The opening Carl Barks story has probably tempted tens of thousands of young readers to convert -- if only for a day -- to Professor Batty’s philosophy of Flipism. “Life is but a gamble!” Donald Duck reads from an advertisement, “Let Flipism chart your ramble!” Daisy Duck enters, as do April, May and June, her three nieces. WDC&S #561 has a fine William Van Horn cover and a complete-in-one-issue DickMoores Mickey Mouse short, “The Great Safe Mystery.”
A series of two-page features begins in this issue, “Disney Comics Archives,” which technically isn’t correct because the CarlBarks art reprinted in it has nothing to do with Disney archives or history. We suspect top management didn’t have a clue and we must congratulate editor Bob Foster for taking a wee bit of a chance. This is what Foster wrote about it, headlined as an “Important Message”:
“Longtime fans of Carl Barks know that from 1930-1935 (the actual dates were both earlier and later) he did cartoons for The Calgary Eye-Opener, a Minneapolis based humor magazine long since out of business. A handful of those magazines was discovered at a swap meet in Pasadena some years ago and have now been pulled out of a private collection in order to reprint some of those cartoons done by Barks shortly before he started working for the Disney Studios in 1935. Beginning with Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #561, we will begin reprinting some of those rare Carl Barks cartoons.”
It isn’t so much what Foster said as what he didn’t say. Collectors had known that the Calgary Eye-Opener was a “girlie” magazine, depicting scads of scantily clad beauties in all kinds of suggestive, provocative and sexy situations. Even that, though, was not the potential time bomb. Published during a less sensitive period of history, there were virtually no taboos in the 1920’s and 1930’s on what could be passed off as humor. Cartoons and text could be found in every issue of the Eye-Opener lampooning society from the individual cartoonists’ viewpoints without editorial constraint. There were no rules, no taboos: race, religion, politics, sex, nationality, etc., were all targets. It was always open season in The Calgary Eye-Opener and everything was fair game, as in the Cole Porter song, “Anything Goes.” Political correctness did not exist. The magazine, or anything reprinted from it in 1991 was, potentially, very unDisneylike. The folks at Another Rainbow had published a dozen Barks’ Eye-Opener gags seven years earlier in The Carl Barks Library of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck, but these books were for collectors, while the newsstand comics were for “kids.” While the CBL pages were all in black and white, Disney’s Comics Archives’ examples were beautifully “tinted” in color by Cris Palomino. Though Foster was careful to choose only the tamest, most acceptable cartoons, he -- oops! -- did inadvertently include one that depicted a comely young lass fingering a small glass of alcoholic wine that Cris lovingly tinted the color of a good merlot. (It would be interesting to know the unsavory text that probably accompanied this drawing.)
Of related interest, The Bruce Hamilton Company published a 64-page, full-color digest in 1997 under its imprint, Hamilton Comics, called “The Unexpurgated Carl Barks,” a proud effort that took many extra hours of work to produce. Although the book says that Carl “does not sponsor or approve it publication,” Barks later told us “it didn’t bother me a whit.” The disclaimer was to shut up BillGrandey and KathyMorby, managers of The Carl Barks Studio, who wanted a cut of the proceeds. (The full and true story of those two individuals hopefully will be revealed some day. Leave it for now that after our book came out Barks personally filed suit against them, as did publisher Bruce Hamilton, both of who successfully prevailed in Oregon’s courts! Among others who have sued the pair is Don Rosa. Pretty august company.)
“The Unexpurgated Carl Barks” pulls no punches and makes no apologies. In fact, a thoughtful Foreword was written by famed New Yorker artist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Art Spiegelman, who said, “I’ve loved Carl Barks’ work since those days of lost innocence when I assumed the duck stories were all written and drawn by Walt Disney himself.” Here is the last paragraph he wrote in his Foreword:
“The biggest eye-opener -- if not blood curdler -- about these cartoons is their casual sexism and racism. The rtoonist’s craft is by its nature a conservative, perhaps even a reactionary one: its very essence consists in the manipulation of shorthand visual signs and widely recognizable stereotypes. Barks used those cruel stereotypes as cheerfully as most of his brethren. Even a black gag cartoonist like E. Simms Campbell drew white-lipped, eight-ball-headed “darkies.” Barks’ hook nosed Jews, shiftless minstrel coons, fey nancy-boys and dumb round-heeled broads offer the whole bestiary of stereotypes that once paraded openly through all our popular culture. We still live with its poisonous effects, but so it was, and to pretend otherwise is to efface a history we need to understand. Barks simply assimilated the values and codes (visual as well as social) of the world around him. Even his duck world, in so many ways a rich, enchanting and realistic one reflects the xenophobia of the value system he grew up with and ultimately transmitted. Beneath his duck masks are living, breathing, very complex souls. Behind the cartoon people of his gag rtoons are simply the generic types that made up much of this sad century’s comedy, rendered by a hard-working craftsman who eventually ripened into one of our great masters.”
“The Unexpurgated Carl Barks” got a glowing, half-page review in Penthouse Magazine in 1997 or early ’98. (Gladstone has misplaced its copy and would like to get another very fine or near mint one. We are willing to pay a reasonable price for a copy, or trade more generously. Meantime, since our inventory of “The Unexpurgated Carl Barks” is low (and we won’t be reprinting it), we suggest interested persons order a shrink-wrapped copy while it is still available from Gladstone for $35.00. Alternatively, it can be bought now as part of a Calgary Eye-Opener Package Offer that includes the book plus all six issues of the comics that contain color reproductions of Barks’ Eye-Opener art. The temporary Package offer is only $50.00 for all seven books (a $65.00 value).
The two-page Calgary Eye-Opener features ran in six consecutive issues of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, #’s 1-566. We’ll restrict future comments about the next five issues only to specific cartoons that warrant attention.
$5.00