Beater

In the local parlance of comic collecting, the term "beater" refers to a comic book that is in extremely low grade that you are willing to add to your collection for various reasons. Usually, the reason is that you're having a hard time locating the issue in any condition at all, and you're going to let this one serve as a place-holder until you can locate a copy in acceptable and higher grade.

One of my oldest Charlotte friends (Tom Smith--no relation) is actually a customer on my mail route. We have the same tastes in old comics with a couple of shared passions: Silver Age Jack Kirby comics and Golden Age Carl Barks comics. He had recently upgraded his copy of Four Color #189 and, since I don't have a copy, he sold me his old, low-grade copy for what he paid for it in 2000! I was more than happy to get the book for about the price of lunch!

So, now I have a "beater" copy of the book in my collection. I'd been trying to buy one for some time. And I doubt I'll ever bother to upgrade it. This one is fine for me.

My low-grade copy of Four Color #189, starring Donald Duck and the nephews!

Special Barks Creation

When I was a kid, I think my very favorite Carl Barks creation was Gyro Gearloose. Gyro had appeared as a supporting character who was soon starring in backup stories in various Disney Duck comics. It was hard to have a favorite Carl Barks character with competition like Donald, the nephews, and Uncle Scrooge. But somehow Gyro Gearloose was able to rise above the others, at least in my estimation. I guess, for me, it was because Gyro was an inventor and as a kid I was endlessly fascinated by science. Even when it was comic book science being studied by a childlike inventor with an enormous genius for fabrication.

I have the first appearance of Gyro in an issue of WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES (#140) which is supposed to be rare, but which has to be one of the single most common Golden Age comics of which I know. Study Ebay or the stocks of any decent comic dealer at the next convention you attend and you will likely find many copies of that book. I assume that the feedback must have been positive, because Barks returned to Gearloose again and again, finally culminating in his own tryout books in Dell's FOUR COLOR title. Alas, sales must not have been quite good enough, because after a few issues (at least three in that tryout format), he was not awarded his own continuing free-standing title.

He was also never used in the cartoons of that era. I've heard it said that this was likely because the Disney animators instead went with Ludwig Von Drake to stand in as the miraculous inventor within the Disney cartoon universe. There just wasn't room for two such characters in the Disney toons.

One thing that I got a kick from when I was a kid was Gyro's assistant, "Helper". This was a little metal robot about the size of a human hand (or a cartoon duck's hand). He moved about almost as a little stick-figure person, the gimmick being that his head was an a-ha moment light bulb. Barks was no dummy when it came to being uniquely clever. Gyro would often get himself into trouble with his inventions, and just as often his little helper would find a way to get him out of a jam. A faithful friend. Every kid likes the idea of a faithful friend.

Four Color #1047.

 

Four Color #1095.

Four Color #1267.

My copy of the supposedly rare (but not actually rare at all) WALT DISNEY'S COMICS & STORIES #140, featuring the first appearance of Gyro Gearloose, Duckburg's greatest inventor.

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The Great Carl Barks!

One of my favorite comic book creators was Carl Barks. He was an animator at Disney. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, Disney comic books were selling enormous numbers. Enough so that Walt needed someone reliable to put in charge of the Duck comics and to keep things on an even keel. This was house important the comic books were to the man who owned the company. So he searched his company talent and settled on one of his best storyboard artists to write and illustrate most of the Duck stories for Dell Comics. That man was Carl Barks.

Even when I was a very young kid...as young as eight...I wondered if the same men who drew the comics were the same men who were also writing the comics. Without ever knowing for sure, I decided that my favorite Duck artist was also writing the stories. This was because of a single panel. At the end of the story there was a panel with a tiny pair of silhouettes off in the distance. The story had involved an elephant and way, way, way back, almost out of sight, you could see this tiny silhouette of Uncle Scrooge leading the huge pachyderm away, the elephant's trunk hooked in Uncle Scrooge's cane.

That did it for me. I knew that only the man who could draw a delightful detail like that could have written the story. It wasn't until some years later that I learned that my favorite Duck artist was named Carl Barks, and that he indeed did write and illustrate the stories. And, of course, it later became obvious to me that Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were also writing the stories (even if that credit was stolen from them).

I still collect Carl Barks comics. Later in life, when he had retired from comics, he had been given permission by the Disney company to sell paintings of the Duck characters. He was doing quite well at this for a while until an unscrupulous businessman made posters of one of his paintings and sold them illegally. Disney got wind of it and withdrew their permission for Barks to do his paintings. Carl Barks created a tremendous number of characters for the Duck books that he wrote and illustrated. Uncle Scrooge. Gyro Gearloose. Gladstone Gander. Flintheart McGlomgold. The Beagle Boys. And so on. It had to be rough for him not to be able to render these paintings, especially when he had created them.

Below, some of my Disney comic books featuring art and stories by Carl Barks.

Donald Duck #26.

This was one of my favorite Donald Duck adventures when I was a kid. Donald and dinosaurs!

The deservedly famous "square egg" story.

Four Color #456, actually Uncle Scrooge #2.

Great Barks comics with great Barks covers!

When Reprints Attack

In the years I was away from the collectible comic book marketplace, one weird thing occurred that affected my ability to gather up some very old comics that I wanted to collect. And that was the influence of certain reprints on the collectible value of some titles. Specifically, Golden Age Disney comics.

All during the years I was a dealer in old comics, the Disney titles written and illustrated by Carl Barks were among my favorites. I loved finding them and hated selling them. And sell them I did, because it seemed that there was a HUGE customer base for the sale of his classic books.

Fast forward to 2004 when I started to get serious about buying old comics for my own pleasure. One of the things that I discovered was that the old Barks books actually went DOWN in value. Now, this may have bugged the hell out of someone who had invested in these books hoping to see them increase in price, but for me it was a blessing. I found that I could actually afford some of the books that I had feared would be far out of my price range. But now I found that these books were mainly quite affordable. Some of them had become even cheap!

And why was this?

It's because the Disney Corporation has vigorously reprinted almost all of the works of Carl Barks in many different formats. Therefore, if you really want to read his classic stories, you don't have to shell out big bucks for rare back issues. Thus, the market for the old books shrank, sometimes tremendously.

And this made it very easy for me to pick up the hard-to-get issues that I dearly wanted to own.

Since I started collecting again I've seen the prices and market for the old Barks books ebb and flow. Sometimes I have competitors wanting the same books and the prices go up a bit. But usually I find that I can land the ones I want for the prices I feel like paying. For me, it's a boon, and I've been able to slowly build my Barks collection to a respectable level.

Will they once again increase in value? Maybe so. Maybe not. Time will tell.

My copy of Four Color #282: "Donald Duck and the Pixilated Parrot"! One of Carl Barks' masterpieces of wit and slapstick.

TUROK back issues!

I've got a couple of writing projects coming up that will require a lot of attention, so I'm going to have to lay off the comic collecting for a while. I really have enjoyed collecting comics, so I want to keep it up. But the last few purchases I've made will probably be the only ones for the next month or so while I buckle down and pay exclusive attention to my writing.

I'd never thought much about it, but even a hobby as simple as collecting comics requires a certain amount of specific attention to detail. I just don't have the time to devote to it for the next few weeks.

So, the last few old comics I've purchased are some very early issues of TUROK, SON OF STONE, the very cool comic book originated by Dell Comics. I've covered the title before, so if you're curious, just look up those installments of the blog. I also landed a Golden Age book that I'll cover in a couple of days. I'll leave that one for later.

These two issues of TUROK were good ones for me. Adding them to the collection give me the first six issues of the title, which is a bit of a landmark and good place for me to pause for a bit. So, here they are:

TUROK #3. This is the first issue that the book was numbered on its own. The first two Turok books were tryouts in Dell's FOUR COLOR title.

The back cover. Sometimes with Dell comic books, the story would actually continue onto the back cover. Or they'd save it for a feature of some type. This back cover also shows the Dell "Pledge to Parents" that they set up so that they wouldn't have to be a part of the Comics Code Authority.


TUROK #6 had a story featuring a giant Kong-like gorilla. As DC Comics editors Mort Weissinger and Julius Schwartz had learned, if you put a gorilla on the cover, sales would be good. This issue shows up often at comic conventions, which leads me to believe that it sold relatively well.

My Latest Golden Age Disney

Here's the latest pickup of a Golden Age Disney comic for my collection. These old Dell Comics are amazing on so many levels. In this instance, we have a book written and illustrated by Carl Barks. Walt Disney thought that the comic book representations of the Disney characters was so important that he hand-picked Barks to do the lion's share of the Duck stories in comic book form. The ducks had become the most popular of his characters in every form of media that Disney was producing, and he wanted the kids buying the comics to have the best stories and art possible. In Carl Barks, what we got was one of the most talented guys to ever create comic book stories for kids.

For ten cents, a kid got a 28-page Barks epic, followed by a 20-page story by a couple of other journeymen Disney artists Paul Murry (pencils) with inks by Carl Buettner, along with one-page gag strips on the inside front and back covers. And with not a single ad in the book! It was all stories and illustrations from cover to cover! Yes, I know a dime went a lot farther in 1950 when this book was published. But, please! What a deal!


Four Color #300, featuring Donald and his nephews in a grand adventure!

Barks Duck Books

Another of my all-time favorite comic book creators was Carl Barks. His stories influenced the likes of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Every kid who grew up between the early 40s and the mid-60s and who read Donald Duck comics came to seek out and enjoy the particular comic stories written and illustrated by Mr. Barks. He had a great sense of story and a truly unique talent for illustrating action and wild emotions in all of his characters. Barks may not have created Donald Duck, but he gave him something no one else had been able to achieve: he made Donald intelligible. You didn't have to hear his insane quacking, but could just read his words and thoughts on the printed page in the form of word and thought balloons.

In addition, Carl Barks created an entire pantheon of supporting characters for Donald. Donald's nephews, Huey, Louie, and Dewey. Uncle Scrooge. Gladstone Gander. Flintheart McGlomgold. Magica DeSpell. The Beagle Boys. The Junior Woodchucks. Gyro Gearloose...the list goes on. He compiled over 500 stories for various Disney comic books during his career. He told stories in formats as short as a single page with just a few panels to vast epics of a couple of dozen pages. Comics doesn't have guys like Carl Barks anymore.

And, as with Kelly, his star is in decline at the moment and I've found myself able to buy up issues featuring his work as they are currently in low demand and thus affordable and easy to obtain.

I really like that.

One of my recent purchases, Four Color #318 featuring the epic tale, "No Such Varmint".