Show Us Your Ducks! 16 16

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

A fantastic tale! I picked up a great copy of this a number of years ago at Caltech of all places. One of the young engineering students was selling it and it was a beauty!

That's hilarious: I can hardly imagine a more fitting story for a Caltech student (except perhaps "The Mad Chemist"). I went to MIT and we always admired the Caltech students as even more geeky than ourselves.

 

Hey TB, I went to Stevens Tech, so the technology circle is complete!

 

 

[Whizzer]

Excellent stuff, thanks guys, that gives me plenty to work with.

 

Hopefully i'll get a couple of Amazon gift certificates for Christmas, so I will definately

pick up the books featuring some of the stories you mention.

 

I'm really looking forward to reading some of this stuff.

 

Thanks again. (thumbs u

[AJD]

Andrew, what do you consider the best WDCS stories in that run? We've kicked it around here, but it's been a long time... Curious which of the essentials I am still missing.

 

 

Let me limit myself to just five from Scrooge's very handy list.

 

#99 Quiz Show

#126 Financial Fable (One of the absolute best Barks stories and the one I give to non-comic fans to read)

#138 Maharajah of Howdoyoustan

#145 Bing!

#146 Omelet

(The 140 s are an extraordinary subrun)

 

Honourable mentions: 86, 92, 111, 127, 138, 140, 141, 144, 149, 158, 170

 

BTW, I somehow managed to miss Four Color #223 Lost in the Andes in my first list

 

[vaillant]

Hey let‘s not forget "Three dirty little ducks":

W WDC 43-02

which is among my favorites! :-)

 

I humbly suggest you to pick also:

I TL 250-AP

"Uncle Scrooge and the lentils of Babylon", one of the most original Scarpa’s Uncle Scrooge stories, published in Uncle Scrooge Adventures #30-31-32 (in 1995).

But the story is from 1960.

[Hepcat]

Here's one I've not yet posted:

 

77

 

 

Edited December 31, 2012 by Hepcat

[Badger]

Here's one I've not yet posted:

 

 

 

Nice! What issue is it?

[Hepcat]

It's #77 from 1961.

 

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

Here's one I've not yet posted:

 

77

 

 

 

Very pretty, love the green background!

[Badger]

Very cool! (thumbs u

[Sqeggs]

Another example of Kelly drawing a mayhem between Donald and the boys cover. Well into Barks's run, Kelly still appears to have been taking his cues from the movie shorts. Was Kelly even reading Barks's stories?

 

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

Another example of Kelly drawing a mayhem between Donald and the boys cover. Well into Barks's run, Kelly still appears to have been taking his cues from the movie shorts. Was Kelly even reading Barks's stories?

 

 

I'm reading the book on Kelly and it indicated that he got into trouble at the studio for taking a too independent approach to his depiction of the characters. So was he reading the Barks stories? Probably not; plus at this point he was working on the development of Pogo as a newspaper strip and would soon be art director for a daily New York newspaper.

[Sqeggs]

Interesting. Is this this book: http://www.amazon.com/Walt-Kelly-Life-Creator-Pogo/dp/193256389X/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357501183&sr=1-5&keywords=walt+kelly Would you recommend it? Thanks.

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

That's the one. I'm sure enjoying it but some might find it too academic. It appears to be a variety of collected essays from various sources but I had not read any of them before. As someone who liked Pogo from when I first came across him in high school it has been a very interesting read. It is not really an appreciation of his art so much as a history of his times and his art in those times.

[Hepcat]

 

Well into Barks's run, Kelly still appears to have been taking his cues from the movie shorts. Was Kelly even reading Barks's stories?

 

I'm reading the book on Kelly and it indicated that he got into trouble at the studio for taking a too independent approach to his depiction of the characters. So was he reading the Barks stories?

 

With the studio? But Sqeggs is implying that Walt Kelly's take on the characters comformed to the way they were being presented by Walt Disney Studios in the cartoons. How was Carl Barks' portrayal of the characters different than the way they were being presented by Disney, and didn't Disney ever object?

 

How indeed did Kelly and Barks portray the characters differently anyway? Moreover, both Barks and Kelly would have been working for Western Printing if they were doing the art for the Dell comics. If Walt Kelly's depictions of the characters wasn't consistent with that of Carl Barks, would it not have been Western Printing, not Disney Studios, that would have wanted a word with one or both artists?

 

Edited January 7, 2013 by Hepcat

[Sqeggs]

Well into Barks's run, Kelly still appears to have been taking his cues from the movie shorts. Was Kelly even reading Barks's stories?

 

I'm reading the book on Kelly and it indicated that he got into trouble at the studio for taking a too independent approach to his depiction of the characters. So was he reading the Barks stories?

 

With the studio? But Sqeggs is implying that Walt Kelly's take on the characters comformed to the way they were being presented by Walt Disney Studios in the cartoons. How was Carl Barks' portrayal of the characters different than the way they were being presented by Disney, and didn't Disney ever object?

 

How indeed did Kelly and Barks portray the characters differently anyway? Moreover, both Barks and Kelly would have been working for Western Printing if they were doing the art for the Dell comics. If Walt Kelly's depictions of the characters wasn't consistent with that of Carl Barks, would it not have been Western Printing, not Disney Studios, that would have wanted a word with one or both artists?

 

 

From what I've read of Barks, Western largely left him alone to do what he wanted. I believe there a few cases where they censored a page or two from a story -- DD 26 ("Trick or Treat") comes to mind -- for excessive violence. I don't have the impression that the Disney studio was involved with story choices, characters, or any other aspects of Barks's works. Although, of course, Barks got his start at the studio.

 

It only occurred to me fairly recently that there is a significant disconnect between the Kelly covers and the Barks stories -- and the later Barks covers.

 

Here's another point that's probably obvious but that I only recently thought of: Drawing these covers wasn't easy. You have essentially one (big) panel and no words to put across the gag. When drawing super hero/horror/romance covers, an artist had the help of both word bubbles and the interior story to rely on for ideas. (Not that there aren't GA covers that don't connect to the interior stories.)

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

Well into Barks's run, Kelly still appears to have been taking his cues from the movie shorts. Was Kelly even reading Barks's stories?

 

I'm reading the book on Kelly and it indicated that he got into trouble at the studio for taking a too independent approach to his depiction of the characters. So was he reading the Barks stories?

 

With the studio? But Sqeggs is implying that Walt Kelly's take on the characters comformed to the way they were being presented by Walt Disney Studios in the cartoons. How was Carl Barks' portrayal of the characters different than the way they were being presented by Disney, and didn't Disney ever object?

 

How indeed did Kelly and Barks portray the characters differently anyway? Moreover, both Barks and Kelly would have been working for Western Printing if they were doing the art for the Dell comics. If Walt Kelly's depictions of the characters wasn't consistent with that of Carl Barks, would it not have been Western Printing, not Disney Studios, that would have wanted a word with one or both artists?

 

 

From what I've read of Barks, Western largely left him alone to do what he wanted. I believe there a few cases where they censored a page or two from a story -- DD 26 ("Trick or Treat") comes to mind -- for excessive violence. I don't have the impression that the Disney studio was involved with story choices, characters, or any other aspects of Barks's works. Although, of course, Barks got his start at the studio.

 

It only occurred to me fairly recently that there is a significant disconnect between the Kelly covers and the Barks stories -- and the later Barks covers.

 

Here's another point that's probably obvious but that I only recently thought of: Drawing these covers wasn't easy. You have essentially one (big) panel and no words to put across the gag. When drawing super hero/horror/romance covers, an artist had the help of both word bubbles and the interior story to rely on for ideas. (Not that there aren't GA covers that don't connect to the interior stories.)

 

Kelly had issues with the studio prior to his work at Western. It just follows that his independent approach to the characters would have continued; particularly as he was ready to launch his newspaper strip. His sheer talent probably brought him a greater degree of freedom at Western.

[Mmehdy]

For all you duck collectors there is an amazing new website on the fine art of carl barks, the book cost like 500 bucks, but it is fully online at

 

www.carlbarkscollection.com

 

its over 200 pages and the website is very friendly you can double click and blow up all the art and posters etc.

[Badger]

For all you duck collectors there is an amazing new website on the fine art of carl barks, the book cost like 500 bucks, but it is fully online at

 

www.carlbarkscollection.com

 

its over 200 pages and the website is very friendly you can double click and blow up all the art and posters etc.

 

This site is amazing! Some cool paintings I have never seen before.

 

Thanks for posting this! (thumbs u

[tb]

In general, I prefer to focus on comics rather than their values in my posts. However, when you collect rare books, it is necessary to educate yourself about the market. Some Disney collectors sold their collections at huge losses after the financial crisis and I'd like to share some observations in the interest of learning from our past mistakes.

 

For some time, I've been thinking about how to visualize what happened to the market. This afternoon, I spent a few hours going through GPAnalysis and gathered statistics on slabbed books with identical certification numbers and a value over $100. For each such book, I listed the buying and selling prices as well as the year it was bought and sold. I went through Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 1-170, Uncle Scrooge 1-50, and Barks Four Colors between 9 and 422 where I found around 460 books that matched the above criteria. I then listed these samples in the two tables below.

 

The first table shows how many slabs were found for each pair of buying and selling years. For example, 13 slabs were bough in 2007 and resold in 2009. This table is then used to color code the second table of average returns (percent) based on how many samples were available. I.e. red means low confidence and green means more reliable numbers.

 

The interesting part is the negative vs. positive percentages in the second table. There was a major bubble in the market in 2006-2008 which can be seen as the negative numbers in the columns for 2007 and 2008. For example, the 13 slabs that were purchased in 2007 and resold in 2009 realized an average return of -41%. Likewise, the 18 slabs purchased in 2008 and resold in 2010 realized -31% before inflation and auction house fees.

 

I only spent a few hours on this, but, with more samples, I think this would be a useful technique for analyzing the comics market in general. You could do the same for any publisher and analyze based on grade ranges etc. I hope that such improved tools will help visualize market trends better so that we can reduce the risk of bubbles in the future.

[Moondog]

Fascinating, TB. Thanks for taking the time.