Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes
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Author: Carl Barks Format: Hardcover Colors: full color Year: 2011 ISBN-13: 978-1-60699-474-0 Price: $24.99
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Carl Barks's Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics are considered among the greatest artistic and storytelling achievements in the history of the medium. After serving a stint at the Walt Disney studios as an in-betweener and a gag-man, Barks began drawing the comic book adventures of Donald Duck in 1942. He quickly mastered every aspect of cartooning and over the next nearly 30 years created some of the most memorable comics ever drawn - as well as some of the most memorable characters: Barks introduced Uncle Scrooge, the charmed and insufferable Gladstone Gander, the daffy inventor Gyro Gearloose, the bumbling and heedless Beagle Boys, the Junior Woodchucks, and many others. Barks alternated between longish, sprawling 20- or 30-page adventure yarns filled with the romance of danger, courage, and derring-do, whose exotic locales spanned the globe, and shorter stories that usually revolved around crazily ingenious domestic squabbles between Donald and various members of the Duckburg cast. Barks's duck stories, famously enjoyed equally by both children and adults, are both evanescent celebrations of courage and perseverance and depictions of less commendable traits - greed, resentment, and one-upmanship. Our initial volume begins when Barks had reached his peak - 1948-1950. Highlights include: - The title story, "Lost in the Andes" (Barks's own favorite). Donald and the nephews embark on an expedition to Peru to find where square eggs come from only to meet danger in a mysterious valley whose inhabitants all speak with a southern drawl, and where Huey, Dewey, and Louie save Unca' Donald's life by learning how to blow square bubbles! - Two stories co-starring the unbearably lucky Gladstone, including the epic "Race to the South Seas," as Donald and Gladstone try to win Uncle Scrooge's favor by being the first to rescue him from a desert island. - Two Christmas stories, including "The Golden Christmas Tree," one of Barks's most fantastic stories that pits him and the nephews against a witch who wants to destroy all the Christmas trees in the world. - In other stories, Donald plays a TV quiz show contestant and ends up encased in a giant barrel of Jell-O, a truant officer who matches wits with his nephews, and a ranch hand who outwits cattle rustlers. Lost in the Andes also features an introduction by noted Barks scholar Donald Ault, and detailed commentary/annotations for each story at the end of the book, written by the foremost Barks authorities in the world. These new editions feature meticulously restored and re-colored pages in a beautifully designed, affordable and accessible format. Discover the genius of Carl Barks! Download and read a 17-page PDF excerpt (3.6 MB). Also, download the promotional BLAD ("Book Layout And Design") brochure (827KB PDF) with more information about the book and sample pages. (Note that details regarding the book may differ from the final product.) |
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Advance Praise for the title:
Walt Disney's Donald Duck: "Lost in the Andes" (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library) - CSMonitor.com
"Barks, the artist, is a master cartoonist, drawing lively, expressive characters with a graceful sense of movement. His beautiful, detailed backgrounds plant the ducks in a fully realized world that adds weight to his storytelling.... But besides the entertaining plots, Barks' appeal is in his characters. He gives his ducks many human frailties and while they usually try to do the right thing, they make mistakes, get angry, frustrated, and even fail. Fantagraphics Books... does its usual high quality work here as well. The design and layout of the book is a handy comic-book size hardcover with bright, colorful reproductions of the comics. Besides the comics, there are articles on Barks and analysis on each story... For both newcomers to Barks' work and diehard fans, this is a book that any comic book reader would love to find under the Christmas tree." - Rich Clabaugh, The Christian Science Monitor
Walt Disney's Donald Duck: "Lost in the Andes" - Comics Bulletin
"...Barks truly was a master at the medium. We all have been hearing this for so long and for those who have not yet read any of his comics, this book [Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes] and the rest of the upcoming series should put all those doubts to rest. Carl Barks used ducks to shine a light on the human condition and make jokes while also making commentary on us all. Despite these stories being published in 1948 and 1949, they truly stand the test of time. But what was truly amazing about his work was that it appeals to both children and adults. Five stars." - Nick Boisson, Comics Bulletin
Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes < PopMatters>
"This volume [Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes] reprints tales from December 1948 through August 1949, when Barks was in high feather as a creator of breathless adventures and light comedies for his Ducks... Great pop culture, great analysis. Scrooge is always searching for more gold, and there's plenty here. [Rating] 10/10" - Michael Barrett, PopMatters
Robot reviews - Donald Duck: 'Lost in the Andes' - Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources - Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment
"...[L]ike Herge, another exemplary creator who made comics primarily for kids and later found an audience of devoted adults, Barks' duck stories are richer, more compelling and smarter than a cursory glance might suggest... Most reprint projects worth their salt these days require some thoughtful essays and supplemental materials and [Walt Disney's Donald Duck:] Lost in the Andes is no different.... In short, this is exactly the book that Barks fans and the curious have been waiting for. ...Barks remains an exemplary cartoonist. His work is thrilling, funny and rather knowing about human nature without ever seeming trite or obvious, and despite the occasional pop culture reference it hasn't aged much over the decades either. How good was Carl Barks? Pretty goddamned good." - Chris Mautner, Robot 6
Nick Gazin's Comic Book Love-In #38 - VICE
"If you've never heard the name Carl Barks, then you probably see this book and wonder, 'What makes this Donald Duck comic so great? Is this, like, an ironic VICE thing? Did I just get VICEd?' This is no goof, this book is the first in a series of volumes collecting some of the best examples of comic bookery ever produced.... In many ways these comics feel more similar to European adventure comics like Tintin or the Smurfs than they do with other American comics. The lines are so clean and bouncy and the stories all seem weirder and more sophisticated than run-of-the-mill children's shit from that era. ...Fantagraphics made my dreams come true with this perfect book. For $25 you get 200 pages of some of the most important comics ever made and about 30 pages of the story of Carl Barks' life along with story notes and annotations. This is a fucking steal. Thank you, Fantagraphics! Your books continue to give me bright bursts of joy even in the grimmest of times!" - Nick Gazin, VICE
Donald Duck "Lost in the Andes" - The Comics Journal
"...I'd been looking forward to the Fantagraphics [Carl Barks Library] series, and I'm happy to say it's being done right.... I like to think that Carl Barks, an unpretentious storyteller who created for an audience of children whose intelligence, ingenuity and decency he never doubted, would approve and be gladdened by how his work, this time around, is being put back out into the world." - Tom De Haven, The Comics Journal
Donald Duck and Carl Barks: Fantagraphics goes on classics quest - Hero Complex - movies, comics, fanboy fare - latimes.com
Geoff Boucher of the Los Angeles Times talks to Gary Groth about The Carl Barks Library - "There is in fact an emotional truth at the center of Barks' work; he even said that this was his primary goal, though I can't dig up the quote at the moment, perhaps I'm thinking of when he told an interviewer that in his stories he was 'telling it like it is' and 'laying it on the line.' The comics critic Don Phelps once told me that it was Barks who made Donald Duck a citizen of the nation of comics characters, which I always remember as being a particularly eloquent way of saying that he invested Donald with such humanity." - and presents a 10-page preview from the book.
Pipeline: - Comic Book Resources
"Maybe, perhaps, at last, the time is right for a mass re-evaluation of the Duck comics, as Fantagraphics steps into the breach to produce a definitive library of Carl Barks' oeuvre. Not only do they step in, but they do so fearlessly... The series starts in November with Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, an impressively affordable $25 hardcover... Happily, the stories look great and the book is a wonder to hold in your hand.... As to the content, itself, it's just as remarkable an achievement in comics as I remembered.... The contents of the book are as good as they're going to get, produced with an eye towards recapturing as much of the look of the original printings as possible, without sacrificing clarity or design. The quality of the black and white line work is top notch, too." - Augie DeBlieck Jr., Comic Book Resources
ExSeq Ep.59-DuckTales << Extra Sequential Podcast
The Extra Sequential podcast discusses "the whacky and funny Fantagraphics collection of Carl Barks' much loved 1940s Donald Duck stories," Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes: "We tell you why creator Carl Barks is loved for his storytelling prowess and surprisingly funny and absurd humour in his Donald, Scrooge, etc. tales..."
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