THEGEOMETRY

'It is morning of a day destined to live long in history!'. This is the opening caption of Carl Barks’ masterpiece FC0223 Lost in the Andes, and he could not possibly have known how prophetic this sentence eventually turned out, when he began to compose what is now considered one of the greatest comic book works of all time! In interviews Barks later stated: My best story, technically, is probably the square egg one, I guess. 1949. That was about the time I hit my peak in stories. I couldn't say for sure whether that was the peak in art, but I remember I felt more interested in art at that time. I mean, I tried a little harder, although some of the stuff since that time has probably been better. - The 1943 cartoon 'Saludos Amigos' had some influence on my choice to do an Inca story. I realized that it was a popular subject and that Disney's would love to have me use that locale.

In drawing his stories Barks made constant use of all types and shapes of geometrical figures (see more HERE). And he did so, masterfully, without a hitch - except in one panel in this story! The halfpage splash panel when the Ducks arrive to Aig Valley looking curiously down on the village of Plain Awful. The geometrical construction of this panel would come back and 'haunt' Barks for the rest of his life because of the flaws that he later recognized...

THE COMIC BOOK

FC0223 Lost in the Andes

AR130 Return to Plain Awful

Barks explained how the stones in the panel came about: It was influenced by the old Inca method of laying stone. I got a lot of material about the Indian tribes in the Andes out of the Geographic; the way they strung their bridges across canyons, the way the canyons had little paths carved along their sides, and the Inca way of fitting stones together without mortar. I notice that I botched up my perspective a little in drawing that. I should have laid out all these little squares by measuring points instead of from the vanishing point. They become diamond shaped toward the bottom of the panel.
When I was drawing it, some neighbour friend dropped in and sat there persistently talking to me, all the time that I was trying to make that big, complicated layout. And I would have to look up and answer, with my thoughts interrupted. There I was, hell-driven to draw that scene! It was just in my system. I wanted to draw it; and there I had this talking neighbor: talk, talk, talk. It's been a problem my whole life: whenever I was up against something on which I had to use my head and do some really deep thinking, somebody would always come along and have to talk about something. Even a stranger will buttonhole me and start talking. I was trying to work out all those complicated perspectives. He just looked at it with a blank stare and kept right on talking.

It is entirely possible to grasp what Barks means by talking about different geometrical points, because we have another rendering of the very same scene! The American artist Keno Don Hugo Rosa actually made a sequel to Barks' story 40 years later. It was AR130 Return to Plain Awful, and in it he featured the Ducks - plus Uncle Scrooge - revisiting Plain Awful. When you compare the two artists' renderings of the scenery you are able to see the geometrical differences.

THE PAINTING

It may have been a coincidence that Barks decided to have another go at the difficult motif the very same year Rosa's story sequel was published, but that is what actually happened. Previously, Barks had made two other paintings from the story, but in 136/1989 Return to Plain Awful he took on the motif from the splash panel - with Scrooge as the 5th member of the expedition! Barks made numerous probing sketches - as he always did when constructing a painting - and some of the geometrically essential ones are reproduced here. It is easy to see that Barks was eager to make absolutely sure that he got the perspective right this time...