Walt Disney's Donald Duck Vol. 2: "A Christmas For Shacktown" (WALT DISNEY DONALD DUCK HC)

Yes, this indeed is volume 11. The usually impeccable Fantagraphics seems a little unsure as to how it will hande the Complete Carl Barks Disney Library which theoretically when complete will have reprinted all the Carl Barks stories done for Disney. The first book released, "Lost in the Andes", makes no mention of a volume but presents stories from 1948 and 1949 despite Barks drawing and writing Donald Duck stories as far back as 1943. This volume contains stories from 1951 and 1952 hence volume 11 despite it being only the third Carl Barks book published in this series. The Uncle Scrooge book, "Only a Poor Man", is listed inside as volume 12. I can only guess that Fantagraphics is trying to lead with Barks best material since this volume is regarded as arguably Barks best period.Carl Barks is one of the all time great comic writer/artists and volume 11 presents some of his most famous stories. Unlike fellow Disney cartoonist Floyd Gottfredson, Barks preferred to keep his creations separate from the rest of the Disney universe so you'll never, for instance, see Mickey Mouse wander into a story. It was Barks who created Duckburg, Gladstone Gander, Scrooge McDuck, The Junior Woodchucks and The Beagle Boys and Barks preferred to stick with his creations. It's interesting that Donald lives in a city called Duckburg since he, Daisy and his family appear to be the only ducks in town. If I had one complaint about Barks art it would be that most of the residents of Duckburg are flesh colored humanoids with animal snouts and floppy ears. Gottfredson went with fully anthropomorphic animal characters but Barks' appear more like human mutants.One story with Gyro Gearloose brings up a dilemma that Floyd Gottfredson found himself in; how do you mix anthropomorphic animals with real animals and why do some animals have human intelligence and others animal intelligence. Gearloose invents a machine that gives intelligence to animals including a wolf and rabbit who become capable of speaking with Donald who is of course a duck. If that were not weird enough the wolf disguises itself as a resident of Duckburg with the pink skin, animal snout and floppy ears and considers himself disguised as a dog. So now Disney has Goofy (an anthropomorphic dog), Pluto (an actual dog) and now pink skinned bipedal dog like creatures. As if that weren't enough the ducks refer to themselves as "human beings" and in one scene the duck family comes across some ducks stuffed and mounted and they look real so just like with dogs there appear to be anthropomorphic ducks and real ducks.I may not love the rendering of the pink skinned animal hybrids but in every other way Barks art is spectacular. Not only is he consistent and clean in his drawing of the ducks but his backgrounds are often magnificent. Barks was able to give scope and size to his art that seems to defy the limitations of his medium. In one comic the bottom drops out of Scrooge McDuck's moneybin and the gapping hole that Barks draws looks absolutely massive. Barks was also able to draw landscapes like South American jungles and Polynesian islands in gorgeous detail. Barks high quality is far above other comic artists working at the time. He also wrote exceptionally smart stories. The ducks are very intelligent and resourceful and good role models for children. When I was young reading these stories I felt like I was being both entertained and informed at the same time.Fantagraphics always does a great job with their comic collections and this one is no exception. I'm not thrilled with the covers of the Complete Carl Barks Disney Library but besides that it's a top notch job. The dimensions of the books are the same size as the original comics and the colors are beautiful. The book finishes with some informative essay's on each of the stories featured in the volume and a short biography on Carl Barks. Between the Carl Barks collection and Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse, fans of Disney comics can hardly ask for more.

This is second of FBI's hardcover reprints of Carl Barks's Duck stories that focuses on Donald Duck. Overall, its actually the 11th volume (as noted in the indicia and notes at the end. This one reprints Carl Barks materials from Dell "Four Color" (also known as "One Shots") #367, 408, 422, and "Walt Disney Comics and Stories" #135-144.Growing up I read many Walt Disney Comics. One of my main sources was the great "Walt Disney Comics Digest" put out by Gold Key Comics/Western Publications. I liked many of the comics they reprinted, but among the best were the "duck stories", especially the longer Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge adventures, by Carl Barks (tho like many of us, I would learn who Barks was many years later).There have been many attempts at reprinting this material. The most recently was the softcover volumes by Gladstone comics of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stuff (include Gyro Gearloose). I have some of those, but not all.I figured what with all the Duck stuff I'd read, that I would be familiar with most of the stuff, atleast the longer stories. So its interesting to see 'new' stuff.While this one is a Donald Duck volume, you have Uncle Scrooge in several, along with Donald's nephews, cousin Gladstone Gander, and Gyro Gearloose.There are several long stories:"A Christmas for Shacktown"- a story of giving, but also one that includes info on Uncle Scrooge's Money Bin (which in the stories in this volume takes on its final form). This story has Daisy, Donald, Uncle Scrooge, Huey, Dewey, and Louise, and Gladstone Gander."Big Bin on Killmotor Hill", which has Uncle Scrooge bin on Killmotor Hill. This story also introduces the Beagle Boys."Gladstone's Usual Good Year" is one of several stories that focuses on super lucky Gladstone Gander. Another is "Gladstone's Terrible Secret" and a third is "Gemstone Hunters"."The Screaming Cowboy" is another funny Donald & nephews story."Statuesque Spendthrifts", while a Donald story, is more of an Uncle Scrooge. This is a new one for me, with Scrooge competing against another claimant to being the richest man in the world."Think Box Bollix" is more of a Gearloose story, tho it stars Donald."The Golden Helmet" is a classic Donald Duck adventure story. Don Rosa did a sequel to it, and the pair were reprinted in the last of Gemstone Barks/Rosa collections (which I sadly missed)."The Gilded Man" is another classic Donald Duck adventure story that I've heard of, but never read."Houseboat Holiday" is a nice little Donald & nephews stories."Spending Money" is a funny story with Donald and Uncle Scrooge.The volume is filled out with various short 1-4 page stories.At the end of the volume, we get some great set of story notes.I look forward to the next volume, which has already been announced.

This is the third published volume of Fantagraphics' Complete Barks series. It will be the 11th volume of the completed (30 volume) series. Here's my (possibly slightly rambling) assessment of the goods:If there were any weak spots in the magnificent first published volume in this series ( Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library) ), then it was surely the two included Christmas-stories, which were somewhat below the high water mark set by Barks in his 'golden' period. However, Barks DID produce a fair amount of memorable Christmas-stories - it possibly helped that Barks view of Christmas was a actually little bit cynical - Barks' seasonal stories tended to be well-balanced and not too saccharine.In this volume we get the title story "A Christmas for Shacktown" which may very well be the best Christmas story Barks ever made. It's just wonderful, from his use of Dickensian kids in Duckburg's poor quarter, to the haunting big black hole in the ground that swallows all Scrooge's money.... This story is a real seasonal classic!This volume features the stories published immediately prior to the stories in  Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge: Only A Poor Old Man (Complete Carl Barks Disney Library) . If you're mainly in it for the Scrooge-character, then you still need this book - even though it mainly focuses on Donald and the Nephews, it still features some all time classic Scrooge moments, including the first appearance of his famous Money Bin.The later long Uncle Scrooge adventure stories are famous, and I can understand why. Back in the 1950s and 1960s the globetrotting adventures of Scrooge must have been truly mindblowing for kids who hadn't yet access to Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies on DVD. However, the truth of it is that Barks did start to burn out on those stories pretty quickly - they forced him into types of too-similar storylines that were in danger of becoming somewhat stale. Some of Barks' very best adventure stories were actually done prior to Uncle Scrooge becoming a lead character.In this volume we get the mighty "The Golden Helmet" (featuring Donald and the nephews), which is simply a perfect adventure tale. I live in Denmark, where Barks' stories have been read (and loved) by kids for generations, unlike in the US, where Marvel's and DC's superheroes kind of pushed them out on the sideline in the 70s and 80s. "The Golden Helmet" has been highly honored in Denmark in a slightly bizarre way. A few years ago the (somewhat right-wing) Minister of Culture decided to strengthen Danish Culture against 'globalization' by assembling a 'canon' of the greatest works of art that had been produced in Denmark. To do this, he assembled a panel of leading artists and intellectuals. To cut a long story short: The final list featured a 'children's culture'-section with one somewhat controversial inclusion: "The Golden Helmet" by Carl Barks. This was the only work by a foreign artist featured on the entire list. The expert panel had apparently felt that this masterpiece had been a part of Danish culture for several generations to such a degree that it almost FELT like it was a Danish work of art.... or something. It all possibly simply goes to show that even leading intellectuals can sometimes be guilty of fuzzy thinking - or maybe they were simply rebelling a little bit against the minister's idea of a National Canon of Art. But they sure seemed to like the works of Carl Barks!The book also features the first appearances of inventor Gyro Gearloose. In the late 1950s and early 1960s Gyro would get his own magazine, and Barks would draw short Gyro solo-stories that were sometimes scripted by other writers. The two stories in this volume featuring Gyro Gearloose are among the darkest Barks ten-page stories. One of them, "The Terrible Secret" is about grown-ups having dark shameful secrets from the past. It ends with a hilarious punchline, but the story nevertheless did manage to unsettle me a bit when I was a kid. At this point in his career Barks wasn't doing watered down kids entertainment, he was doing stuff that was as edgy as any later Simpsons episode from the best seasons of that show.(Simpsons creator Matt Groening is known to be a big Barks nut, and arguable many aspects of the Simpsons show is a direct continuation of the storytelling in Barks' ten-page stories, with Springfield replacing Duckburg and Mr. Burns as a darker version of Uncle Scrooge, and Homer's relationship with his Christian neighbor Flanders sometimes mimicking the Donald/Gladstone rivalry.)(re: "Watered down kids entertainment". Barks would always retain SOME of his edge, but he WAS forced to skip some of the darker stuff in later years, after the comic book scare in the mid-50s, when the "Comic Book Code" was introduced and the industry was forced into self-censorship.)(and I'm not saying that this book isn't suitable for kids - it's GREAT for kids! I'm just saying that some stories MIGHT possibly haunt them a little bit the way good art is MEANT to haunt you....think Disney's "Bambi", or most Pixar-movies, or other kids' entertainments with somewhat dark undercurrents)Anyway, enough (happy) rambling from me. This is as good as comics gets! Buy this book! :-) Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library)Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge: Only A Poor Old Man (Complete Carl Barks Disney Library)

Its nostalgia time, thanks Carl Barks for those wonderful memoriesI recommend especially to folks that grew up reading and traveling in our imagination and living those adventures but also to the young’s to see how supreme they are.

I read these as a child, and I really enjoyed reading them again. Carl Barks and Hergé shared the ability to describe the world, whitout even travelling themselves. Both stand the test of time.

The stories are obviously fantastic, the quality of the paper however is not, very close to newspaper quality, not white and if you hold the book in one hand closed, you can see the paper waves ( not straight). But I probably end up buying them anyway, all of them.

Great!!