Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge Vol. 12: Only a Poor Old Man: The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 12

I've been reading Carl Barks since I was a kid. My dad grew up with the old comics and passed them along to me. I still fondly remember the smell of the pages and have a soft spot for that type of thing. If I see one at a garage sale, I'll often pick it up, even if it's pretty battered. I've purchased newer versions of Barks' works over the years. I have the complete set of the Carl Barks Library that was published in the 90s by Gladstone. That is a beautiful set. Slightly larger than originally published with updated coloring techniques - mainly you'll see color gradients and wider palette compared to the original - or this edition here which stays true to the original coloring. However, I have a new generation to give my old Gladstone copies to. At first I planned on giving these to the niece and nephews, but when I got the first one I liked it so much I decided to give them the Gladstone ones instead and keep these for myself. ;) My niece and nephews are pretty young still, all under six, so the Gladstone books are easier for them to handle. These books are better for readers closer to 8-10 due to the size. They are hefty and well built, a little like a grade-school textbook in bulk. They look wonderful on the shelf all lined up. And what's extra nice for me, they have a lot more of the comics in each volume, so I can keep one by the bed and read a few each night for a while before swapping to the next. For people who've never read Carl Barks and are looking for something for yourself or for your kids, these are just the ticket. If you liked the DuckTales, you might be surprised to learn that some of the best DuckTales episodes were taken straight from Barks' Duck stories. Barks is a big part of what made DuckTales so great, since they had a wealth of adventures to pull from. Barks writes well. He doesn't write down to kids. Instead, he writes a great adventure tale and peppers it with names and places and characters that keep the kids interested. These are the best types of kids stories, because much like Pixar's work, it makes it so much more fun to take part in your kids interests if the stories aren't dumbed down. Creators have proven you don't need to do that to keep a child's interest and Barks illustrates that viewpoint perfectly. The art in the comics is also fun and expressive, with clean lines and not a lot of clutter, Barks gets a lot of emotion into a simple panel. Even the kids who aren't as good at reading yet can follow along. Barks also uses real places - he loved reading National Geographic and including those locales in his work. For a kid's comic, it's fairly sophisticated, but accessible. As far as value is concerned, this set is incomparable. I mentioned I've been buying Barks' work for years. This is by far the most affordable I've seen yet. While the Gladstone version was beautiful, now you'd be hard-pressed to get a volume for under $10 and most are closer to $20, with more than a few going for far more than that. It was a major investment for me when I got them, both in time and in money - hunting down all the volumes took a while since they're out of print. There were nearly 150 volumes of all his stories, and you only got five or less stories in each one. While I was glad to have them at the time since the only other complete collection was in black and white, if this set had been out at the same time I would have picked it up instead without a second thought. The hardbacks are durable and there are easily twice as many stories in each volume as the Gladstone versions. And while I've seen some comments that these are not identical to the originals in every single way - the covers are in the back, the original publisher information isn't printed on the page - those are gripes primarily for collectors. People new to the series, or introducing them to their kids won't have those issues with the comics. My highest recommendation!

Only in the last couple of years have I started reading Uncle Scrooge comics. Of course I grew up with DuckTales when I was a kid, and dreamed of going on adventures just like Scrooge and his nephews. For some reason, finding Disney comics was difficult, so I never really got a chance to read the original stories that DuckTales was inspired by. A few years ago I read through Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, and absolutely loved it. It became my favorite comic/graphic novel/whatever you want to call it ever. It only made sense to read the stories by Carl Barks as well. He created Scrooge after all! This hardcover collection compiles a ton of the earliest Uncle Scrooge stories by Carl Barks and includes some fantastic notes at the end, as well as an introduction by George Lucas. Whatever you think of the guy now, post-prequels, he gives a one page introduction that gives an insight as to just how great these stories were when they were first published, and how they still hold up today. He's right. Every story in this book is a keeper, and I know I'll be getting the other collections over time. The stories contained within are already listed here on the product page, so I'll just go over a few of my favorites. The first story, Only a Poor Old Man, was such a fascinating read and a perfect way to introduce the character if you don't know anything about him. Uncle Scrooge, worried about his money being stolen, decides to hide all of it in a lake. As buffoonish as the Beagle Boys may be, they do something ingenious to recover the money- send in trained Cormorant birds to dive in and scoop it up! Rarely do I laugh out loud when reading or watching something, but here, I was in stitches. Of all the possible ways to recover money from the bottom of a lake, I would've never expected that. Back to the Klondike introduces a special someone who makes several appearances throughout Don Rosa's stories- Glittering Goldie. Scrooge and his nephews head back to where he struck it big when he was much younger, only to be shot at and get chased off by a bear. We see a very kind side of Scrooge at the story's resolution where he does something incredibly generous while playing it off as a kind of accident. Somethin' Fishy Here is just a few pages, but a very silly story where Donald tricks Scrooge into thinking that fish has become the new currency. The Horse-Radish Treasure is one of my top two favorites- Scrooge is on the verge of losing his entire fortune to a man who's related to someone who didn't get a shipment of horse-radish from a relative of Scrooge's a long, long time ago. He still has the contract, and unless Scrooge is able to recover the cargo very soon, he obtains the fortune. This story has Scrooge and his nephews (of course) thrown into a deadly storm at sea, and puts them into one dangerous situation after another when a certain someone gets involved to make sure they don't get the horse-radish. The Secret of Atlantis was one for the ages too. Scrooge, determined to make just a couple of cents back that Donald won from him, gets rid of every single quarter with a specific year except one that he has. He dumps them all into the ocean, and after losing his own quarter, dives down with Donald to recover a couple. It turns out that they sank deep down to the city of Atlantis, where mer-people take them prisoner, for better or worse. Also included are a bunch of single page stories that'll at least make you smile. My favorite being one where Scrooge learns ballet and gracefully leaps over people asking for money. I absolutely love this book. The presentation is top notch, and the inclusion of notes at the end really fills it out, letting you in on some cool info, like panels that were cut out. Can you believe the original story for Back to the Klondike cut out nearly a whole page because the publisher found Scrooge's behavior "unchivalrous"? This collection is nothing short of a masterpiece, and a must for any fan of the world's richest duck.

The difference between a Bugs Bunny cartoon and one with Huckleberry Hound is that the former can still be enjoyable to an adult viewer while the latter is strictly kids' stuff. The target audience for Carl Barks's Uncle Scrooge comics is children, but even an adult first-time reader like myself can find them very fun. Unlike many classic Disney characters, Uncle Scrooge (also known as Scrooge McDuck) didn't really make a transition from comics to cartoons until relatively late, but he remains a familiar figure in the Disney universe. Obviously based on Ebenezer Scrooge (but only loosely), Uncle Scrooge is wealth incarnate, the sort to make a Bill Gates or Warren Buffett seem like impoverished by comparison; on page one of this collection, he is described as having "umpteen-centrifugilillion" dollars. Being a miser, Scrooge keeps his money close at hand, the easier to swim in it. It also makes him super-stingy and super-paranoid about theft, although this proves to be an appropriate feeling considering the many heist attempts by adversaries like the Beagle Boys. Typically, the stories within this edition are divided into two sorts: one-page, one joke strips and longer (around 30 page) mini-epics with support by Donald, Huey, Dewey and Louie. These sagas are where Barks truly shines, both with truly imaginative art and with equally clever stories. In short, you don't have to be a kid to enjoy Uncle Scrooge if Carl Barks is the one writing and illustrating it; this is fun stuff for people of all ages.

Only a Poor Old Man, the second volume in Fantagraphics ongoing series to reprint all of Carl Barks' Disney comic book work, looks very good. It corrects most of the relatively minor flaws I found in the first volume, Lost in the Andes. Sometimes a few shading lines are missing compared to the original comic books. This seems a little odd but perhaps they were very fine lines in the original art that were strengthened by the somewhat heavier printing in the original. Where there are such differences, they seem to match the Carl Barks Library. For example there is a lower eyelid added to Scrooge's right eye in page 3 panel 8 in this book and the CBL that does not appear in the original comic book. And the missing shading in page 2 panel 7 matches the missing shading in the CBL, not the comic book. But there are also places where more detail is visible in the CBL and here than the original comic book, for example in the shading of the back of Scrooge's chair on page 3, shading detail is apparent which was obscured by the heavier printing in the original. The coloring largely is quite similar to the original and does honor to it and I have not noticed in my non-exhaustive comparison of original to reprint any changes for the worse. The excessively gold yellow of LOST IN THE ANDES has been replaced by a yellow more true to the original, but OFTEN the yellow is too intense compared to the original. If they are using 100% yellow for backgrounds, they could be brought much closer to the original by cutting back to 75% or 50%. Where yellow is mixed with Cyan or Magenta to produce the other colors of the spectrum, the match to the original is much better than when the yellow plate is by itself. The registration and printing quality are significantly better here than in the original comic books though these early 1950s comic books were much better in that respect than the comics of the late 1960s and 1970s. The size of the image on the page is very close to original and to be honest the difference is so small you need to lay the pages edge to edge to see the difference. The Beagle Boys in blue shirts on the cover? Well, that is how they appeared in the original comic book. Having the gag pages printed with the stories instead of isolated is an improvement. Now if they would just put the covers with the stories! If you want to read the first six issues of Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge stories more or less as readers 60 years ago first saw them, buy this book. There is one very important difference. Back to the Klondike, in the second Uncle Scrooge comic book, was originally published with 5 pages censored out. What was excised was pretty tame stuff by more modern standards, and even compared to publishers other than Dell, but those missing pages have been restored in this printing, as in all others since the publication of the CBL in the middle 1980s. NOTE: The story in Uncle Scrooge #6, starting on page 205 of this book, is a rewritten and reused version of a Barney Bear and Benny Burro story Barks did in Our Gang Comics #35, starting on page 201 of Carl Barks Big Book of Barney Bear , which I have also reviewed. Barks' duck work is generally better than his non-Disney work, and this is no exception, but the earlier version is an interesting footnote. 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 (the present Uncle Scrooge, volume 12, plus 11 & 6) have all but disappeared, appearing on only a few scattered pages; and even volume 6 was a great improvement on earlier volumes. And the excessively gold "yellow" in volume 7 Walt Disney's Donald Duck: "Lost in the Andes" (Vol. 7) (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library) , fortunately, appears nowhere else. Perhaps that can be corrected when there is a true Second Edition (not just a second printing) of that book which also restores Carl Barks' original version of Race to the South Seas. Volume 5 was published earlier this month and, like the other volumes, is highly recommended.

I bought this for my son as a Christmas gift. He loves reading Walt Disney books.

I collected these comics when they were first released long ago. Carl Barks was my hero.

As a child and even now well into my late 40s, I have enjoyed the Walt Disney comics, especially the exploits of Uncle Srooge and the rest of the duck family. Yes, I understand Donald came first, but frankly, Uncle Scrooge is my favorite. This collection and the other volume (and soon to be more!) are almost like candy to me, and I would recommend it to anyone who has or had enjoyed Barks' works. I even recommend them as an introduction or reinforcement for the younger generations who missed out on the earlier periods of comics. In this age of superheroes, partial to full nudity, and extreme violence, these comics show what really can and should be done - entertain, not shock! My only complaint is that I wish they were being put out faster.

Delighted to receive a copy of this, it is beautifully printed and bound and looks like it is made to last. The cover is gorgeous and of course the stories, being from the Duck Artist/writer Carl Barks, enthrall and delight. It takes me back to my childhood, when I used to read his Duck stories over and over, and I still do..the best comics are right here, and such a bargain price. Even if you never buy comics, this series is worth considering. Real adventure stories, and great humour, never tacky like modern comics can be. I hope they don't take too long to release them all. So far no news on the next release, although the Donald Duck title is moving along with issue 3 coming out soon..perhaps they are waiting for more sales of this volume before releasing the next one.? Great art and writing deserves to be seen and read!

fantagraphics fait du très bon travail sur cet intégrale de barks, je le conseil vivement, à la place de celui de glénat. par contre il faudrait vraiment que amazon emballe ses livres avec du papier bulle, j'en ai marre de recevoir des livres explosés et de devoir faire 50 retour !!! et au final de devoir se contenter d'un livre en état "correct" alors qu'il est censé être neuf !! je connais beaucoup de gens qui n'achete plus sur amazon uniquement pour cela, et je vais pas tarder à les rejoindres ....

Wenn jemand, der eines der erfolgreichsten Film-Franchises aller Zeiten begründet hat, im Vorwort eines Comicbuches über den Autor der Comics sagt, dass diese Teil des Literaturerbes und nicht wegdenkbar seien, dann ist das beachtlich. Wenn dieser Comic-Zeichner dann aber noch - zumindest in Europa - als Legende gilt & Figuren wie "Dagobert Duck" oder "Daniel Düsentrieb" erdacht hat, dann reden wir hier von einem Künstler, der sich selbst unsterblich gemacht hat. Die Rede ist, na klar, von Carl Barks. Jenem, den viele früher nur als "den guten Zeichner" kannten. Ich besitze bereits zahlreiche Ausgaben von ihm, so auch eine deutsche Komplettversion - doch als ich das Prinzip & die Veröffentlichungsweise von der Neuauflage der englischen "Carl Barks Library" verstand, war ich interessiert. Zu meinem eigenen Bedauern muss ich sagen, dass ich erst nach knapp 3 Jahren auf diese englische Gesamtausgabe gestossen bin. Ich hatte sie, in der Zeit davor, immer irgendwo zum Verkauf gesehen, aber ihr nie wirklich Beachtung geschenkt. Zu meinem Vorteil jedoch muss ich festhalten, dass bislang erst 7 Bände veröffentlich wurden, 2 stehen in den Startlöchern - und als ich kürzlich diesen Teil der Gesamtausgabe sah, musste ich ihn einfach haben, schließlich ist "Only a poor old Man" in meinen Augen eine der besten Comicstories aller Zeiten (inkl. der legendären letzten Seite, die viele, beispielsweise Don Rosa, für eine der besten Comicseiten ever halten). Ich bestellte diese Ausgabe vornehmlich, um diese tolle Geschichte auch mal im "Originalton" zu lesen, wirklich gewillt, die gesamte Library zu kaufen, war ich eigentlich nicht - doch nun muss ich festhalten, dass es gar keinen anderen Weg gibt, als alle Ausgaben zu holen. Wie auch schon die "Don Rosa Library", die vom selben Verlag veröffentlicht wird, überzeugt der Band auf ganzer Linie. Layout, Geschichtendarstellung, Zusatzinfos - alles in top Ausstattung vorhanden. Hinzu kommt, dass ich die Bindung inkl. der Aufmachung als sehr toll erachte - im deutschen Sprachraum gibt es wenige Bände, die für einen Preis um die 20€ ähnliche Qualität vermitteln. Fast möchte man das Wort "Perfekt" in den Mund nehmen. Nach Erhalt des Buches (und meiner entsprechend positiven Auffassung) recherchierte ich, wann & wie diese Library weiter fortgesetzt wird - mein Ergebnis ließ ein Lächeln auf meinen Lippen erscheinen. In den kommenden Jahren werden jährlich zwei Ausgaben veröffentlicht - das ist nicht viel, schon gar nicht bei 20€ pro Band. Die gesamte Ausgabe wird also ca. einen Gesamtpreis von 600€ betragen - für eine Gesamtausgabe der Carl Barks Geschichten ist das in meinen Augen nicht viel. Natürlich sind 600€ auf einen Schlag eine Menge - aber derzeit befindet sich der geneigte Comicfan in der günstigen Lage, dass die "Library", die im endgültigen Zustand 30 Bände umfassen soll, noch nicht mal 9 veröffentlichte Bände vorweisen kann. Die Bände, die laut Wikipedia bislang geplant und veröffentlicht sind, sind zwar insgesamt 9 - aber darin eingeschlossen sind die beiden Bände, die 2015 noch kommen werden. 2011 kam ein Band raus, 2012-2014 jeweils zwei - somit ist davon auszugehen, dass auch in Zukunft immer zwei Bände pro Jahr veröffentlicht werden. Natürlich kann man der Ungeduldige (Sammler) nun sagen, dass es bei einer Veröffentlichung von 2 Bänden pro Jahr noch bis 2025 dauern wird, bis alle veröffentlich sind - doch lassen Sie mich folgendes anmerken: ich zahle lieber jährlich 2x20€ über einen längeren Zeitraum anstatt 600€ auf einen Schlag. Ausserdem: soll sich der Verlag halt die Zeit nehmen. Lieber 'ne tolle Ausgabe über mehr als ein Jahrzehnt, als 30 schwache Bände, die ich nur selten aus dem Regal hole. Über die Schwierigkeit des Englischen kann ich nur wenig verlieren - ich habe ein Jahr in den USA verbracht und bin daher entsprechend gut trainiert, doch sehe ich das Englisch nicht als allzu schwierig an. Ob man damit Englisch lernen kann, vermag ich nicht zu beurteilen - aber sein Englisch aufbessern kann man damit (auf äußerst unterhaltsame Weise) definitiv. Als Fazit kann ich nur ziehen, dass ich unglaublich froh bin, diese Reihe (jetzt schon) entdeckt zu haben. Sie ist toll - und auch wenn ich die Comics alle schon auf deutsch besitze, so ist es nochmal was anderes, sie in der "Muttersprache" des Autors zu lesen. Das ist auch der Grund, warum ich mir die "Don Rosa Library" ebenfalls holen werde. Ausserdem, und da bin ich mir sicher, wird die Library im kompletten Set, wenn sie irgendwann fertig gestellt wird, weit mehr als 600€ kosten - auch wenn es sich hier nicht um eine Limitierungsedition handelt. Ich glaube kaum, dass die Bände ohne Limit nachgedruckt werden - dazu ist der Absatz-Zielmarkt, die USA, in Sachen "Disney-Comics" zu uninteressiert. In diesem Sinne: schlagen Sie zu. Jetzt! Ich habe selten eine Comicreihe erlebt, bei der ich das so leicht sagen konnte.

This is the second published volume of Fantagraphics Complete Barks series. It will be the 12th volume of the completed series. I'd gotten the impression that the series was going to present the stories in chronological order (although the volumes would be published out of order), but it seems like they've loosened a bit up on that promise for this second volume. This book presents the early Uncle Scrooge stories produced between 1952-1954. The ten page Donald Duck solo-stories Barks produced within the same period have apparently been moved to the adjacent volumes. Oh well, I'm not really complaining. Uncle Scrooge is a popular character, and I can see the attraction of producing a 'definitive' first Scrooge volume that includes the early 'origin'-stories*. This book certainly feels very much like a complete and attractive entity for new readers. The coloring is still excellent. There were some complaints about the yellow color in the first volume, and it's been tweaked a bit for this second volume. It's less 'golden', and there are no stories in which this color dominates too much. The coloring still sticks pretty much to the original coloring - which was mostly very good - and my only real complaint is that they've chosen to keep the inconsistent colors used for Uncle Scrooge's clothes (I assume this was done by different colorists for the original books). This was before his jacket had been established as being red in later stories. It's not a major problem, though. I'm nitpicking here. So basically this book presents some of the greatest comic book stories ever produced in an attractive no-nonsense manner which is slightly (and fashionably) 'retro' and mirrors the way they were originally published in the 1950s, but which should still appeal to modern kids. I approve! A LOOK AHEAD Based on me having borrowed the European Barks edition from my local public library, here's what you should (approximately) expect from the series in the future: - About 12 or 13 glorious five star volumes from the 'golden' era, in which Barks was on a roll, and pretty much every story was an amazing classic. I assume Fantagraphics will publish these volumes first, so you can expect pretty much pure gold for the next few years of publication. Best comics ever made! Seriously! - 2 initial volumes of early stories. These stick pretty close to the formula used in the Donald Duck animated shorts Barks had worked on previously. They frankly feel a bit slow and dated. But still... it's fascinating to see how Barks personal vision quickly evolved from this. And around volume 3 Barks starts to get REALLY funny and REALLY dynamic REALLY fast. - maybe 4 or 5 volumes (worthy of maybe 3 stars) in which Barks was experiencing creative burn-out (particularly around 1958-59) or was writing second-rate Junior Woodchucks stories for other artists. I assume the stories written for other artists will be published in the redrawn versions by the great Daan Jippes (these were redrawn a few years ago for the German/Scandinavian Barks Library), so the art will certainly be attractive enough, but these stories aren't particularly inspired efforts. - the rest (approx. 11 volumes) will feature a mix of classic stories and some lesser works, in which Barks was repeating himself a bit. I'd probably rate most of these volumes four starts or four-and-a-half-stars - the beautiful cartooning still makes them very much memorable. The volumes in this series aren't numbered on the spine, and each book works as a stand alone item. So if you aren't a completist or collector you'll be able to pick and chose between the volumes based on which periods you find interesting. *) note: the earliest stories in this volume ARE sort of 'origin'-stories, but only in the loosest sense of the term. They aren't the earliest Scrooge stories, but they define Scrooge as a new main character for his own comic book series. They also include a few brief flashbacks to his youth.

I like it

Some of the older Carl Barks material is gettting hard to find and the older books don't have the crisp colour of these new reprints. The stories are all classics and you can't go wrong with any of these books if you are a duck fan.