (the fact I mistook it for barks says a lot, but I'll stick with what I said about donald's hands, and the faces. I must have missed something here - are we talking about WDC&S 108? the one with Donald and HDL on a small sailboat? That is a lay-down classic Barks cover. One of my absolute favourites! Barrier's book has it as Barks and it was one of Gladstones Barks' poster series (I want to buy one if anyone knows where I can get it). Or did I miss something?

Since the first one seemed to be of interest, here's another. This one has a different car for Scrooge on the back cover. I suspect this scene was redrawn from Barks panels by the unknown Australian artist(s) who produced local Disney covers sometimes. Cheers, Andrew

Excellent point, I never thought about the gag/associative trends. One of the hardest things about distinguishing so many issues within the whole Dell/GK Uncle Scrooge run was the gag covers, which got compounded because they`d be reprinted over and over. And the lack of issue numbers on the GK covers, of course. Tell me about it! I can have read the issue five times and generally speaking I still won't have a clue what story I'm about to read by looking at the front cover I think I have to stick up for the gag covers here! Those Scrooge covers in the Dell run are, to my mind, some of Barks' finest work. Classic composition, solid colours that look great and really striking images. (I have a couple framed on the wall of my office here - #4 and #10. I'm going to add #12 soon.) I think the Scrooge covers took a turn for the worse at #45, when the story-specific ones re-appeared. I'll caveat all this by saying that FC 386 and FC 456 have great and iconic covers and the first gag cover FC 495 leaves me cold. But the others make those Scrooge issues classic comics and a beautiful timeless product (which is why they keep getting reused). BTW the Gold key issues have a date publication code that can let you work out which is which. For example, WDCS 264 is 10011-209, which breaks down to (1) decade = sep 1962- aug 1972 (0011) = WDCS (2) = 1962 (09) = september. Grabbing one at random beside me, it is 90011-205 or a WDCS between sep 72 and aug 82, and specifically is May 1982. (It has a great Barks gag cover too.) The Uncle Scrooge codes work the same way, but the title id is 0038. So 10038-611 is Uncle Scrooge November 1966, 90038-803 is the March 1978 issue and so on. Apologies if you all knew that already, but I was very pleased when I worked it out!

Welcome to the boards. Gotta say that's a fantastic book to start with! Can I have it? Please?

Very cool, Andrew. I really like the back cover too. I take it these are tough to track down? Yes, the quality of the paper tends to work against them. The last half a dozen must have been printed in larger numbers, because they pop up on ebay a lot (and sell for $20-$30) but in my 6 years there, I think I have seen #1 and #2 once each. I've found a couple in antique stores too - Mobil collectables are a bit of a thing in some circles here, so I hope to get them all eventually. I have a lead on a #12 from New Zealand at the moment.

I just got this in, and thought I'd show it here. This is the last of 24 giveaway comics distributed in Australia starting in the mid 1960s. I remember getting this one with my dad when I was a kid - probably 1968. There was a New Zealand series as well. The Australian ones are numbered and glued, the NZ ones un-numbered and stapled. They are printed on very poor quality paper and the production standards were low as well - that's a production crease right through the front cover. But they are a really neat little collectable - they are half the size of a regular book. The duck stories are Barks 10 pagers from WDC&S, but are edited down to fit the format. There are 16 pages, including front and back covers, making 7 and a bit normal comic pages. Sometimes the editing is well done, but sometimes odd gaps appear in the story. There were some Mickey Mouse issues, and a Sword in the Stone one. These are a collection focus for me this year. I have 12 of the 24. In the (unlikely) event that you see any, you know who to PM...

The chart says 1184 is missing. Allow me.

I don't know if 15c variants exist, but FWIW, my copies of 14-16 are all 10c. My 11-13 are 15c. (I don't have 9, 10 - yet). Maybe the price reduction was an atempt to pick sales up? After all, Pogo finished after #16. Andrew

You geeky intuition is likely on target as the MOC back covers are not pictured in the Gladstone albums. Or in the hardcover Barks Library. Can anyone post a scan? I've never seen them.

I just noticed a neat example of an artist re-using an idea. Two takes on the same gag from Walt Kelly (and ducks on both, of course). Here's one I've had for a year or two, the Xmas 1946 WDC&S: and here's a purchase I just made on eBay, Pogo Possum #11 from 1952:

I feel your pain - that's my experience too.

Bergdoll, are you (or anyone else) interested in the Australian Uncle Scrooge variants? I'd be happy to write a short article and scan some covers. I posted a couple last week.

I think this one might have been omitted from the Don Rosa index: Title: Back in Time for a Dime! Year: 1990 Book: DuckTales Magazine, Spring 1990 Publisher: Disney This was reprinted in a relatively recent Uncle Scrooge. Don't go to too much effort to find it. It's a horrible 4 page story that was scripted by Rosa and drawn by someone else (Cosme Cortieri from Diaz studios). Apologies if this was already noted.

Pogo #3 An eBay purchase of a 'VF+'. Still, a very nice 7.0 or so for $40 Anyone else like these?

I don't know why that particular issue is larger, but I've seen a similar thing in another title. The Australian run of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories had about five issues in 1950 that were significantly larger than the earlier or later ones. As a result, they are harder to find in middle to higher grades, because they tended to stick out of piles and get beaten up more. I'd expect that to be true of the outsize Planet Comics as well.

Another Australian Scarpa reprint from the 1960s. This is my favourite Scarpa story. I wrote to Gemstone and suggested they run it - no luck so far.

well that's just it. he kind of sucked the fun out of those stories and made them one giant barksian research orgy. which is not my idea of what comics are all about. I think you are being harsh there. Rosa did get a bit overwrought with the Barks legacy in places, but there is some genuinely funny and poignant stuff in there too. At his best, Rosa is great fun. At his worst, he's better than everyone else, except for Barks. I'd even go as far as saying that Bad Rosa is better than bad Barks. Case study: Jet Witch

Here's a Scarpa cover from a 1960s Australian reprint. We got US and European stories reprinted here, with the latter presumably translated here. I have fond memories of these stories. Re-reading them, they are a fair bit better than most Euro-stories, but nowhere in Barks' league.

Great gift!! I won this off of Ebay a while back, so it's possible your book was from the same collection: You are likely right. Those signatures are almost identical - and are both slightly different from the other Barks signatures (reproduced in books) that I was able to find. What's the back story on yours?

That's what I felt as well. I've tried to read them and thought some were kid of novel, but I just never got captured by the stories. On the other hand, I've been rereading the 6,000 Barks pages over the past 3 years and thought at least 2/3 were a pure joy to read. Perhaps it's just a generation gap thing(?). As I've pointed out before, however, one of the truely remarkable things about working for Pixar was observing how the super talented people the story department worked. They had an extreme case of the pressure cooker effect you get when you put some of the smartest, most creative, and hardest working artists together in a small space and let them challenge each other in friendly competition. My own theory is that what made Barks' stories stand out was a combination of raw talent and - just as importantly - what he learned from the story department at Disney in the 30s. At Pixar, _everything_ was about story and a lot of knowledge was not written down anywhere. It just was passed from artist to artist. Everything I've read about the Disney studios around the time of "Snow White" sounds remarkably like the environment that existed at Pixar. Based on this, it makes perfect sense to me why so few other comic book artists, including Rosa, have come close to Barks in terms of storytelling. This is a really insightful comment. I'm in the process of reading Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers' (a really great book), which shows how important the environment (and timing) is for generating high achievers. It's very clear that the sort of hothouse environment that Barks found himself in played a big role in his development. But, having said that, his earliest comic stories are too much like storyboards ('Pirate Gold' is almost unreadable, for example). It's the development of the more literary threads in his work that really elevates it above the pack - and that seems to have come from within.

That's a good question (and one I've pondered for a day or two). The Life and Times series, of course, will be Rosa's most enduring legacy, and are great fun to boot - especially some of the 'follow-up' chapters. I'm especially fond of the Krakatoa story 'The Cowboy Captain of the Cutty Sark'. Of his 'sequels', I think the best is the follow-up to Uncle Scrooge 6 (Tralla la) - 'Return to Xanadu'. I still chuckle about the 'Rama Lama Dhing Dhong/You are a very strange person' dialogue (quoted from memory, so don't shoot me). He also has to get an honourable mention for the Barks 'Pied Piper' story he finished off brilliantly. Of the Rosa 'stand alones' my shortlist would be: Son of the Sun (not technically great, but it single handedly renewed my interest in comics when I found it on a newstand) Mythological Menagerie - one of the best duck ten-pagers by anyone Guardians of the Lost Library - a long but very engaging explantion for something that didn't actually need explaining. What about the rest of you?

Link? WDC&S mailers Yikes! There was one for sale a few months ago (I think it was 1947, but could be wrong) that sold for about $120. I thought at the time that it was an item I could usefully have bid a little more on. But these prices are extraordinary. What recession?

It was bought from a family who were sometimes house guests with the Barks back in the 1970s and 80s. They had about a dozen signed copies, and decided to sell some of them. No COA, alas, but still a great item to own.

While I'm posting, here is a Christmas present I got from my wonderful wife. She was strangely insistent that I open it up and leaf through. Here's why I'm glad I bought her a really nice present!

As promised, here is a checklist of the twelve Scrooge 60th anniversary posters by Don Rosa. I hope it is useful, but I had fun compiling it anyway. Uncle Scrooge 60th Anniversary poster series 372 – ‘Early versions of Scrooge McDuck’; from Christmas on Bear Mountain (FC 178) to the Magic Hourglass (FC 291) 373 – ‘The number one dime’; menaced by Magica (US36), a giant ant (US33), winning the day in deepest Africa (US15) etc. 374 – ‘Strange beings’; Island in the Sky natives (US 29) Harpies (US12) Venusian King (US24) Martian (US 46) Microducks (US65) Merman (US69) Terries and Fermies (US13) King of Atlantis (US5) Faceless native (US48) 375 – ‘Scrooge’s early life’; scenes from the Life and Times series 376 – ‘The Money Bin’; six different Barks variants, including the corn crib from WDC&S 126 (my favourite ever Barks story and a lovely economics parable) 377 – ‘Scrooge’s Greatest treasures’; Goose egg nugget (FC456), candy-striped ruby (US41), golden fleece (US12), philosopher’s stone (US10), Terry-Fermy trophy (US13), 1916 quarter (US5), golden moon, 7 cities of Cibola (US7), bombastium (US17), crown of the Mayas (US44), Vulcan’s hammer (US34), pearls of Kuku Maru (US37), mines of King Solomon (US19) 378 – ‘The Beagle Boys’; includes appearances from various Barks and Rosa stories 379 – ‘Monsters’; Hound of the Whiskervilles (US29), Sleepless Dragon (US12), roc (US37), giant jellyfish (US41), giant robot robber (US58), Gu the abominable snowman (US14), Bombie the zombie (FC238), queen of the wild dogpack (US62), ghost (US56), ghost of Sir Quakly McDuck (FC189) 380 – ‘Lost realms’; Castle McDuck (FC189), Valhalla (US34), Colchis (US12), Tangkor Wat (US20), Incan Gold Mines (US26), throne room of King Minos (US10), 5 of Cibola’s 7 cities (US7), Terry-Fermy (US13), Atlantis (US5), Tralla La (US6) 381 – ‘Flintheart Glomgold’; from Barks stories from US 15, 27 and 61 382 – ‘Magica de Spell’; from US 40, 43, 45 and 48, WDC 258, 265 383 – I just realised I haven’t picked this up from my LCS yet! TBA…