Carl Barks: "The Good Duck Artist" (2 Points)

 One throughline found within several of the artists we looked at this week was the concept of getting credit for their work. Jack Kirby for example, was and is known very well by comic fans who have read his works or the works influenced by his pioneering. Today, however, many of the stories he had a large hand in creating are now blockbuster juggernauts but fans of the films have accepted them as the work of the late expert marketer and personality Stan Lee. While Kirby’s name may have slipped through the cracks over the years, the opposite is true for Carl Barks. Fans of the Scrooge McDuck Comics were able to sift through the uncredited strips and identify “The Good Duck Artist” as he was known for years until the comics were released under the names of their creators instead of simply “Disney.” 


One thing that I like about Bark’s Scrooge comics are his sense of scale and adventure, as well as the motivations of the characters that lead to those adventures. It feels like anything can and will happen, all at the behest of scrooge’s insatiable stinginess. Uncle Scrooge is the kind of guy that you would never want to deal with on a daily basis in real life, but to watch in on his life is extremely entertaining. In order to prove he is the richest duck in the world he will load up a ship with every single one of his assets and challenge his closest contender to a richest duck off. To keep his wealth from getting stolen using magic - something he cannot prevent through normal means - he’ll go to an uncharted jungle and hide out with a strange race of faceless people. These concepts are inherently funny on their own, and Barks stretches them to their full potential rather gracefully.

The world of Uncle Scrooge is ever evolving and expanding, if the author needs a new location for scrooge to explore then all they need to do is create it. If he wants to have Scrooge battle magic with an impossible feat of magic, they can do it. Nothing is restricted by logic or reality because Scrooge is an illogical man in an Illogical world. While his family does their best to talk some sense into him but his stubbornness will inevitably drag him into another adventure.


This concept for Scrooge’s character and world is kept consistent through almost all future interpretations of the story, from the 80s cartoon, to the 2019 reboot, to 2013’s Ducktales: Remastered.      


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