This is an informative page about Carl Barks'
contemporary competitors - directly and indirectly - within the
realm of the American comic books. His most noticeable
competitors can be roughly divided into 4 main categories: The
Disney characters, the funny animal characters (not including
Disney's), the human characters, and the superhuman characters.
It is only natural that the competition mentioned in this page
solely refers to the American artists and magazines that Barks
knew of, although many other countries had their own competitors
to Barks and his work at the time.
Although Barks, during his active comic book period from 1942 to
1966, had a lot of competitors in fields similar to that of his
own, he was always able to make his presence noticed. Not with
his name as he was not bylined, but with his unique storytelling
qualities and his thoroughly worked-through drawings. Barks might
not have been the greatest comic book artist of his time, but he
surely stood shoulder to shoulder with the best of them! Now, let's
size up the competition from yesteryear...
| THE DISNEY CHARACTERS | ||||
Western Publishing (see more HERE) was the primary distributor of Disney's funny animal comic books, and their flagship series were undoubtedly Four Color (FC) (see more HERE), and Walt Disney Comics and Stories (WDCS) (see more HERE). They had the broadest appeal, because they contained most of the well-known characters. The biggest worlds in the various magazines were the duck universe (chiefly Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, and Gyro Gearloose) and the mouse universe (chiefly Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Pluto). But several other recurring characters such as Li'l Bad Wolf, Bucky Bug, and Chip 'n Dale, were also present. Barks' direct competition on the duck stories were artists such as Al Taliaferro and Tony Strobl (see more HERE), and worthy opponents from the mouse world were Paul Murry and Floyd Gottfredson (see more HERE). |
| THE FUNNY ANIMAL CHARACTERS | ||||
Most of the comic books with other
funny animal characters than Disney's originated from
short cartoons from several of America's biggest film
companies. Here are the most well-known of them followed
by their most popular characters, i.e. some of the ones
who made it to the comic books: There
can be little doubt that the characters had a both
competitive and economic influence on the sale of Barks'
ducks, but it is also interesting that he did, in fact,
dabble with some of them for a short period of time (see
more HERE). |
| THE HUMAN CHARACTERS | ||||
In general, Barks had a positive
attitude towards human characters in the contemporary
comics (see more HERE). It was quite logical, because he
had drawn them in cartoons for a number of years in The
Calgary EyeOpener (see more HERE),
and the rest of his life he had a secret dream of
creating a new series featuring everyday people. |
| THE SUPERHUMAN CHARACTERS | ||||
Barks: The comic books of the 'golden
years' of the 40s, 50s, and 60s were all escapist reading
in my opinion. As for Superman and all those type of
stories, they were quite an artificial thing. They did
have a little bit of the human element in them, where
Superman was trying to keep his identity secret from Lois
Lane. In most of the fighting and the menaces and all, it
was just complete fabrication. It didn't seem to me to
have much depth (see more HERE,
last paragraph). |
| See more detailed information on Barks' overall competition HERE. |
|
| http://www.cbarks.dk/THECOMPETITION.htm | Date 2007-09-15 |
