Tuesday 4 January 2011

Great News For Barks Fans

This has been buzzing around the internet for a few days now and I must thank my fellow Duck fan Simon for alerting me to this. But finally we are going to see affordable and tastefully produced editions of the complete works of Carl Barks, produced by none other than Fantagraphics Books, who have been wowing comic book aficionados  with reprints of classic comic strips, including their recent and superlative Prince Valiant volumes.

The books will amount to 30 volumes and will be issued at the rate of two volumes a year, ensuring that some Barks fans will be reading these books in their nursing homes. However, the better news is that the books will be issued with the prioritization of the best years at the head of the release schedule. Which means that the first book to appear will include classic tales such as "Lost in the Andes" and "Race to the South Seas" along with "Voodoo Hoodoo", "The Golden Christmas Tree" and contemporaneous 10 pagers. The second volume will include "Only A Poor Old Man" and "Back to the Klondike" which are two classic Uncle Scrooge epics along with the shorter stories from this period.

The news gets better and better as the stories will be recolored using the original comics as a color guide and utilizing the considerable graphic talents of illustrator Rich Tommaso to add flat (yup flat as in F.L.A.T. - no crappy digital airbrush, twenty years out of date efx) colors to Barks artwork.

And the books will retail for a very affordable $25.00  which with 240 pages featuring some of the best ever stories to appear in comics is a really irresistible deal and proves beyond peradventure that more and more people care about the health and welfare of  the dear little flexible guy aka Dave Morris's credit card.

What more could you ask for?

10 volumes a year.

... fifteen years is way too long to wait!

Check this link for further details.

2 comments:

  1. It's rare that both my credit card and I are jumping for joy, but this is truly great news for both of us. And I'm sure that you've done a lot, Peter, towards paving the road to success for these new books. Certainly I had never appreciated Carl Barks's brilliant work until being introduced to it on the Cloud 109 blog.

    Ten volumes a year would've been nice too, but in that case the little flexible guy would've been in intensive care :)

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  2. Well Dave, there's also the complete Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse due to be published by Fantagraphics which I think might be worthy of your consideration.

    So perhaps ... ???

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