Perhaps the most overlooked and ignored part of Carl Barks' work is the numerous magazine front covers he made during his Disney comic book years. When you pick up a funny animal magazine from the store you would probably seldom pay much attention to the front cover (you just dive into the stories, right?), although many of them constitute fine works of art. This was also partly true in Barks' days - and he contributed greatly to give the Disney comic books a much needed brushing up on the welcoming covers!
For the first time ever all of Barks' Disney magazine front covers are graphically displayed in strict chronological order enabling you to follow how Barks worked and developed this somewhat neglected art form. Most of the covers are pure gag situations depicting almost all of the primary characters from the duck universe, some are modelled after Barks' - or other artists' - stories in the individual issue, while others are joint ventures with other artists' work where the drawing space was shared with some of his contemporary colleagues. You will also be able to follow how Barks' publisher, Western, developed technically through the years; notice how logos, fonts, and layouts changed at a relatively rapid pace.
You will also be able to observe a number of additional, interesting details: Which year was the most productive, which adventure stories received a cover, which covers Barks made entirely by himself and on which he received help. Also you will find comparison facts such as the information that FC0386 Poor Old Man was published at the same time as WDCS138 'Statues Galore'.

Barks liked making front covers. It was easy work, and it paid better than story pages. Somewhat surprising, really, because a cover only needed a basic idea, and no complex and time-consuming dialogue was required. In the last years Barks did not even have to think up ideas - he simply took them from his adventure stories! This meant that Western was regularly 'flooded' with idea sketches (Barks never delivered finished cover artwork before an idea was accepted), and the publisher would normally pick one or two out of batches of 10 at a time. Just imagine how many perfectly good ideas ended up in the publisher's wastepaper basket!!!
Although it was easy work Barks had to comply with a radically different way of thinking when turning to covers. Apart from the obvious fact that he now had only one drawing in which to express a whole gag or scene, the characters should also in some way reflect a certain issue making them immediately identifiable to the potential buyers; for instance, in the WDCS-series Donald and the nephews were almost certain to appear, in the US-series Scrooge was often the only character, and this was also true with Gyro in his series. Furthermore, it was very important to use alternative figure designs; for instance the ducks' heads in gag situations must be drawn considerably larger than in the stories and the legs considerably shorter in order to obtain a better overall harmony in the scene. You will see that Barks sometimes had severe problems getting his figure designs right!

In the sub-pages you are almost certain to discover front covers of which you have no recollection at all as well as covers that you meet again with great reverence. In any case you are cordially invited to take a trip down memory lane with Barks' 'forgotten' work - his eminent front covers.