THEPAYMENTS

Carl Barks was an employee until his golden years, and he worked the longest for the publisher of his numerous Disney duck stories, Western Publishing. It all started in 1942, and Barks submitted thousands of finished pages in the following 27 years. Now, how much was Barks paid for specific stories during all this time? This question has baffled his fans for many years, and the answer has eluded them for just as many. Barks was never especially informative about his wages; he would, at most, say that his income was equivalent to that of a typical American worker and that comparison is highly stretchable!
For the first time all of the payments Barks received for delivering finished art pages to Western are disclosed in great detail. You will be able to see just how much - and when - he was paid for your favourite story, but the information in the sub-pages contains many other titbits. One of the most surprising might be how Barks' work was not always published in the same order in which he submitted it. Another very surprising detail is that Barks did, in fact, submit a variety of finished pages, which Western never published!!! If you browse the sub-pages you can see precisely how many pages are lost forever as Western unceremoniously burned them!
In short, the sub-pages are filled with detailed, surprising, and never before disclosed information, and it is rendered as precisely as possible. Happy browsing...

Notes:
1. Payments follow Western's payslips closely. This means that there will be, in a few instantces, apparent discrepancies when the amounts do not seem to correspond exactly with the number of pages published. In those cases it should be remembered that Western sometimes cut into the stories thus influencing the number of pages.
2. The sub-pages follow the years of issue closely, meaning that you may experience some amount of monthly 'overlapping' from year to year. This is because the stories were not always published in the same sequence that Barks finished them. Several times stories and, especially, front covers and 1-pagers were published a long time after Barks delivered them thus making the sequence of, for example, the WDCS issues seem irregular from time to time judged by their numbers.
3. From May 1951 Barks was advanced $500.00 per month as stipulated in an Advance against Artist and Writer Contract. The contract went on for many years and the advanced amounts were continuously increased to follow normal salary developments and inflation.
4. In the years 1952 to 1954 Barks calculated his time averages per finished page to equal $6.35. This bit of information gives you a little insight in how much Barks earned in comparison to the time spent.
5. It would be futile to accumulate one or more years' payments in an attempt to see how much money Barks earned in a certain period for the simple reason that he frequently received different benefits called Bonusses and Profit sharings. They were all of rather substantial sizes and added greatly to his financial situation.

CODE

DESCRIPTION .or. TITLE

BARKS' ID

PG.

ACC.DATE

PAYMENT

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), and/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 multi-pager in order to give you brief descriptive and relevant information on the content of the individual story.

BARKS' ID:
Barks' personal Identification of front covers, 1-pagers, and stories. The information is taken from Barks' personal work sheets. Only mentioned if the official titles differ from his private ones. The titles are merely Barks' own quick reference descriptions, but some are precise enough to deserve the reference as a lasting title as Barks' suggestion. Still, in general, Barks was never especially interested in titling his stories.

PG.: Number of Pages published for the story. The number may differ from the number Barks actually delivered to Western.

ACC.DATE: This is the date of Acceptance, i.e. when Western received and registered Barks' work and NOT the date Barks submitted it. As a rule Barks was paid within a few days from Western's acceptance (the work was not evaluated first!), thus the two dates usually are close to each other.
Chronologically sorted by this date within each published issue. Note: The main story in an issue always takes preference as for the dates. If the stories are equally 'important' (for example the stories in Daisy Duck's Diary issues) the date of the issue's first story takes preference.
The stories are primarily placed in chronological order after date of finishing by Barks and not by date of issue! This gives you the added benefit of seeing exactly which stories Barks was working on at any given time as well as the order in which he finished them.
In general, the dates are always between 3 and 15 months before the month of publishing.

PAYMENT: Mentioned in Dollars. A NR means No Records, i.e. the payslip for the story has not survived. Still, the size of the payment can often be deducted by similar entries nearby.
The payments for the front covers often vary. This was caused by the simple fact that Barks always drew and inked them, but he was from time to time furnished with scripts or ideas in which case he was, of course, not paid for this.

BUDGETS
Compares the cost of living to Barks' earnings (1961 has been chosen as reference).

CHRONOLOGY
Multi-pager showing all Barks' duck work in the chronology of Western's monthly issues.

EARLY PAYMENTS
Barks' income before he started at Western Publishing.

FRONTCOVERS
Multi-pager showing all of Barks' drawn front covers.

PAINTING PAYMENTS
Barks' income during his painting career (still under construction).

SERIES
Offers a brief summary of all Barks' stories.

STATISTICS
Full listing of Barks' duck work divided into front covers, 1-pagers, 10-pagers, and so on.

TIME CONSUMPTION
Barks' own accounts of the average time he spent on his duck stories.