From 1971 to 1976 and then again from 1981 on Carl Barks had permission from the Walt Disney Corporation to create oil paintings based on the ducks from his comic book stories. Barks utilized this outstanding possibility to finish more than 200 brilliant works that all incorporated the duck characters. Except for one! There he only used a single character from one of his stories, FC0238 Voodoo Hoodoo, namely a zombie*. This is the story.

* In its basic form a zombie is regarded to be a dead person who is brought back to life through the means of Voodoo magic. It all originates from Africa but is nowadays more commonly known to take place in Haiti.

 

 

 

THE BEGINNING

Even today thousands of people in Haiti are thought to be zombies. One example is Felicia Felix-Mentor, who died and was buried in 1907, but was found wandering the countryside in 1937 (photo).

When Barks made FC0238 Voodoo Hoodoo in 1949 he was partly triggered by a 1932 Bela Lugosi film titled White Zombie about a Haitian factory owner who used undead people to work for him.

But the main trigger was a thrilling 1942 painting by Joe Little titled I Met a Zombie! rendered in American Weekly's Sunday edition showing a human-like zombie with torn clothes.

 

THE SWAMP STORIES

FC0062 Mystery of the Swamp - 1945
WDCS147 'Blackmail Dinner' - 1952
U$57 The Swamp of No Return - 1965

Over time Barks made these three comic book stories that mostly took place in swamps. The two oldest ones were located in The Everglades in Florida ('...the creepiest swamp in the world', as the nephews shuddered), whereas the newest was situated in Dismal Swamps outside Duckburg, where the narrator chills the reader by exclaiming '...where only the hissing of varmints answer your cries'...

 

THE VOODOO STORY

The all-dominant secondary character in FC0238 Voodoo Hoodoo is, of course, the totally oblivious (he can only hold one thought at a time!) zombie affectionately referred to as Bombie the Zombie by the nephews. When Barks tried to come up with a plausible appearance for Bombie he doodled the 5 faces seen here. For some reason Barks ended up dispensing the stereotypical fat lips, and the final result portrayed Bombie with blank eyeballs and no eyelids. When Barks had delivered the story to the publisher it was feared that children would be frightened by that appearance, and the publisher added pupils and half-closed eyelids to soften things up.

Barks ended up drawing an extremely soulful(!) zombie, who oozes personality without even having to say or do anything! Barks had no intention of imitating the horrid monsters from the EC comics, so Bombie turned out to be somewhat of a cuddly monster in the story.

 

THE BACKUP

Dawn Mystique - 1973
Song of the South - 1976

When it came to the naturalistic backgrounds in his paintings, Barks often received both inspiration and help from his wife Garé, who was an educated and highly skilled landscape artist. And she was a great help to him by offering pointers in getting the flora and atmosphere right in his zombie painting. As he admitted: I'm not very good at swamps. That's for the guys who did that stuff for EC Comics. Apparently, it was especially due to Garé's technical help that her husband ended up doing a solid job.
It is interesting to learn that Garé a few years later chose to paint two, for her, atypical swamp motifs as seen above. She chose American Southern environments, but it is easy to see that she, at least in the second work, must have had the zombie painting in mind when she painted hers.

 

...AND FINALLY:

THE PAINTING


Idea sketch


10-72 Bombie the Zombie

Idea sketch:
This is one of many sketches Barks made leading up to the finished result that, in reality, had nothing to do with the initial story, as we never saw Bombie in any swamp terrain. The composition has several flaws: Barks pictured the zombie wandering around in an African swamp (the presence of the monkeys is a dead giveaway), he drew an unnatural amount of horizontal growth (plants seek upwards onto the light), and the zombie looks too broad-shouldered and beefy for a supposedly skeleton-like person.

Finished painting:
Location: Barks changed plans as for the location and placed the zombie in North America, presumably The Everglades in Florida, (the  American turkey vulture is a dead giveaway).
Fauna: The ominous looking bird is now the only animal left (the monkeys and the crocodile have gone).
Flora: The background is filled with easily identifiable mangrove trees, ferns, mosses, saw-grass, and water lilies.
Doll: The little angry-looking, wide-eyed doll that the zombie is holding is very similar to a voodoo doll from the 1962 story U$32 That Small Feeling, in which Gyro Gearloose is visited by an evil witch doctor who can shrink people to a very small size. To that end he uses a sinister looking voodoo doll.
Zombie: In the story Bombie had pupils and half-open eyelids as decided by the editor, but in the painting Barks returned to his initial version thus making the zombie more scary looking.
Technical: The painting received Barks' code number 10-72 meaning that it was his 10th finished Disney painting in 1972. It was, as most of Barks' paintings, done on the smooth surfaced Masonite in the size 16x20" (410x510mms).
Purchase: The work was initially sold to a friend for 200 dollars in August, 1972.

 

 

EXTRA

21-73 In Voodoo Land
17-74 Voodoo Hoodooed
1996 In the Clutches of a Voodoo Curse

Also, Barks made these renderings, two oils and one pastel, in accordance with the story's overall plotline.

 

 

http://www.cbarks.dk/THEDUCKLESSPAINTING.htm

   Date 2013-12-13