By Carl Barks & anonymous (Gladstone)
No ISBN
The greatest surprise about this magnificent slice of all-ages-adventure is just how long it took to make the blindingly obvious connection between the epitome of the American self-made man – okay, Duck – and the most ubiquitous legend of lost and illimitable wealth. ‘The Mines of King Solomon’ is magical mystery and exotic derring-do wrapped up in the author’s sly wit, uproarious slapstick and down-home, simple morality: in other words, pure Carl Barks.
One of the greatest storytellers America has ever produced, Barks’ early life is well-documented elsewhere if you need detail, but in brief, he started as a jobbing cartoonist, before joining Disney’s studio in 1935, toiling in-house as a animator before quitting in 1942 to work exclusively and anonymously in comic books.
Until the mid-1960s he worked in productive seclusion writing and drawing a vast array of comedic adventure yarns for kids, creating a Duck Universe of memorable – and highly bankable – characters like Gladstone Gander (1948), the Beagle Boys (1951), Gyro Gearloose (1952), and Magica De Spell (1961) to augment the stable of cartoon actors from the Disney Studio. His greatest creation was undoubtedly the crusty, energetic, paternalistic, money-mad gazillionaire Scrooge McDuck: the star of this show.
So potent were his creations that they fed back into Disney’s animation output itself, even though his brilliant comic work was done for the licensing company Dell/Gold Key, and not directly for the studio.
Throughout this period Barks was blissfully unaware that his work (uncredited by official policy as was all the company’s cartoon and comicbook output), was nevertheless singled out by a rabid and discerning public as being by “the Good Duck Artist.†When some of his most dedicated fans finally tracked him down, his belated celebrity began.
Gladstone Publishing began re-releasing Barks material – and a selection of other Disney comics strips – in the 1980s and this album is another one of the best. Whilst producing all that landmark innovative material Barks was just a working guy, generating covers, illustrating other people’s scripts when necessary (as here in the intriguing supplementary “team-up†with Grandma Duck) and contributing story and art to the burgeoning canon of Donald Duck and other Big Screen characters.
Printed in the large but increasingly scarce European oversized format (278mm x 223mm) this glorious gem reprints the contents of Uncle Scrooge #19 (1957) wherein the Mallard Magnate decides to personally check all his global money-making ventures, and dragoons Donald Duck and his nephews into tagging along to be his unpaid dogs-bodies.
At his glass factory in Sweden he discovers that the supply of sand has dried up, and Duck-of-Action that he is, flies straight to the Sinai desert to discover why. And thus begins an absorbing trek through epochs ancient and modern that leads, via bandits, beasts and general bedlam, to the uncovering of the most spectacular treasures of the ages…
Barks drew ‘Honey of a Hen’ for an unnamed scripter (from Four Color Comics #1010, better known as Grandma Duck’s Farm Friends, 1959) wherein the mighty Management Mogul fails to optimise productivity on the old biddy’s small-holding, but it’s all the great man himself for the remaining stories; two Scrooge single-page gag strips from Uncle Scrooge #19 and #21 and a painfully funny yarn from Walt Disney Comics and Stories #227 (1958), once again pitting the irascible Donald against his nephews in their most obnoxious mode as veteran know-it-alls of the Junior Woodchucks.
No one has ever bettered Barks at blending humour with drama and charm with action and even if you can’t find this particular volume, his work is now readily accessible through a number of publications and outlets. So if you’ve denied yourself his captivating brand of magic, no matter what your age or temperament you can easily experience the magic of the man Will Eisner called “the Hans Christian Andersen of Comics.â€
You poor fools, what are you waiting for?
© 1987, 1959, 1958, 1957 The Walt Disney Company. All Rights Reserved.