Walt Disney's Donald Duck

A Christmas for Shacktown

By Carl Barks

2012

First Published

4.50

Average Rating

240

Number of Pages

7H17M

Audio Length

Part of Series

The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library book cover 1

The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library

Series · 8 books

By Carl Barks

The third volume of Fantagraphics' reprinting of Carl Barks' classic Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge work—like last spring's Uncle Scrooge: Only a Poor Old Man — focuses on the early 1950s, universally considered one of Barks s very peak periods. Originally published in 1951, A Christmas for Shacktown is one of Barks' masterpieces: A rare, 32-pager that stays within the confines of Duckburg, featuring a storyline in which the Duck family works hard to raise money to throw a Christmas party for the poor children of the city's slums (depicted by Barks with surprisingly Dickensian grittiness), and climaxing in one of the most memorable images Barks ever created, the terrifying bottomless pit that swallows up all of Scrooge's money. But there's lots more gold to be found in this volume (literally), which features both The Golden Helmet (a quest off the coast of Labrador for a relic that might grant the finder ownership of America, reducing more than one cast member to a state of Gollum-like covetousness), while The Gilded Man features a hunt for a rare stamp in South America; two more of Barks' thrilling full-length adventure stories. But that's less than half the volume! This volume also features ten of Barks' smart and funny 10-pagers, including a double whammy of yarns co-starring Donald's insufferable cousin (Gladstone's Usual Very Good Year and Gladstone's Terrible Secret); as well as another nine of Barks' rarely seen, one-page Duck gags all painstakingly recolored to match the original coloring as exactly as possible, and supplemented with an extensive series of notes and behind-the-scenes essays by the foremost Duck experts in the world.

Avg Rating

4.50

Number of Ratings

533

5 STARS

60%

4 STARS

31%

3 STARS

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Carl Barks

Author · 17 books

Carl Barks (March 27, 1901 – August 25, 2000) was an American Disney Studio illustrator and comic book creator, who invented Duckburg and many of its inhabitants, such as Scrooge McDuck (1947), Gladstone Gander (1948), the Beagle Boys (1951), The Junior Woodchucks (1951), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Cornelius Coot (1952), Flintheart Glomgold (1956), John D. Rockerduck (1961) and Magica De Spell (1961). The quality of his scripts and drawings earned him the nicknames "The Duck Man" and "The Good Duck Artist". People who work for Disney generally do so in relative anonymity; the stories only carry Walt Disney's name and (sometimes) a short identification number. Prior to 1960, the creator of these stories remained a mystery to his readers. However, many readers recognized Barks' work and drawing style, and began to call him the Good Duck Artist, a label which stuck even after his true identity was discovered by John and Bill Spicer in 1959. After Barks received a 1960 visit from Bill and John Spicer and Ron Leonard, he was no longer anonymous, as his name soon became known to his readers. Writer-artist Will Eisner called him "the Hans Christian Andersen of comic books." In 1987, Barks was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. (From wikipedia)