PROLOGUE

Occasionally Barks mentioned that a dream of his was to have been able to draw real humans in a series of his own, but he never got around to it. Several unpublished 'feeling around' sketches (see more HERE) as well as inked panels (see more HERE) which he made during his Disney days have survived, but they can all be characterized as arranged portraits without much appeal. Barks was a great admirer of several other artists, and he more than once said that he would have liked to be able to draw as well as Burne 'Tarzan' Hogarth and Harold 'Prince Valiant' Foster (see more HERE). Though Barks never admitted it, he was probably aware that this was not his field after all, and so the plans were shelved.
Instead, Barks was a second-to-none funny animal artist, but for a period of time (1947-1951) he tried to sneak real humans into his duck stories.

HUMAN EXAMPLES

Barks ventured out on thin ice when he began to show real humans instead of humanized ducks and similar animals in his long adventure stories (it rarely happened in the 10-pagers). This fad started ever so sporadically as scattered examples in 1947 and culminating with FC0308 Dangerous Disguise, which he personally delivered at Western's offices in Beverly Hills in June 1950 on one of his frequent visits. Barks recalled from the meeting: As soon as I took 'Dangerous Disguise' in, and Carl Buettner (Western Publishing editor at the time - Editor's remark) took a look at it, he said, 'That doesn't go good, having real humans. It takes the ducks out of their own world'. Barks, on the other hand, later claimed that he could not have made this semi-realistic story if it was to be filled with button-nosed characters.
Although Barks would probably not have admitted it at the time, Buettner was indeed right; real humans are not natural ingredients in a funny animal story. One can only wonder why it took Buettner that long to put his foot down, but the inertia was probably due to the fact that Barks had quite free reins being the star that he was.

EPILOGUE

Below you are presented to a few real humans from some of Barks' production leading up to the 'axe' story. If you browse through most of the stories spanning the years 1947 to 1950 you will be able to discover more examples in varying degrees of 'humanism'. For instance, in FC0300 Big Top Bedlam all of the secondary characters except three are humans (can you find them?)! The selected stories are presented in chronological order after dates of issue.

On FC0328 In Old California! from 1951 Barks later sighed: I would have preferred to have drawn the characters as real humans...