Customer Reviews

Walt Disney's Donald Duck finds Pirate Gold! (Gladstone Giant Album Comic Series No. 1) (Gladstone Giant, Comic Album Special 1)

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"Reading level: Baby-Preschool"!? Try "Preschool-Deathbed." Most people might smirk at the idea of "Disney Comics," but legendary cartoonist Carl Barks imbued Donald and Uncle Scrooge with life, warmth, energy, and adventure. This is great reading for even the most cynical (who will delight in the fact that Barks got away with giving substance to Disney's cookie-cutter characters for decades). But Gemstone's contract with Disney has expired, and negotiations are under way. Barks has been getting a lot of attention in recent years (particularly since his death at the age of 99 last year), and Disney may decide to bring him "back into the fold." But they would never treat the work with the respect with which Gemstone has, and which it deserves. My recommendation: snatch up anything you can find with Carl Bark's name on it before it goes out of print (which might be very soon). Enjoy it yourself, and save it for your children (or nieces and nephews) and grandchildren (or grandnieces and grandnephews). Just don't let the little whipper-snappers damage the merchandise!

While this Duck book is significant as not only the first 'original' Donald Duck comic-book but also as the first Duck work by Carl Barks (he did not write it and drew only part of it) it is a dissapointing read, especially when compared with the far better Donald Duck or Uncle Scrooge books which followed. Adapted from an unproduced Disney animated film, the pacing is slow and the story, unexciting and uninvolving. I found it very tedious to get through. Better to pick this one up after you've read the good stuff (especially try the Uncle Scrooge story "Back to the Klondike" to see what I mean.)

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"Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold"
(Gladstone's Giant Album Comic series #1)
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"Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold," from 1942, is a king-sized Duck adventure, with Donald and his nephews -- Huey, Dewey and Louie -- on a search to find treasure before the bad guy, Black Pete, can stop them. Apparently this epic was adapted from storyboards from a Disney film, and handed over to cartoonist Carl Barks as one of his first assignments as Disney's resident Duck specialist. It's interesting how whole chunks of the book are told without words, letting the printed page mimic the comic beats and visual style of the animated cartoons (which is kind of cool, actually...) but there are also sequences that show Barks' steady hand as a draftsman and innovative story stylist. The print quality and colors on this edition are superior in every way, giving plenty of room for the artwork to breathe and fill your eyes. Gladstone has reprinted these old Carl Barks stories in many formats; this is certainly one of the best. Recommended for family entertainment, and as a gateway into the visual language of comics. (Joe Sixpack, ReadThatAgain children's book reviews)

This is a graphic novel comic softcover published by Gladstone Comics. Gladstone was the publisher that treated the Barks material with more respect than any other publisher,and this is just one of the types of publications they used to reprint classic Disney material. They especially gave good treatment to reprinting the stories by the classic comic artist Carl Barks, who created the character Uncle Scrooge and drew Disney ducks from this first story in 1949 up until the 1960's. An impressive 11" tall, it is from the "Giant Album" series they produced before the smaller format Carl Barks Library in Color that produced all of the stories in chronological order. The Giant Albums instead chose stories that grouped together by theme, with added new cover art inspired by an interior story.

The story in this issue, "Pirate Gold", first appeared in Dell's Four Color Comics One Shot issue #9, published in October of 1942. The story is the first time Carl Barks worked on a comic book, and he was teamed up on the artwork with another Disney Studios artist, Jack Hannah. The script was by script by Bob Karp, who wrote the daily Donald Duck newspaper strip from 1938 to 1974, that was illustrated by Al Taliaferro. In this first comic by Barks, we need to keep in mind that he had just left his position as an animator at Disney, and was at first constrained by their style that he was used to and a script he did not write. He made a big transition later, but he did what he could with it. The story is important to collectors as a starting point of Barks comic book career. The genesis of the story adapted from an planned Walt Disney animated short that was never produced, to be titled, "Morgans Ghost". After this first story Barks was given a chance to script his own story and the publishers found out he could write, and the rest as they say, is history. Barks continued to write and draw Disney duck stories until the early 1960's.