The Unavailable Carl Barks (in color)

Kudos to Kim Weston for putting this book together ; when IDW published their "Big Book of Barney Bear", I couldn't understand why they skipped the Benny Burro stories,but now they are available in English as well, together with Barks' Droopy Dog and some other things. So yay for that! Also I appreciate the work having been spent at restoration and new coloring, where possible, including a new restoration of a classic early Donald Duck-story.The actual stories themselves vary in quality. Some, like the Andy Panda and Porky Pig stories are mostly interesting for historical reasons, but some of the others are truly great, especially the Benny Burro ones, so if you are a fan of Barks, get this book! It is early Barks, so slapstick is the theme of the day, and great slapstick it is :-)Luckily, the best stories also have the best printing (due to those having original source material available). But this isn't the end all collection of Barks' non-Disney comics stories in English, that one is yet to be seen. Such a book should also include the stories from the IDW book, using the original source material with recoloring, rather than the copied comic book pages. But now at least we have the non-Benny & Barney stuff in a nice book!Edit: An earlier version of this review criticised the printing of the book, but it turned out I had gotten a misprinted copy; the new copy received from Amazon (naturally without extra costs) had none of those issues. Thanks to Kim W. for pointing out that my copy was bad, and for Amazon in sending me a new copy.

Apart from all the Disney work that Carl Barks did, he also wrote and/or drew 36 other comic book stories. Of them, 26 are available in the book "The Carl Barks Big Book of Barney Bear" by Craig Yoe, which contains versions scanned from the original comic books. This book by Kim Weston contains the other 10, as well as restored versions of two of the 26 in Yoe's book. All of them, except for three, are sourced from high quality masters and are beautifully colored, and look really wonderful! The other three are scanned from the original comic books. There are also short essays and restoration notes as well as a complete index to the Carl Barks' non-Disney comic books. Most of the stories in this book are from the years 1943-1945. In comparison, the Donald Duck story "Frozen Gold" was drawn in 1944 and "The Ghost of the Grotto" in 1947. I am personally very fond of the early work of Barks, and having all these non-Disney stories from the same era is an absolute treasure!

I was let down when Craig Yoe's Barney Bear Book didn't include the Benny Burro solo stories, unlike the much earlier black and white fan-published Barney Bear Book.As it turns out, there was more than enough Carl Barks non-Disney material to fill up a good book, and I must say, you would never get a collection this well thought out and researched from the usual publishers. Kim Weston's labor of love is so exceptional here! No stone was unturned in seeking out the best possible source material.This book was such a bright spot in the terrible tragic political climate that made 2016 so miserable. That something this well done can still happen gives me some hope for the world.

As I have said so many times before, Carl Barks never drew or wrote a dud. Before he was the chief chronicler of the Disney Ducks; Western publishing had him doing non-Disney comics and stories. Actually these non-Disney tales are the best these characters ever produced. I remember, as a child, the disappointment I felt when "Barney Bear and Benny Burro" were drawn by someone else. The only really good "Droopy tales" were drawn and scripted by Barks and the best non-Barks Droopy stories were written, if not drawn by Barks. This book collects those non-Disney Barks stories and a few that were only written by Barks. If you like the work of Carl Barks, you'll love this book. Highly recommended.

A fun bunch of stories by the greatest comic book artist of all time.

An very worthwhile addition to my collection! Will buy from them again.

Very good!

Great book!

Colma alcune lacune per chi desidera avere l'opera omnia di Barks.

Carl Barks rocks; a real treasure

A must have for any Barks aficionado.

Best quality of all Barks bear stories so far.