The Carl Barks Library
U
ncle Scrooge 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 that remain in stock.
See below for ordering information.
Uncle Scrooge Adventures In Color
Comic Albums
A Complete Set of 56 Volumes For
Sale: $1750. SOLD OUT
(But, you can still buy most albums individually.)
Walt Disney's Uncle
Scrooge Adventures in Color #1
The first Uncle
Scrooge comic book (Dell's one-shot, Four Color #386, March 1952)
chronicles how Scrooge McDuck came out of the Klondike in
the 1898 with a fortune in gold nuggets by being "tougher than the toughies,
and smarter than the smarties." In "Only a Poor Old Man," Carl
Barks tells how Uncle Scrooge accumulated over umpteen-centrifugillion
dollars and intends to keep it!
$25.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #2
Uncle Scrooge
suffers from Blinkus of the Thinkus, a mild form of amnesia. The
pills he takes to sharpen his memory prompt him to go "Back to the
Klondike," where he has unfinished business with the woman who stole
his nuggets -- and his heart -- in 1898, Glittering Goldie. A reprint
of Four Color #456.
$20.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #3
Carl Barks was
often inspired to do a story depending on what he felt like drawing. In "The Horse-Radish Story," he was undoubtedly inspired to craft
a sea-faring tale and to try to match the great oceanic art of Hal
Foster, line for line, wave for wave, and -- in many fans' minds,
including ye olde publisher's -- he succeeded admirably! This is the epic
that introduces the notorious swindler, Chisel McSue.
The back-up story, "The Round Money Bin," first mentions Uncle
Scrooge's lucky Number One Dime, which he reveals is "the first
dime I ever earned!" (Sold out)
$--.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #4
"The Menehune Mystery"
takes Uncle Scrooge and the Duck family to McDucks'
private island, "a few miles from Hawaii," where the miser tries to hide
his greenbacks. Carl Barks' wife Gare helped the Old
Duck Man with many of the authentic details he needed for this story:
she was born and raised on Oahu. The tiny, magical menehunes, for
instance, were her inspiration. (An historic letter is repro-duced from
Carl Barks written to Hal Adelquist, Walt Disney Studio
head and dated November 9, 1942 in which Barks resigns from his
job to pursue a career raising chickens and doing free-lance cartooning.
He also speaks of Walt Disney himself as "the best boss I ever
had."(Sold out)
$0.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #5
"The Secret of Atlantis" reprints Uncle Scrooge #5, March 1954 and marks the first appearance
of the Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook (as it was later known). It
also shows insights into Barks' mind concerning collectibles: this
time it's a 1916 quarter that Scrooge manipulates into being the
rarest and most valuable coin in the world - and he owns
the only one! (extremely limited)
(SOLD OUT!)
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #6
According to Carl Barks historian Geoffrey Blum, "Tralla La" (headlining this volume) is probably Barks' most famous and most perfect story and Blum devotes 2 pages in this volume to review this beloved adventure where Scrooge, Donald and the boys travel to a strange valley in the Himalayas. In Barks' second story, "Outfoxed Fox", Scrooge is determined to acquire Donald's and Neighbor Jones' lots so he can build a pocketbook factory in their place - no matter what!
(SOLD OUT!)
Walt Disney's Uncle
Scrooge Adventures in Color #7
Commentary by former publisher, Bruce Hamilton
One of the best remembered and most treasured stories of
the 500 plus that Carl Barks wrote and drew is "The Seven Cities
of Cibola," which originally appeared in the seventh issue of Uncle
Scrooge comics (September 1954), also featuring Donald Duck
and the nephews, Gyro Gearloose and the Beagle Boys. "This
tale results from more research than I usually devoted to my comic work,"
Barks once recalled. The lost ship of the desert, the fate of Admiral
de Ulloa, and the location of the Seven Cities of Cibola came
from reading very old books in the La Jolla (California) library."
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, both admirers of Carl
Barks and collectors of his original art paid ultimate homage to the
Old Duck Man's genius by hijacking Cibola's emerald guardian
for the opening sequence of the first Indiana Jones film, "Raiders
of the Lost Ark." Fascinating details about Barks' research
for "The Seven Cities of Cibola" -- the first Uncle Scrooge
treasure hunt -- and more about Spielberg and Lucas' interest
in Carl Barks is told in Geoffrey Blum's two-page article,
"Wind from a Dead Galleon."
-- BH (SOLD OUT!)
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #8
"The Mysterious Stone
Ray" is a deadly invention: it turns people -- and even ducks and Beagle Boys -- to stone. This Uncle Scrooge adventure from
1954 also contains previously unpublished Barks art. (SOLD OUT!)
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #9
An ornery rodent with
a taste for cheese merrily leads the ducks on a chase to Norway,
smack into the middle of a lemming migration. In "The Lemming with
the Locket," Uncle Scrooge faces a nightmarish task.
$30.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #10
Carl Barks was
54 and the year was 1955. The Old Duck Man was at the height of
his story-telling when he did "The Fabulous Philosopher's Stone." This treasure-trekking adventure inspired Barks to paint his final
legendary Another Rainbow oil, "The Stone That Turns All Metals
Gold," which was produced as
a pricey limited edition continuous-tone lithograph. (SOLD OUT!)
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #11
While prospecting in
the Australian outback, Uncle Scrooge tries vainly to find
water, but his expert nose unearths only "Riches, Riches, Everywhere!"
In this issue's alternate tale (reprinted from Uncle Scrooge FC
11, September 1955), McDuck's victory in "The Great Steamboat
Race," depicts the miser winning, but also losing by a nose.
$20.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #12
Uncle Scrooge
pays five gold bars for passage to ancient Colchis to hunt the
Golden Fleece, but the birdlike creatures who guide him have other
ideas as did Barks' editors at Western Publishing. The Duck
Man called the female menaces Harpies, "an obscure nickname
for a streetwalker ," Barks later explained. "I managed
to save the story ["The Golden Fleecing"] by renaming the old girls
as Larkies." (SOLD OUT!)
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #13
Scrooge's big
worry is the coming earthquake that may crack his money bin like an egg.
Geologists tunnel into Terry Fermy, the "Land Beneath the Ground!
" where all quakes originate. Barks' "comical little round-bodied
guys," as he called them, are still impressing youngsters in Disney
stores around the nation where the characters, both Terries and
Fermies, have been built into "lifesize" displays de-picting an
underground scene ten to twelve feet in length. The pity is that Barks,
of course, gets no credit and there is no acknowledgment of the comic
book. Even Disney store employees, when asked, have no idea of
the display's fantastic origin or the genius who conceived it.
$15.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #14
On the frozen heights
of the Ghaspan Ghulp plateau Scrooge battles the Abominable
Snowman -- a primitive monster with a penchant for gaudy trinkets. "'The Lost Crown of Genghis Khan' and a loud-ticking watch are
knickknacks I felt would appeal to such a creature," Barks said.
$15.00
Walt Disney's Uncle
Scrooge Adventures in Color #15
A landmark issue
in which Uncle Scrooge meets his doppleganger -- the origin
and first appearance of Flintheart Glomgold, who was to
become a mainstay in Barksdom and the annals of Duckburg.
But the question remained unresolved: which webfoot would be relegated
to the role of "The Second-Richest Duck," South Africa's Glomgold
or America's McDuck? (SOLD OUT!)
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #16
A psychic journey, "Back
to Long Ago!" reveals that in a former life Scrooge was Matey
McDuck of the Royal Navy and Donald his junior officer. Carl
Barks himself was skeptical of reincarnation but saw its fictional
possibilities. A great yarn!
$20.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #17
Gladstone was
responsible for helping to thaw the freeze between Disney and destiny
concerning "A Cold Bargain," an Uncle Scrooge adventure
from the chilly part of 1957's Cold War; for many years Disney
banned the story, prohibiting its republication. The Studio's objections
and subsequent restrictions to Barks' art and text were puzzling
at best, ridiculous at worst. Our company was, for example, forced to
change the Brutopian ambassador's denigration of Scrooge
from a "rich pig of a duck," to a "rich dog of a duck."
Huh? More understandable, perhaps, were the facial reconstructions required:
the Brutopian was too Slavic and looked a bit too similar,
Disney felt, to the Soviet Union's former leader, Nikita
Khrushchev. By the time this comic album was done in 1997, however,
the ethnic facial features of the menacing arms merchant were reinstated
and the word "pig" instead of "dog" was written back in
to Barks' original copy. In your humble former publisher's personal
opinion, Uncle Scrooge Adventures in Color #17 is an absolute
must for any serious fan who doesn't have $180 or more to buy
a near mint copy of the original comic.
$25.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #18
Carl Barks always
felt evildoers in his Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories
should, reasonably, be big (the Beagle Boys, the Larkies
and even the sorceress, Magica de Spell), but if the antagonists
are a lost race or tribe or even an alien species (the Gneezles,
the Micro-Ducks, the space Apaches, or the diminutive Peeweegahs
in this story) and if they are to gain any reader sympathy they
need to be very small, vulnerabie. In the "Land of the Pygmy Indians," the miniature Hiawathas "make a slight menace out of the ducks,"
Barks explained. This is the finest reprinting of the classic with
magnificent coloring by Scott Rockwell.
$30.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #19
Everyone knows Uncle
Scrooge is the quintessential miser when it comes to saving
money; however, he can spend it in prodigious amounts, too, as
this timely tale illustrates on page one: the McDuck empire's office
staff parades in with armloads of tickets for all five of the Duck
clan to travel to "1200 places in 69 countries, with 16 crossings
of the Seven Seas!" Scheduled as a business trip, it nonetheless
leads to adventure when the ducks find "The Mines of King Solomon."
$15.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #20
A double issue, USA
#20 leads off reprinting a Far-East adventure that takes the
ducks to Tankor Wat in the "City of Golden Roofs." Carl
Barks completists will also be pleased with the inclusion of "September
Scrimmage," a short tale from Mickey Mouse Almanac #1, an elusive
1957 Dell Giant.
$12.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #21
Uncle Scrooge
storms out of his office, determined to foil the Beagle Boys' latest
assault on his billions. Leaving behind a binful of castor oil, he hides
his cash in the countryside, just below the earth's crust, never dreaming
he's buried it on land belonging to Grandpa Beagle. But all ends
well in "The Money Well."
$12.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #22
When satisfaction turns
to trauma and Uncle Scrooge's money bin explodes, the ducks take
refuge in a mountain cabin. Scrooge frets and snarls to pass the time,
but Donald Duck's nephews read about "The Golden River,"
Ruskin's fairy tale of wastelands and of gold and greed redeemed
by love.
$20.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #23
Four of Uncle Scooge
McDuck's ocean liners pile up on the dreaded reefs of Doomgurgle
Straits and have been stripped of their golden cargo. To help out,
Donald Duck turns detective, but even he may be out of his depth
resolving the intricasies of "The Strange Shipwrecks."
$12.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #24
"The Twenty-Four
Carat Moon" is, without doubt, one of the most brilliantly conceived,
interestingly crafted, beautifully structured and drawn, well laid-out
and flawlessly executed Uncle Scrooge stories done by the Old
Duck Man and, in the instance of this reprinting, magnificently colored
by Gladstone's award-winning Susan Daigle-Leach. We're even
pleased with the new cover, the title page and the exclusive Trading
Card! When this powerful comic album was published May 6, 1997, the
folks at Gladstone felt they really had their acts together. But
why buy this particular issue? Well, there's one more reason: Dana
Gabbard and Geoffrey Blum's four-page illustrated article, "The Color of Truth is Gray"! Blum was a contributor and
associate editor of Another Rainbow and Gladstone books
and comics for a decade and a half, but, honestly, there were no four
pages of his text (not to ignore Gabbard's contribution) that I've
enjoyed reading more than this piece. If you order the comic, please read
this article! It's not for most high schoolers, but for most college students
and adults who like to read and think. It's a must!
$15.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #25
Scrooge's quest
for a missing merchant vessel begins inauspiciously but
turns to disaster when the ship proves to be "The Flying Dutchman."
Carl Barks recollected that "the myth of the Dutchman was
something I read references to in pulp magazines' sea stories. I gathered
it was a legend with a grain of truth. " This comic album has a title
page that departs from the norm in that the art by Barks was relatively
contemporary -- not drawn in 1959 at the time of the story, but some twenty
seven years later: a pen and ink tracing from "Afoul of the Flying
Dutchman," a 1985 oil painting based on the vintage story. An in-depth
article by Geoffrey Blum entitled "Stormy Seas" delves into
the history of three more "Flying Dutchman" oils Barks did
in the early 1970's, reproducing six stages of two of them. The history,
as reported by Blum of who bought what and when was mostly correct
in 1997, but more is known now (and that is yet another story for another
time).
$15.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #26
A conquistador's letter
points the way for Uncle Scrooge and his nephews to golden treasure
and they set out with llama and alpine gear to get it. Their perilous
trek leads to a valley high in the Andes where they find "The
Prize of Pizarro." This is another Barks tale that inspired
the Indiana Jones films of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
$15.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #27
"Next to my money, I
love a good fight," exclaims Uncle Scrooge as he starts a brawl
with Flintheart Glomgold, who appears for the second time in a
mayhem- and-moola contest to prove which duck is "The Money Champ."
A profuse photo-illustrated article, "Barks' Breakdowns," delves
into nine stages Carl Barks went through from conception to auction
in the early 1970's when he averaged nearly one oil painting every two
weeks for the collector's market.
$15.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #28
To foil the evil, evil
Beagle Boys in "The 'Paul Bunyan' Machine," crafty old Uncle
Scrooge McDuck wraps all the cash and currency in his money bin in
small brown paper packages and mails it to himself in the forested mountains
of Talltree, Idaho, where he squirrels it in tree trunks,
never dreaming he'll have to contend with the Beagles Boys' logging
machine!
$20.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #29
A joint interview was
conducted In March 1983 with two of the greatest Disney legends,
Carl Barks and Floyd Gottfredson (the fifty-year Mickey
Mouse newspaper syndicated comic strip veteran). Each was asked to
name the favorite story they had written. Gottfredson explained
that his favorite was "Island in the Sky" (published from November
30, 1936 through April 3, 1937), the story based on a secret, futuristic
atomic-power formula. Barks astonished everyone present when he,
too, said, "The one I like best now after all these years in looking back
over the whole chain of them that I did, was "Island in the Sky"
(one of Susan Daigle-Leach's best coloring jobs leads off the album,
Uncle Scrooge Adventures in Color #29). Gottfredson's and
Barks' stories were totally different, of course, but that didn't
lessen the impact nor coincidence of The Old Duck Man's little
revelation! This historic moment was recorded and released six years later,
after Floyd Gottfredson's passing at age 80. Carl Barks,
meantime, who lived to be 99 years old, had launched into a new phase
of his long career painting Disney duck oils for Another Rainbow
at the time of the release of Mickey Mouse in Color, a huge, eight-pound
national book-award winner in which a 45-rpm picture record is pocketed
that contains the voices of the publisher as he asks questions, Floyd's
reactions and Carl's brief monolog as he recounts his tale of an
"Island in the Sky." (Various people in management at Disney
have described MMIC over the years as "the finest single book ever
published by a licensee" of the Studio. It was released in a limited
edition by Another Rainbow and is, essentially, a book that is
50 percent Floyd Gottfredson, reprinting famous Mickey Mouse
stories such as The Robin Hood Adventure, Mickey Mouse Outwits
the Phantom Blot and Blaggard Castle, among other classic Sunday
and daily newspaper strips; and the other half is strictly Carl Barks
art featuring Mickey Mouse! Most notable are the color storyboards
conceptualizing a complete Mickey animated cartoon Barks
called Northwest Mounted, co-starring Minnie Mouse and Peg-Leg
Pete. Though it was never produced, the effort precipitated Barks'
move elsewhere in the Studio to work on Donald Duck cartoons
(there he met Jack Hannah, eventually teaming up to draw the comic
book, Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold). At this time in 1942, Barks'
creation of his most famous comic book character, Uncle Scrooge McDuck,
was still five years away. (A small quantity of the original Mickey
Mouse in Color book is still available at the original issue price
of $250. Please do not confuse the limited-edition book with the small
trade edition, which does not contain the 45 rpm record or any of the
art by Carl Barks. Only the limited edition books are signed by Gottfredson
and Barks. Call Another Rainbow at [928] 776-1300 and ask
for Helen; fax [928] 445-7536; write Box 2079, Prescott, AZ 86302;
or email bdhamilton@mindspring.com [sorry, but emails usually delay
a response by seven to ten days].)
Also, relating to the USA #29 album: Carl Barks once commented
that "modern art is so meaningless it can be anything you choose to call
it." The pictorial cover art for this album, humbly but imaginatively
recreated by yours truly -- with terrific color added by Susan Daigle-Leach
-- was taken from Uncle Scrooge's image in the last panel of the
second story, "Hound of the Whiskervilles," and is one of the publisher's
personal favorite covers. Buy it. -- BH
(extremely limited)
$35.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #30
Uncle Scrooge McDuck knows the world is run by oil and financed by oil and in this lead story
from forty years ago (June 1960), "Pipeline to Danger," it
takes the Duck clan to the north African seacoast and thence
on to the deep sands of the Sahara, where, as Scrooge puts
it, he wants Donald Duck and the boys "to learn a little about
the oil business." But the miserly old entrepreneur doesn't know how to
do anything halfway, including not getting into t-r-o-u-b-l-e!
$15.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #31
Disguises abound in
USA #31. To sneak his gold past pirates on the high seas, Uncle
Scrooge loads the bullion aboard a windjammer. No one should sus-pect
such a slow ship of hauling treasure, right? But the wily Beagle Boys
know windjammers are also the cheapest form of transport, and they line
in wait for the old penny-pincher.
$15.00
A land deal in Florida's
Everglades becomes the find of the century when Uncle Scrooge
splashes into the Fountain of Youth -- and emerges, still old,
to tell the tale, "That's No Fable!" This story is unique as Carl
Barks' only duck adventure told entirely in flashback. "I was trying
to get a little variety in the opening," Barks explained. "The
reader needed to be aware that Scrooge would find the Fountain.
It would have seemed awfully phony if it were dragged in cold along about
page eight." $20.00 Walt Disney's Uncle
Scrooge Adventures in Color #33
Commentary by former publisher, Bruce Hamilton.
Four full-fledged 1961 Uncle Scrooge stories
populate this interesting comic album: "Billions in the Hole" and
"Bongo on the Congo" from Uncle Scrooge #33, plus "Mythtic
Mystery" and "Chugwagon Derby" from Uncle Scrooge #34.
Each is interesting for its own reasons. A little science, a lot of fiction
and the Beagle Boys mix it up in the first story when all the ducks
and Scrooge's money bin are shrunk by an Atom Subtractor.
In the African story, though, there's a bit of a question about
its political correctness today, but the country is fictional and how
upset could anyone be when the main antagonists are Duk Duks and
Quak Quaks?
Story number three is an odd one, mixing an earthling astronomer and mythical
gods from Valhalla who seem to be living on a small errant planet
that may actually be a recreation of Olympus but, then, how do
Hercules, Thor and Vulcan fit in? The best advice:
don't think about it. Just hop on Carl Barks' ride into outer space!
"Chugwagon Derby" is a fascinating study, too. Dig up a copy of
the second Duck story Barks ever wrote, "The Hard Loser,"
a 1943 ten-pager that followed "The Mummy's Ring" in Donald
Duck FC #29. "Chugwagon Derby" is a retelling eighteen
years later by Barks of that early effort! -- BH (SOLD OUT!)
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #34
Outside normal sequencing,
this slightly larger album reprints Carl Barks stories from Uncle
Scrooge Goes to Disneyland (August 1957), Disneyland Birthday Party
(October 1958) and Summer Fun #2 (August 1959), all of which are
difficult to obtain in original editions. Barks was assiged to
stray from routine as Western Publishing's number one man for Uncle
Scrooge and Donald Duck adventure stories, which seems inexplicable.
The two Disneyland tales attest to Barks' integrity and
ultimate professionalism, though. The themed jobs were an open invitation
to mediocrity: the books would not be big sellers and who'd know anyway
if he just knocked out something for a paycheck? But that was never Carl
Barks' mindset. He dug in, stretched his imagination -- and gift for
imaginative layouts -- and did "The Fantastic River Race," co-starring Grandma Duck, Gyro Gearloose and the Beagle Boys
(but no Donald Duck); and then reteamed Scrooge with
Gyro for "The Forbidium Money Bin." Highly recommended!
$15.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #35
Gladstone published
USA #35 on December 2, 1997, the 50th Anniversary of Uncle
Scrooge's first appearance in "Christmas on Bear Mountain"
in 1947. It reprints Carl Barks stories from Uncle Scrooge #36
and #37 (September and December 1961). Inside, "Fifty Years
of Scrooge McDuck" is a four-page article by Geoffrey Blum
that has compiled a fascinating year-by-year must-read for serious Barks
collectors. As for the stories, "The Golden Nugget Boat" combines
fan-favorite ingredients: a happy return by the ducks to the Klondike,
but, unfortunately, also with the insufferable presence of Gladstone
Gander! Highlighting the album is the first appearance of Magica
de Spell and her home at a small sorcery shop in the village of Sulphuria
on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius. Magica's obsession to steal
Scrooge's old Number One Dime (the first he ever earned),
is thus explained by the sorceress herself: "I believe that if I melt
[the coins of rich men] together in the sulphurous fires of Mt. Vesuvius,
their mystic powers will fuse into a super amulet! " This is her
first story and the beginning of their many duels of wits.
$15.00
The ducks buck bad luck
when they seek treasures lying buried beneath the sands of what was once
ancient Persia (today's Iran). After yelling "Open Sesame" and rolling back a boulder fronting the "Cave of Ali Baba," Scrooge,
Donald, and nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie find the jewels guarded by rocs of another kind! As explained in the opening
panel caption, "Uncle Scrooge is on a tour of his faraway oil pipe
lines!" -- and the subsequent by-products of a treasure hunt were mere
chance. A story that came from a forever-gone era, Carl Barks wrote
and drew this mini-epic forty years ago, originally published March 1962.
An innocent plot device then, the location, the motivations, the exploitation
would be, under any pretext, unimaginable fiction today, post September
11, 2001. Barks was spared witnessing the changes, having passed
away in 2000. As a decades long friend, I know he felt he came
into this world at a perfect time but he may have left it at the perfect
time, too. -- BH $15.00 Walt Disney's Uncle
Scrooge Adventures in Color #37
Commentary by former publisher, Bruce Hamilton.
Carl Barks introduced a villainess by the name of Magica de Spell fifteen years into his Uncle Scrooge saga.
He explained, "Magica was another menace that I developed because
I couldn't be using the Beagle Boys all the time." Curiously, the Beagle Boys do a two-page cameo here in "The Unsafe Safe," and it was Magica's second appearance (from Uncle Scrooge #38, June 1962). Geoffrey Blum penned notes accompanying three
pages of Magica drawings in a featurette, "Models for a Sorceress." (Publisher's note: I never mentioned this to Blum because I saw
no point, but he made a slight goof in a caption where he said, "The [three]
sketches below were done for practice and never made it into a story." Oops! See page 11, panel 4.) -- BH
- SOLD OUT
Walt Disney's Uncle
Scrooge Adventures in Color #38
Commentary by former publisher, Bruce Hamilton.
Uncle Scrooge walks around his money bin in a daze
as he laments, "After sixteen hours of counting money, I'm beat! We billionaires
sure have a hard life!" Little does he realize he's about to embark
on a full-length adventure in a story called, "A Spicy Tale" (reprinted
from Uncle Scrooge #39, September 1962) that takes him to the Amazon
and leads him and his nephews, Donald, Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck
on a zany adventure dealing with unlikely 1962 topics like the twist craze,
bongo music and a singer with a suspicious name: Elfish Pestly.
One gem of Uncle Scrooge Adventures in Color #38, however, is Geoffrey
Blum's article, "Smoke and Mirrors," in which the Gladstone
Associate Editor reveals for the first time Carl Barks quotes from
vintage letters in which the Old Duck Man talks candidly about
the 1960's: trends, politicians and "a phoniness about so muoh of the
progress [of society] that one gradually becomes cynical about all of
it." What's frightening is to realize he was talking about the United
States as he saw it then , forty years ago! He could have been
writing about today! To read these quotes from Barks' letters is
worth picking up the album. -- BH --(SOLD OUT!) --
Walt Disney's Uncle
Scrooge Adventures in Color #39
Commentary by former publisher, Bruce Hamilton.
"An Oddball Odyssey" (reprinting US #40,
January 1963) is a unique, oddball story reflecting oddball editorial decisions by Western Publishing's editors. Not widely
understood by the marketplace then and absolutely ignored by 99% of fandom
today, Western's Dell and Gold Key comics sold better than
anyone else's comics going all the way back to the golden era of the 1940's.
A mediocre title would routinely sell 600,000 copies a month and good
sellers would top one million, two million and more! But, by the early
'60's, Western was slipping (as was everyone) from the competition
of television and the demise of mom-and-pop stores. To hopefully boost
sales by making their comics more attractive (but in actual fact, merely
making them strange), for one issue the editors had Carl Barks eliminate the borders on the panels of "Odyssey" and make the balloons
rectangular. Gladstone corrected the former and left the latter. --BH
(SOLD OUT!) --
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #40
"The Case of the
Sticky Money" pits Uncle Scrooge and the Duck clan against
the Beagle Boys and in "For Old Dime's Sake" the family
battles nemisis Magica de Spell as the sneaky shapeshifter unleashes
a firestorm of comets and meteors and audaciouly assumes the form of her
archenemy, Scrooge McDuck! (SOLD OUT!)
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #41
"Crown of the Mayas" put the Duck clan on an archaeological trek in the best Carl Barks tradition, closely based on text and photgraphs from the National Geographic (see the color illustrated article, "Back to the Geographic"). A short back-up featurette, a six-pager called "The Invisible Intruder" depicts Scrooge (for the only time) in a flashback as a duckling! - (SOLD OUT!)
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #42
Carl Barks had a fondness from preaching the true value of gold. "Isle of Golden Geese" sends Uncle Scrooge to the Honker Archipelago, where a featherbrainded goose girl presides over a fortune in golden eggs and quills - but lectures our hero on the greater worth of nourishing food and soft pillows. This story is backed up by "The Travel Tightwad," which tells of McDuck stretching pennies by switching his chauffeur-driven limousine for a chauffeur-driver scooter. A special don't miss extra is the text feature, "Raiders of the Lost Barks - Letters to Don Rosa from Carl Barks." - (SOLD OUT!)--
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #43
Uncle Scrooge's attempt to buy Mount Everest, the Taj Mahal and Hong Kong for his amusement park in Duckburg is just the start of a daring adventure. When a typhoon sinks the steamship carrying his Number One dime, the old McDuck must follow it all the way to Davy Jones' Locker! Soon ducks and dime alike are "Lost Beneath the Sea." Next a suspicious Scrooge disguises himself to spy on his nephews' business practices in "The Lemonade Fling."- (SOLD OUT!)
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #44
Question: When is miserly
Uncle Scrooge not a miser?
Answer #1: When his meddling nephew uses a hypno-ray to jolt McDuck's "generosity gene," turning the old fellow into "The Thrifty Spendthrift" (from Uncle Scrooge #47, February 1964). This is probably Barks'
second most bizarre tale.
Answer #2: When a slinky sorceress unleashes a hex to scramble Scrooge's physiognomy, forcing him to assume "The Many Faces of Magic de Spell" (from US #48, March '64). This is probably Barks' most bizarre
tale.
$20.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #45
The villain in "The
Loony Lunar Gold Rush" is not Scrooge McDuck, but Dangerous
Dan McShrew. The ducks rush skyward, to a kind of Klondike-on-the-moon
and a space-age parody of Robert W. Service's "The Shooting
of Dan McGrew."
In the days when Babylon was a babe and Sesame was a word
that opened caves, one special carpet had the power to fly. In the second
tale, Magica de Spell is after that woven wonder, vying with Uncle
Scrooge for the prize. "Rug Riders in the Sky," is another
parody, the title reminiscent of singer Vaughn Monroe's #1 Hit
Parade song, "Ghost Riders in the Sky."
Don't miss the intriguing feature reproducing three of Carl Barks'
original cover concepts (from this and the previous album), comparing
them to the finished versions, two of which were better in their
final form and one that was not! (The Old Duck Man subtly
reveals why.) SOLD OUT
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #46
When two million gophers
undermine his bin, Uncle Scrooge flees from Duckburg into
the country, disguising his greenbacks as farm produce. He doesn't count,
however, on the Beagle Boys hijacking his harvest to feed their
own gophers in "How Green Was My Lettuce." (Another title "borrowed" by Carl Barks, this time from the classic film of the 1940's, "How
Green Was My Valley.")
In "The Great Wig Mystery," it's Donald Duck who has to
hide. He's the sole witness who can save Scrooge McDuck's fortune
in a high-rolling lawsuit, and the prosecution wants him silenced -- permanently.
$12.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #47
Scrooge and his
kin will boldly go where no duck has gone before even if it means rocketing
off to Venus just to deliver a love letter. The mail must go through
in "Interplanetary Postman." It's an appropriate album for Geoff
Blum's sentimental article on Carl Barks' late wife, Gare,
who passed away in 1993. Two outstanding paintings by Gare, who
was a published artist of renown, are reproduced in color, one being "Storms
Over Grand Canyon," depicting a real rock formation she later found
out is known as -- wouldn't you know? -- Duck on a Rock!
$15.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #48
Two full-length, twenty-four
page adventures from Uncle Scrooge #55 and #56. The gold
of Sheba intrigues Scrooge, who must cross three hundred
thousand square miles of sand in "McDuck of Arabia" to reach his
goal. Barks' rough map clearly shows where they are to traverse
is between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, most likely
Saudi Arabia, possibly Iraq.
The second hunt for riches is in the "Mystery of the Ghost Town Railroad." Location: Goldopolis, Nevada. Uncle Scrooge battles one
of his Old West foes, Copperhead McViper, last of the notorious
McViper gang.
$12.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #49
A hypnotism machine
falls into the clutches of Bruto Castrova, a spy from Brutopia
(see "A Cold Bargain") who visits a scientist's labratory and as
a result, soon Scrooge and clan are off to "The Swamp of No
Return." Second story: it only takes one small gang of Beagle Boys
to turn mammoth mechanical servants into "The Giant Robot Robbers."
$12.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #50
Two of the more famous
later Scrooge McDuck stories by Carl Barks are featured
in this album (reprints from Uncle Scrooge #59 and #60,
September and November 1965). First is Barks' last Alaska/Klondike
story (which is which gets
a little muddled), "North of the Yukon," where, once again,
McDuck encounters a well-known old swindler from '98, Soapy Slick.
Second: Uncle Scrooge doesn't believe in ghosts till he visits
an ancient Duckburg church. There he uncovers secret tunnels, a
coin cathedral, and a light-fingered, fleet-footed thief, "The Phantom
of Notre Duck." An interesting side piece is "The Barko Factor," written by Geoffrey Blum. In it he tells the story of a real-life
sled dog that inspired Barks.
$18.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #51
The Near East
and Africa have often been favorite inspirational locales for Carl
Barks' Uncle Scrooge adventures. The latter wins out this time in
"So Far No Safari." Music from everywhere hath charms, so when
Scrooge's plane goes down over Africa, Huey, Dewey
and Louie fly to the rescue and use their Junior Woodchuck
animal-taming tunes to persuade local wildlife to transport our heroes.
Further, a third of the way east around the world, the ducks land next
"down under," in Australia, where they run into and eventually
tame the overweight and vicious "Queen of the Wild Dog Pack." $12.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #52
A significant album,
USA #52 features a lead story with proven ingredients: Uncle
Scrooge and the Duck family, McDuck's money bin, the
Beagle Boys and the "House of Haunts," an outrageously haunted
castle. Best of all, however, is "The Treasure of Marco Polo," which was the single most difficult Carl Barks story (of twelve)
for Another Rainbow to get removed from Disney's dreaded
permanent and Official Banned List from the 1970's. ("A Cold
Bargain," the "Atom Bomb" giveaway and "Voodoo Hoodoo" were others.) Everything about "The Treasure of Marco Polo" seemed
to bother Disney before they relaxed -- or lowered? -- their barriers.
Revolutionary settings were taboo -- especially in the Far East
-- and here was Prince Char Ming, the rightful ruler of Unsteadystan,
threatened by rebels whose leader was Wahn Beeg Raht. Even the
Duckburgian Embassy gets blown up. SOLD OUT
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #53
Timing is everything.
Gladstone was amazed and overjoyed in the summer of 1998 when the
staff realized that the highly unlikely, precise and coincidental time
had arrived to reprint "Micro-Ducks From Outer Space." The lovable
little ducks from Micro are spacemen who first arrive by flying
saucer through a broken window in Scrooge McDuck's money bin in
1966. The following explanation appears on the Contents page of USA
in Color #53:
"This album's cover commemorates the arrival exactly thirty-two years
ago of Captain Micron and his crew in the pages of Uncle Scrooge
#65, published in September 1966. Since it takes the Micron
ship eight years to make a round trip between its home planet and earth,
the tiny spacemen will have gone and come back four times since their
initial visit. As you see from the book in your hands [when you look on
the title page], they're just now back in town.
"May they keep returning to trade for wheat and corn, and may they
find, as they did the first time, that not all earthmen are crooks and
monsters."
The dimunitive Micro-Ducks are due back next in 2006.
$15.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #54
When Uncle Scrooge's money bin cracks open and his multi-trillions fall all the way into the
ocean, the ducks mount a giant salvage operation and confront the "Hall
of the Memaid Queen." Also in USA #54 it's off to Longhorn
Valley and a battle of beef barons: McDuck versus McViper.
$12.00
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge
Adventures in Color #55
In the stormy waters
off Miserystan, Uncle Scrooge and the Beagle Boys
vie for possession of "The Doom Diamond," a gem that carries a
deadly curse (this is the last story Carl Barks both wrote and
drew before his retirement; it appeared in Uncle Scrooge #70, July
1967). In our album's final story (written by Barks but
drawn by Tony Strobl from Duck Man storyboard scripts for
US #71, November '67) a Sumerian king, doomed to perpetual
life, forces the ducks to relive an ancient war so they could lead the
despot to a treasure that "King Scrooge the First" had concealed
thirty-nine centuries earlier.
$12.00
To wrap up the Gladstone-imprint
saga of Uncle Scrooge McDuck -- and to make the page counts work
-- the final album, USA #56, presents a curious mix of the works
of the Grand Duckmaster, master craftsman Carl Barks. The first story, "The Black Pearls of Tabu Yama," originally appeared in Western Publishing's 1957 square-bound annual, Christmas in Disneyland #1. It was a book-length tale framed around the idea of Santa Claus taking two children on a tour of Disney's themepark. Various artists were asked to contribute a portion, with Barks' assignment to do an Uncle Scrooge story to accompany the riverboat ride in Adventureland. Though these stories must have been difficult to conceive -- much less write in any coherent manner -- the art was designed for three-tier rather than four-tier layouts, allowing Barks to take the full artistic opportunity to include sharpened detailwork and to draw large splash panels (see also USA #34 ).
The second story appeared in Vacation in Disneyland Four Color #1025
(August 1949) as a Grandma Duck and Uncle Scrooge six-page adventure
that was drawn by Barks but not written by him. Gladstone was first in the United States to publish Barks' last story in its bi-monthly Uncle Scrooge Adventures #33 (July 1995). After a hiatus of three decades, Carl Barks was persuaded to typescript "Horsing Around With History" and to leave the artistic chores to the younger Disney artist, William Van Horn. How the tale came about is divulged in a two-page article, "The Last Hurrah," written by Geoffrey Blum. After the commitment had been made, Barks immediately regretted his decision and complained of feeling "trapped." As always, though, he settled down to do the task to the best of his ability and did. (The only other break from retirement was in 1981 when Barks wrote a text story, "Go Slowly, Sands of Time," and then illustrated it with watercolor art.)
$12.00