UnBarks it: Luck of the North

Deconstructing the comics genius of Carl Barks

I’m still happily reading up on my collection of Donald Duck albums featuring the work of Disney’s ‘Duck Man’ Carl Barks; discovering how much it has influenced my own cartooning and trying to analyze what it is exactly that makes Barks’ graphic storytelling so compelling.

This time I read ‘Luck of the North’, a story originally published in 1949:

The Dutch album with this story was published in 1978 (cover by Daan Jippes). I probably first read it around 1980.

Donald’s annoying cousin Gladstone Gander was a relatively new addition, created just a few years before, and Barks introduces him brilliantly on the first page:

To uncover the graphic choices that Barks made here, I “translated” this scene to this:

This is not necessarily a “bad” way of storytelling. But I can see I am availing myself of a few “easy” comics clichés that Barks has avoided:

My comics style can feature a lot of “talking heads” (which I justify by putting an effort into the expressions). Barks steers away from this by drawing intensifying physical action, even into a simple conversation. I love how increasingly over-the-top Gladstone’s behavior gets in every panel. It’s a nice set-up for the rest of the story, where Donald sends him on a fake errand to the North Pole… and then relents. Which is depicted in this gem of a page:

How brilliant are those silent panels on row three? The story could have done without them, but they add such a wonderful mood, and a bit of a moral, too. Look at the way Donald is looking directly at the reader as remorse sets in!

Since an early age, I have filled my head with Barks’ comics language. Even now that I am consciously analyzing it, his influence comes through unconsciously, like in the last comic I made:

I almost literally copied Barks, including the worm! And I didn’t even realize it until I took a closer look at this story!

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If you liked this post, take a look at my other UnBarksings: