THECHRONOLOGY

These pages describe - in strict chronological order - ALL the original, published work (first issues from the USA only) Carl Barks wrote and/or drew for the comic books. The sheer number of different covers and stories is staggering - well over 1,000 in the course of half a century! Even if you just scan the charts in this section you will be amazed just how much information is presented. Apart from the obvious chronology, by which you are now able - for the first time ever! - to follow and compare Barks' work year by year and month by month, you can also read a number of interesting details - who published his varied work? - which story titles did he invent? - did he actually script all of his stories? - which year was his most productive? - and so on.
You are also able to deduce approximately when the covers and stories were actually drawn. As a rule Barks always tried to stay 6 months ahead of deadlines, as he once put it. I mailed the sheets to the Beverly Office, and they sent them off to either Poughkeepsie, New York, or Racine, Wisconsin, depending on who was responsible for the comic. A look in the diagrams will show you how successful he was.

The construction of this multipager has clear references to a vast number of this website's other pages. The Series and The Statistics are among the most relevant ones.

MONTH

PUBLISHER

CODE

DESCRIPTION .or. TITLE

PG.

ORIGINATOR

ACC.DATE

COM.

MONTH: Indicates the publishing Month of the comic. Only mentioned once at the start of a frame regardless of the number of entries for that month. A blank frame (which will always occur as the last frame) means that no month for the comic has been established.

PUBLISHER: Nearly all of the comic books were issued by Western Publishing but under different names (see more HERE).

CODE: The normally used and well-known system is used (see more HERE).

DESCRIPTION: All Front Covers are indicated with FC. This abbreviation may be followed by ms (which means that the drawing illustrates the main story inside), or by part (which means that Barks only drew part of the cover).

TITLE: All titles in bold letters are the original ones in the comics. Titles which are not in bold letters (half of Barks' stories had no titles) are invented for this chronology in order to give you descriptive and relevant information on the content of the individual story.

PG.: Number of Pages originally published for the story.

ORIGINATOR: A blank line indicates that Barks did all the preliminary work, i.e., idea, script and sketches. An I or an S followed by a name indicates that the person came up with either the initial Idea or supplied either Script or Sketches. In some cases you will see the term Artist Unknown. This means that it has not been possible to establish the originator for sure (which also means that Barks may well have been the originator himself).

ACC.DATE: This is the date of Acceptance, i.e., when Western received and registered Barks' work. The date is always between 3 and 15 months before the month of publishing. A ? (question mark) means that the date is uncertain, and the name of a month followed by ?? means that the exact date of that month is uncertain. A - (minus) means that Barks did not do the inking, in which case the Originator column has more information.

COM.: In some cases Barks' work needs some explanatory Comments. They occur below the diagram.