4,9
Special Edition Walt Disney's Donald Duck Vol. 6: The Old Castle's Secret (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library) with Free PDF EDITION Download Now!
With this volume, “The Carl Barks Library” loops back to Barks’s earlier days, collecting the entirety of Barks’s (astounding) 1948 output. The title story, “The Old Castle’s Secret,” is notable not just for being the first full-length 32-page adventure instigated by Scrooge McDuck (in his second-ever appearance), but for featuring some of Barks’s spookiest, lushest settings in old Clan McDuck castle of Dismal Downs. The other long story, “The Sheriff of Bullet Valley,” plunks Donald and the nephews in the Wild West, with Donald as an overconfident deputy having to deal with some high-tech rustlers.
At this time of writing, The Ebook Walt Disney's Donald Duck Vol. 6: The Old Castle's Secret (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library) has garnered 9 customer reviews with rating of 5 out of 5 stars. Not a bad score at all as if you round it off, it’s actually a perfect TEN already. From the looks of that rating, we can say the Ebook is Good TO READ!
Special Edition Walt Disney's Donald Duck Vol. 6: The Old Castle's Secret (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library) with Free PDF EDITION!
Another Treasure by Carl Barks The Old Castle's Secret is the fourth in Fantagraphics' series of books reprinting Carl Barks' comic book stories with Disney characters and includes stories Barks wrote and drew between Dec. 3, 1947 and May 28, 1948. For the most part, the art looks stunningly beautiful and detailed, thanks to the extraordinary quality of Barks original drawings and also the excellent quality negatives that were made from the original art at the time of their original printings, negatives used again in the printing of this book. The one exception is the story, Darkest Africa, which also looks very, very good, and arguably better than it has looked since its original printing, but not quite as good as the others, more about which later in this review. The coloring is generally quite faithful to the very good coloring in the original comics, but both the general printing quality and the registration is much better in this book than in the original cheap 10¢ comic books. Not everyone is in favor of this fidelity of color design to the original, and some would prefer the broader color palate available in modern comic books. I disagree. Barks knew the color palate available in the comics at the time and undoubtedly had that in mind when he drew these pages. There are occasional minor color errors. For example there should be a single red flower in the bush below the butterfly in page 75, panel 5. But one can make a good arguement that these comics have never looked better in color. My major complaint, and a minor one it is indeed, is that yellow plate color is sometimes too intense. For an example compare page 54 to the first 5 panels of page 55. But even this has generally improved as this series has progressed. About Barks writing, this is excellent Barks material, near the beginning of his peak period of 5-8 years. Some of his later work is a little deeper, more profound, more sharply edged satire, and maybe even funnier. Some, but not all. This is prime Barks. If you haven't enjoyed the other Fantagraphics Barks books, you probably shouldn't buy this one. But then you probably aren't reading this review either. If you have enjoyed the others, this is certainly a must have. It has one very good and two terrific long adventure stories, eleven 10-pagers from Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, and a few covers and one page gags; and there is some commentary, most of which I have not yet read, but which in the past has been interesting and sometimes informative even to a long time Barks fan and scholar like myself. You really can't miss. According to notes in the back of the book by Ken Parille, the version of Darkest Africa printed in The Old Castle's Secret was restored from copies of the original 1948 comic book printing in March of Comics #20 and a 1950s Italian reprint, which may have been in Black and White, but the text does not say. Previous printings since the 1980s have been done using a redrawn version by Daan Jippes and Dick Vlottes commissioned in 1982 by the Dutch publisher of Disney comics. Black and White xeroxes of the original comic book were probably blown up to approximately 28 x 36 cm (the size of Jippes' redrawn version of Donald Duck's Atom Bomb, approximately 11 x 14 inches).* The xeroxes were presumably then put on a light box and re-inked, and there was probably a good bit of actual redrawing necessary, too. For publication in the USA, further changes were made before the stories were printed in the Carl Barks Library series of Barks reprints in the 1980s and early 1990s and those changes have persisted in all American printings since. Until the Fantagraphics reprint now available in this book, The Old Castle's Secret. I have not seen the 1950s Italian printing, but I have the original March of Comics edition of the story and I have seen old Italian printings of other Barks stories, and those stories were often reformatted for Italian comic books. It is quite likely that many stories were reformatted by the Italian publishers for printing in three tier pages instead of the standard four tier pages that Barks drew for most of his career. If Darkest Africa was originally printed in Black and White in its Italian version and with three tier pages, that would explain why the art for the story in the Fantagraphics Book is mostly pretty sharp and clear (but noticeably less sharp and clear than the other stories in the volume which were printed from archival stats) and also why there are small changes, especially at the edges, in so many of the panels. The art was probably trimmed slightly at the edges for the original Italian printing so it remains missing. Fantagraphics probably reformatted the black and white art from Italian pages back to match as closely as possible the original American comic book formatting and then took the (mostly black and white) word balloons and captions from the American comic book printing and placed them appropriately back into the re-reformatted pages. And they did a really nice job. And short of spending $500 or more on an original copy of March of Comics #20, this is the best we are likely to see of this story and it will probably become the standard on which future printings are based worldwide. However I suspect that future printings in standard comic books in the USA, if any, will continue to be reprinted from the sanitized 1980s version.* NOTE: Daan Jippes currently (2012-2013) draws approximately 36.5 x 53 cm (about 14.5 x 21 inches, significantly smaller than Barks working image size which is about 41 x 59.5 cm or 16 x 23.25 inches, panel border to panel border). Jippes' current art is much larger than most artwork done for American comic books these days, but roughly the same size most American comic book art was done up until the 1960s.Evidence supporting my analysis and some other details about changes is presented below:Page 76, panel 5, the color filled exclamation mark in original becomes solid black.Page 76, panel 2, the art is enlarged slightly and some art on left, right, and top is cut off, more than 1/4 inch on right of panel.Professor McFiendy's beard and hair are denser and thicker throughout the story.Many panels have slight amounts of art removed from left and/or right sides, and typically a little over 1/4 inch per tier of art. Some fine lines and shading are slightly differentPage 89, panel 5, front of canoe and tree art is added (slight).Page 91, panel 2, art is redrawn and added at right edge (slight).Page 92, panel 2, the portal in top right corner is completed (the top half is obscured by shadow in original).The spacing between panels both vertically and horizontally is slightly different comparing Darkest Africa and other stories.If you hold the book flat and near eye level and look at the panel lines from bottom to top along the sides of the pages or from side to side across the pages, the lines are perfectly straight for all stories except for an occasional break between the top and bottom half of the page on all stories except Darkest Africa. This is not true subjecting Darkest Africa to the same examination. The occassional break between the top and bottom half of the pages on other stories is explained by the fact that Barks cut his drawing pages in half for convenience on his drawing board while drawing them and then taped the top and bottom half back together before submitting the pages to the office, and sometimes the top and bottom half didn't align quite perfectly.This book is another winner from Fantagraphics. Buy it!Addendum 6-20-13: Based on comment 4 below and another communication from Fantagraphics, it appears that the analysis above was largely correct. Rather than a black and white comic book reprinting being used, Italian archival stats were used in the restoration of Darkest Africa. The art in those stats had been trimmed at the sides and occasionally at the top and bottom even though the Italian reprint was on 4 tier pages, because the dimensions of the Italian comic book pages are different from American comics. Stats of the redrawn version were used for layout, panel borders, and word balloons. Word balloons and dialog seem largely intact, but in some places there seems to be some, mostly minor, retouching. Barks art from the Italian stats was inserted over the redrawn art using the original comic book as a guide. In places where there is added art, for example the additions cited above on pages 89-92, the added art is from the redrawn version. But still, in the Fantagraphics version, as stated in the review, the art in this story is basically all Barks, with occasional minor changes around the edges due to the trimming of the art in the Italian printing 60 + years ago. BUY THIS BOOK and enjoy it.ADDENDUM, 11/29/13: In Walt Disney's Donald Duck: "Christmas On Bear Mountain" (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library) , volume 5 of the series in both publication order and chronological sequence, the overly intense yellows in previous volumes (12, 11, & 6) have all but disappeared, appearing on only a few scattered pages; and even the present volume 6 was a great improvement on earlier volumes. And the excessively gold "yellow" in volume 7 Lost in the Andes, fortunately, appears nowhere else. Volume 5 was published earlier this month and, like the other volumes, is highly recommended.
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