The Carl Barks Library
Donald
Duck Adventures in Color Comic Albums
Large, magazine-size,
heavy-stock, square-bound, full-color comic albums with new covers created
from Carl Barks art. Each comes with a Trading Card.
Prices are based on the number of copies in stock and also,
in the case of early numbers, greater page counts and higher original
cover prices.
See below for ordering information.
Donald Duck Adventures in
Color Comic Albums
A Complete Set of 25-Volume
Sets For Sale: Only $675
This includes the extremely rare #19, which is available only with the complete set. All DDA albums are unopened, unread copies. COMPLETE SETS ARE SOLD OUT! (But, you can still buy most albums individually.)
Overview:
of all the comic books produced by Gladstone, none are in such
short supply as some of the Donald Duck Adventures in Color
albums. We wish it weren't true, but facts are stubborn things, as a wise
man once said. Please be advised that the single copy prices quoted here
are a compromise by us: that is, we could definitely sell the rarest
- the ones that are the most difficult to find... for much more than the
prices quoted here. Though we don't want to take advantage of the marketplace,
neither can we afford to let the copies we have that are in short supply
walk out the door to dealers who intend to resell them for a profit to
their own customers.
So,
in our judgment, all prices are what we hope everyone will realize is
a happy compromise . higher than you might expect, but lower
than we could get.
Walt
Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #1
Donald
Duck Finds Pirate Gold, Four Color #9, August 1942, has an impressive
new cover for the first Issue of The Carl Barks Library of Donald Duck
Adventures In Color (the original cover was not done by the Old
-- then only 41 - Duck Man). Ours was taken from Barks art
for which some re-inking was required to smooth out small-image lines
we needed for larger reproduction. The cover recreates elements from the
story's splash panel and page 12, distinctively colored by Gary Leach,
who was later to become Gladstone's Art Director. The man who then
held that position, Michael McCormick, skillfully colored all interior
pages. Ah, such nostalgia! This album is remembered with great fondness
by your former publisher, representing what was on the stands when he
was a boy.
Some
nostalgic comments and trivia: Check out the article on Morgan's Ghost,
which inspired Pirate Gold! The album's title page was taken from
a single panel by Carl Barks. He and Jack Hannah
divided the chores on this exploratory comic, Western Publishing's
experiment offering sixty four pages of Donald Duck to a public
that had already enthusiastically accepted a full-length Mickey Mouse
comic, Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot (Four Color #16, series
#1,1941).Barks and Hannah divided the job 50-50 as follows:
Carl drew pages 1, 2, 5 and 12-40, while Jack took pages
3,4,6-11 and 41-64, their logic being that if one artist were to do mostly
interior scenes while the other labored over outdoor ship-and-rigging
pages (Barks' choice), the reader would be less likely to notice
that there were really two artists (the assignment was given because the
Barks and Hannah storyboarding team had worked together
on many Donald Duck animated cartoon shorts for five years). Looking
at the comic book in his later years, Jack Hannah claimed he found
it hard to tell his and Barks'inking apart.
Of
several Pirate Gold reprints, DDA#1 is by far the best!
$15.00
Walt
Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #2
"The Mummy's
Ring," inspired by a Boris Karloff film, shows Carl
Barks' flair for gothic chills, with the ducks racing up the Nile*
to save Huey from being entombed. Barks modeled his Egyptian
props and scenery on illustrations from National Geographic
magazine.
The filler
stories are more standard fare: Donald and the boys are steeplechase
rivals in "The Hard Loser", which Barks may have
intended for Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, a series
he began a few months earlier. Eighteen years later, Barks included
Scrooge when he redrew the screwball comedy (see Uncle Scrooge
Adventures #33).
"Too
Many Pets," with its ducks-at-home-setting, rounds out Four Color
#29 (September 1943). The 26-pages suggest it may have been considered
as a later lead story and not a back-up. Less exotic in story line and
art, though, it's been largely forgotten by fans. "Too Many Pets" was neglected for reprints because of its World War II setting
structured around the antics of an organ grinder's monkey that helps the
ducks catch a foreign spy.
(* The ducks do, indeed, race "up" the Nile, even though
they sail south. The river is one of a
rare few in the northern hemisphere that flows northward as it loses altitude.)
$18.00
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #3
Commentary
by former publisher, Bruce Hamilton.
A wonderful
60-page issue featuring Carl Barks' full-length Donald
Duck adventure, "Frozen Gold," it is reprinted from only
the second Four Color comic book completely written and drawn by the Old
Duck Man! The story has been reprinted before, but nowhere
has its color been as beautifully, appropriately and painstakingly rendered
as it appears in this permanent-collectible Library version by Carl
Barks' all-time master colorist, Susan Daigle-Leach. Also
included in the album is Barks' masterful, historically important
24-page adventure starring Donald and the boys, "The Mystery
of the Swamp," which introduces the irrepressible Gneezles,
a forgotten tribe, as Barks called them, of "strange little
men who reside in Florida's Everglades." The Gneezles were
the memorable predecessors (or "spiritual" ancestors) of the
Plain Awfultonlans, Terry Fermians and Pygmy Indians of later tales,
to quote Geoffrey Blum in his article. "The Classic Barks," which closely overviews the totality of the duck artist's most famous
characterizations. - BH - ( Sold Out)
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #4
Pretty
gritty stuff poured from the Old Duck Man's imagination onto his
inked Donald Duck comic pages in the late 1940's, giving his stories
an unsettling edge with fear lurking behind the comedy. "The Terror
of the River," for example, has a villain Carl Barks attempted to portray as "totally nutty." He explained years
later that he hadn't wanted to "cause children any nightmares afterward."
Of the
500-plus stories Carl Barks wrote, Disney "permanently" put the kibosh on twelve for any republication in the 1970's, putting
them on an Official Banned List. It has absolutely amazed me, however,
about a few that were overlooked, "The Firebug" for example.
Following terror heaped upon terror in "Terror of the River," post-war kids were then dosed with goosebump thrill upon thrill in "The
Firebug" (Donald Duck Four Color #108, 1946).The ending
immediately was censored by Western Publishing, the final
two panels redrawn by a staff artist. In retrospect, maybe -- but I doubt
-- that is why Disney paid no further attention to it. The story-behind-the-story
is written up in a compilation of interviews with Carl Barks,
in which he explains how he conceived and drew the original ending to "The Firebug" (which, not surprisingly, was funny).
FC #108 ends on a softer note and a funny finale in "Seals are
So Smart!"
$15.00
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #5
Commentary
by former publisher, Bruce Hamilton."
Combining 1947's
Donald Duck Latin-American epic, "Volcano Valley," with 1945's "Riddle of the Red Hat," (Carl
Barks' only Mickey Mouse comic book) is what makes this
album, Donald Duck Adventures in Color #5, so rich in contrasts.
Barks always maintained he didn't know how to draw the mouse and
did not do Mickey well, but the Old Duck Man's fans don't care:
It's the fact that it's Barks' Mickey they want to see.
Meanwhile, when
Pablo Manana takes Donald south of the border in "Volcano Valley," he neglects to mention two crucial
things: his homeland is ringed by active volcanos, and no one may leave
unless he becomes a national hero. Like Californians ignoring the
San Andreas fault, the Volcanovians respond to this crisis
by taking a siesta, leaving the ducks trapped and friendless. -- BH SOLD OUT
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #6
According
to the 2002 Comic Book Price Guide #32, mint copies of the total
original giveaways reprinted in Donald Duck Adventures in Color
#6 would dictate a collector should have to pay approximately $10,400
for them. (that is, if they hadn't been certified, sealed in plastic by
encapsulation -- or "slabbed" -- by CGC, which, of course,
they would have been) and if they truly were in mint and if you didn't
have to pay multiples of guide (which, of course, you would have). These
are the famous Carl Barks giveaway comics reprinted in DDA#6:
"Maharajah
Donald" from Boys' and Girls' March of Comics #4 (1947),
is valued at $7,000 (also in the album is "The Peaceful Hills," a two-page back-up filler with Donald Duck trying unsuccessfully
to take a peaceful afternoon hike in the hills).
"Donald
Duck's Atom Bomb," a 1947 Cheerios pocket-sized giveaway
(#Y-1), was permanently banned by Disney in the 1970's, not to
be reprinted as originally drawn by Barks, its ending labeled by
company executives as "mean spirited." [Donald's "atom
bomb" only sputtered, but its radiation made peoples' hair fall out.
On the next to the last page, Professor Molicule encourages Donald to make another bomb and rants enthusiastically, "Money! Money! Vast
riches!" But Don's response is, "I've got a way picked
out to make money -- and lots of, it!" In the last panel Donald
and the boys display a sign over their booth that reads, "Professor
Duck's Atomic Hair-Grower 'Will Grow Hair on Anything'." A
sign below reads: "$1.00 a Bottle" ... and Donald
happily racks up sales on the cash register. The new ending, however (forced
on Gladstone), changed Donald's word balloon so he says, "No thanks, Professor! I've got more than money in mind!" The
art was not altered, but the banner at the top of the booth now omits
the word "Atomic" and the sign below is reworded to
read: "Free Samples -- Growth Guaranteed!"]. For a mere reprint anthology, Disney's dictum to rewrite history
seems to me to conflict with the definition and concept of what history
actually is, wouldn't you think?
According
to Robert M.Overstreet, this book in now worth $900 in mint (much
too low, but who gives the Price Guide any new pricing information
each year on rare Disney giveaways?).
Also in
DDA #6 is the much-sought-after "Donald Duck Tells
About Kites" (a part of Western Publishing's Kite
FunBook series), which republished for the first time, we believe,
the original Southern California Edison edition: plus a filler page with
three new drawings by Carl Barks, that he did for the Pacific
Gas and Electric version, substituting two old panels from the seventh
page of the SCE. Overstreet says this is a $3,200 comic.
$15.00
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures In Color #7
"Ghost
of' the Grotto," the lead Donald Duck adventure in this
album, was inspired by the discovery of an ancient shipwreck in the coral
reefs off Florida. To this rudimentary bit of history, Carl
Barks added a treasure chest and a sinister armored man, weaving
a mystery that reached back to the days of Sir Francis Drake. DDA #7's other long story, "Adventure Down Under," combines
globe-trotting thrills with the cartoon formula of the troublesome pet,
in this case Barks' first truly memorable animal character, the
rogue kangaroo, Mournful Mary.
$15.00
Walt
Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #8
No two
consecutive Carl Barks Four Color comics have had more impact
on the collective consciousness of Disney collectors, fans, and
historians than "Christmas on Bear Mountain," (1947's
FC 178) and "The Old Castle's Secret" (1948's FC 189),
which were published only six months apart In the first, Uncle Scrooge
McDuck makes his initial grouchy appearance.
In the
second, Barks' mastery of story telling and character development
takes giant strides as the duck family starts to coalesce as a family:
they journey together to Scotland in search of millions of dollars
in treasure, known to the McDuck clan for 900 years, but hidden "somewhere," Scrooge explains, "in the huge old
castle of Dismal Downs!" Barks' artistry was truly
inspired, from panel layouts to his researched use of shadows and silhouettes.
Gladstone is justifiably proud of its efforts producing DDA #8.
$18.00
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #9
Carl
Barks' quintessential Wester, "Sheriff of Bullet
Valley," (Four Color 199) and "The Golden Christmas Tree" (FC 203), both from 1948, are paired in DDA #9. The former is Barks'
sendup of the sagebrush saga, with Donald Duck as a bumbling lawman
who tries to model himself on movie stars. But not until he calls on his
own resources is he 'able to capture the oh-so dastardly Blacksnake
McQuirt.
"The
Golden Christmas Tree" offers a similar moral, but in so syrupy
a fashion that Barks said he would rather forget it. "The
editors made me do some changes. I still wince at the preachy stuff I
had to put in about the Spirit of Christmas." In a letter
to a fan in 1961, Barks wrote, "I felt sourly about the finished
story because the editors had made me do some changes in the fight sequences
between Don and the witch that I thought took the guts out of the
story."
In DDA
#9, the Table of Contents refers to the Christmas story as by "author
unknown." This is an error. Barks wrote it, but the editors
made numerous changes, including all but the last four panels of the final
two pages.
$12.00
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #10
These twenty-five
volumes of Donald Duck Adventures In Color albums were published
by The Bruce Hamilton Company under the Gladstone imprint
in two years and one month, the page counts varying by as much as 22 pages,
from 44 to 68, #10 one of the latter. It combines what a large percentage
of collectors feel was Carl Barks' greatest Donald
Duck full-length adventure, "Lost In the Andes" (Four
Color 223), and the Old Duck Man's most controversial, "Voodoo
Hoodoo" (FC 238). Both were written and drawn in 1949.
Donald's
quest for square eggs in "Lost In the Andes" has everything:
thrills, sentiment, biting satire, and lovingly rendered foreign locales. "Voodoo Hoodoo" treads a delicate line between humor
and horror as Donald falls victim to a voodoo curse. Uncle Scrooge McDuck plays a significant five-page supporting role.
$15.00
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #11
Christmas
Parade #1 (1949) and #2 (1950) represents what Carl Barks
felt the most uncomfortable writing ... stories about holiday good cheer,
sentimentality and other standard, gooey Christmas stuff, but -- well,
shucks -- he was so good at it his editors gave him assignment
after assignment over the years. What made it palatable, however, was
adding Uncle Scrooge to his lexicon, which allowed for lots of
ranting and snorting. The stories, "Letter to Santa" and "You Can't Guess" contain Barks' unvarnished
comments on Christmas, a season he felt had become too commercial.
As the ducks vie in contests of giving and getting, tempers flare and
greeds erupt in angry slapstick. Yet a lingering holiday spirit prevails,
making it possible for Santa to come down the chimney, untangle all the
feuds, and put gifts into the right hands. (extremely limited)
(sold out)
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #12
"Luck
of the North" has a special nostalgic memory: it was the one
story both Carl and Gare Barks (his wife) lavished
many comments and much praise for Susan Dalgle-Leach's exquisite
color. They felt it had just the right amount of all the things the Barkses
felt they wanted to see in Gladstone comic books: dynamism, subtlety,
contrast, balance, mood, smoothness, power and -- most of all -- eye appeal.
Barks wrote "Luck of the North" in 1949, while evolving the
character of Gladstone Gander. He found that the obnoxious dandy
with the horseshoe luck was a perfect foil for probing Donald's
soul. By careful pacing of his text and art, Barks was able to
capture the rage that leads Donald to draw a bogus treasure map
and his heel-clicking glee as he sends cousin Gladstone to the
Arctic on a wild goose chase. Guilt follows as Donald pictures
the gander swallowed by a polar bear.
$20.00
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #13
Commentary
by former publisher, Bruce Hamilton.
Two
full-length, 24-page Donald Duck adventures from Carl Barks'
prolific mind reprint Four Color #263. February 1950. "Land of
the Totem Poles" sends the ducks to northwest Canada as
competing salesmen: Donald must peddle steam calliopes while the
boys sell cosmetics to backwoodsmen. Barks liked his plotline so
much he reworked it later as an Uncle Scrooge adventure,
changing the setting to Siam and the merchandise to furnaces and tape
players (see "City of Golden Roofs" in USA #20).
DDA #13 is rounded out with "Trail of the Unicorn," co-starring Uncle Scrooge and Gladstone Gander! -
BH ( Sold Out )
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #14
Carl
Barks' legendary trio of three March of Comics giveaways
(see also DDA #6) concludes in this album. It's true Barks'
travel tales were never serene, for they often mix globetrotting with
heated rivalries. "Darkest Africa" (MOC #20, 1948)
pits Donald against professor Argus McFiendly, a lepidopterist
who will stop at nothing to snare rare butterflies for his collection.
In "Race
to the South Seas" (M0C #41 is shown in the Table of Contents
in error as having been published in 1959; the correct date is 1949) our
hero competes with Gladstone to rescue Scrooge when the
tycoon's seaplane crashes. This is the first tale in which Gladstone's
uncanny luck is revealed, and it sets the tone for his future wars with
Donald.
( Sold Out )
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #15
"Ancient
Persia" (FC 275) is undoubtedly Donald's zaniest adventure.
What with mixed identities, a mad scientist, a psychotic king and a formula
for turning people into dust, it might have been a horror tale, but Barks played up the comical side. By contrast, "The Pixilated Parrot" (FC 282) is a lighthearted Central American romp with Donald
and the nephews tracking down an errant pet.(extremely limited)
$45.00
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #16
Commentary
by former publisher, Bruce Hamilton.
Two Carl
Barks full-length Donald Duck adventures are reprinted from
over a half century ago: "The Magic Hourglass" (from
Four Color #291, September 1950) and "Big-Top Bedlam," (FC #300, November 1950). In the first story, Uncle Scrooge never
believed in luck until he discards an antique timepiece and his business
deals start going sour. He has to track his nephews to the Sahara in hopes of recovering the hourglass. "Big- Top Bedlam" gives a similar plotline a different setting, as Donald chases
a quick-change artist back and forth across a three-ring circus to recover
Daisy's antique brooch. Carl Barks' admitted mentor
for humor was Elzie Crisler Segar, creator of Popeye,
and it may be only a coincidence, or a subconscious one, that in
one of Segar's 1930's Thimble Theatre stories a similar
quick-change artist appears, which Barks certainly read in his
hometown daily newspaper. But make no mistake, just as Segar's
character was his own, so was Carl Barks'. -BH ( Sold Out)
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #17
"Dangerous
Disguise" created amazement, amusement and consternation in 1951
at the Wester Publishing editorial offices: Carl
Barks had just turned in one of his much-anticipated, long Disney-licensed
Donald Duck adventure yarns that was always read with delight by
editors and other office staffers. But this one was different --
mixed in with the ducks were real people: in fact, everyone
else was a real person! Incredible! It was like the ducks were the
intruders... a family of anthromorphic animated cartoon characters stepping
off the screen of fantasy into a real world of international intrigue,
spies and danger. Another duck did appear, but not until page 20 -and
he was a Donald Duck-Iookalike, a Chiliburgerian matador
named Donaldo ElQuacko, in reality a spy from Ironheella,
who commits suicide by leaping through a glass window! This is Disney
fare? What is -- was -- remarkable is where were the censors? Not only
was the story not changed or abandoned then, in 1951, even to this day
it has never been viewed as objectionable. Years later, Barks explained
his thinking: "I couldn't visualize all those master spies from different
nations as dogfaces or pigfaces. I saw them the way they appear in the
movies: suave-looking characters and beautiful girls, so I went ahead
and drew them like that." Well, it worked, it got by and it caused
no trouble. But he never did it so extensively again.
DDA#17
also contains "No Such Varmint" (FC 318), a simpler comedy
in which Donald's talent as a snake charmer leads to the discovery
of a sea serpent. (extremely limited)
$45.00
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #18
"Vacation
Time," from Vacation Parade #1 (1950) is a spectacular
tale and an unusually long adventure at 33 pages: but as to his art, panel
design and page layout, it is, without doubt, one of the best stories
Carl Barks ever did. The Old Duck Man pulled out
all stops, first in a paean to America's parklands, then in his
terrifying depiction of a forest fire that nearly kills the ducks.
Backing
up DDA #18 is "Camp Counselor," also from VP
#1; it takes its lead from the 1938 cartoon Good Scouts, which features
Donald as a bumbling troop leader. This eight-page comic book filler
was not written by Barks, but, ironically, he did co-author (storyboard)
the animated film. A third story, "Jungle Hi-Jinks" (from
1959's Summer Fun #2), is fourteen pages of Disney fodder.
Donald battles wild African beasts while his nephews snap
photographs -- well drawn, of course, but clearly not written by Barks.
$12.00
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #19
Of all the Comic Albums Gladstone produced, DDA #19 must rank at or very close to the top. All one has to do is name either story reprinted here and any devoted Carl Barks fan immediately knows almost all there is to know: the 28-page lead story, "In Old California," originally appeared in Donald Duck Four Color #328, May 1951 and "Christmas for Shacktown" highlighted Donald Duck Four Color #367, January 1952. Scott Rockwell's magnificent coloring in both stories rivals the best of Susan Daigle-Leach. ( Sold Out)
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #20
"The Golden
Helmet" (FC 408) is one of four or five stories Carl Barks
claimed as his favorite. Witness his incisive and biting satire of the
legal profession: the evil Azure Blue, direct descendant of Olaf
the Blue, is represented by Lawyer Sharky, who lipspeaks continuous
legalese, such as "Hocus, locus, jocus," which translates
to mean, "To the landlord belong the doorknobs."
Another
1952 reprint is "The Gilded Man," in which Donald
chases the one-cent magenta stamp from British Guiana, the ultimate
collecting goal of all philatelists.
$15.00
Walt
Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #21
"Trick
or Treat" (from Donald Duck #26, 1952) has the dubious
distinction of having had more pages cut from it -- censored -- than any
other Carl Barks story, all of which, however, have been
restored for this printing. It's an anomaly: a comedy standing out in
a long line of adventure stories that Barks adapted from an animated
cartoon directed by his former partner, Jack Hannah. The action,
as if returning to simpler plots of the 1940s, revolves around a petty
scrap in the Duck family. Donald tries to sabotage his nephews'
Halloween, filling their sack with firecrackers and dousing the
boys with water. In both versions a feisty witch named Hazel comes
to their rescue, but Barks added nine pages involving an ogre named
Smorgasbord, which his editors cut out.
Two other stories appear, "Hobblin' Goblins," and "Dogcatcher
Duck" (from DD #46), which
was originally cut from eight pages to six, the two missing pages now
lost. (limited)
$30.00
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #22
DDA #22 is a 68-pager, with two adventures from 1956, "Secret of Hondorica" (DD #46) and "The Lost Peg-Leg Mine" (DD #52) and one
from 1957, "Forbidden Valley" (DD #54). The comedic tone of "Hondorica" is on a grudge fight between Donald
and Gladstone Gander, while they are on a dangerous treasure hunt
in Latin America. In "Lost Mine" the search for
an old prospector's gold devolves into a war of wits with wily pack rats. "Forbidden Valley" reworks the thrills of "Darkest
Africa" with a funnier villain and much zanier climax -- a dinosaur
stampede!
$15.00
Walt
Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #23
In the
late 1950s Barks took on extra work drawing stories by other writers. "I jazzed them up so they would look a little more like my stuff.
Some... I changed so completely that, after two years went by, I thought
I wrote (them)." DDA #23 has "Christmas In Duckburg," for example, from Christmas Parade #9, "The Christmas Cha..Cha" from CP #26 and the Beagle Boys complicating things in "Mastering
the Matterhorn" from Vacation In Disneyland FC #1025.
(very limited)
$30.00
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #24
During
the 1960's Barks was so involved with the Uncle Scrooge
comics, doing covers, writing scripts and doing specialty titles, such
as Grandma Duck's Farm Friends, the title that began it all, Donald
Duck, fell by the wayside. "Donald Duck and the Titanic Ants" (DD #60) was the Old Duck Man's last major Donald
story and was recast into a three-tier format, probably because it was
faster to do! A super highlight of DDA #24, however, are the 52
storyboard panels of pencil drawings Barks scripted for a Mickey,
Donald and Goofy cartoon short in 1936 called "Love Nest" that was never produced.
$12.00
Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures in Color #25
Carl
Barks' one-page gags that ran in Donald Duck from 1947 to
1960 have mostly been the forgotten children of the duck master by collectors.
It is only when a fan is able to feast on such a display as in this album
-- especially when seen in Susan Daigle-Leach's color -- is Barks'
genius at gags so readily recognizable. He didn't like to do them because
they took too much time to conceive, write and draw. But take the time,
he did. And it shows!
$12.00