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