The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library


The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library is a series of books collecting all of the comic book Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories written and drawn by Carl Barks, originally published between 1942 and Barks' retirement in June 1966. The series was launched in late 2011, and will comprise 6,000 plus pages over roughly 30 200- to 250-page volumes when it is finished.
The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library has been translated and published in Italy, Brazil, Russia, and Germany.
From March 2024, Disney restricted access to the Kindle editions outside of North America, making the entire digital collection unavailable to purchase officially outside of North America.

Background

The rights to Barks' works were licensed from Disney by Gemstone Publishing from 2003 until the end of 2008, when they ceased publishing Disney titles. When Fantagraphics Books publisher Gary Groth heard this, he contacted Disney and secured the publishing rights to Floyd Gottfredson's work on the Mickey Mouse comic strip, resulting in the Floyd Gottfredson Library series that began publication in mid-2011. Groth also tried to obtain the publishing rights to Barks' duck stories. Disney at first announced they would publish the stories themselves, but eventually changed their minds and passed the work on to Fantagraphics. In 2014, Fantagraphics also began publishing a companion series, The Don Rosa Library, collecting the Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck stories written and drawn by Don Rosa.

Format

Barks' duck stories have been reprinted extensively, especially in Europe. Before Fantagraphics there were two complete collections in English published by Another Rainbow. The first was the expensive, scholarly Carl Barks Library in 30 hardcover volumes collected in ten slipcase volumes with three books in each, which was in black-and-white. The second was Carl Barks Library in Color in softcover album format with modern colouring.
Fantagraphics' 7.5 inches × 10.25 inches hardcover volumes are published in full color, as the stories originally were. When the series is complete, it will represent a chronological collection of Barks' stories. However, the volumes of the stories are being published out of order, starting with the volumes that the publishers believe will attract the most attention, starting with Lost in the Andes!, a volume containing stories from what is considered to be Barks' "peak" period, including the title story "Lost in the Andes", which many fans consider to be representative of Barks' best work, and was Barks' own favorite.
The design work was done by Fantagraphics' lead designer, Jacob Covey. The pages are recolored by Rich Tommaso, using the original comics as a coloring guide, unlike some of Fantagraphics' more scholarly reprints, as the books are aimed at a more general audience than many of Fantagraphics' other offerings, which are often aimed at the comics aficionados.
The books are about 240 pages each—about 200 pages of comics, with the remaining pages made up of supplementary material, such as cover reprints and essays.

Restoration

Fantagraphics chose to have the artwork computer-recolored, using the original comics as color guides, rather than reprinting with the original off-register colors as they have in many of their other archival projects. Colorist Rich Tommaso has stuck closely to the original colors, although muting the originally garish ones somewhat in a concession to modern readers. Sometimes the colors were changed when it was known that Barks hadn't liked them, or when it was felt they could be corrected or improved. Some stories are printed from recently rediscovered original artwork.

Censorship

Volumes 5-20 were completely uncensored, including the racial caricatures that appeared in the originals that had been retouched in later printings. Starting from Volume 21, some stories were edited or removed:
  • Volume 21 - altered dialogue / removed content.
  • *The first printing includes the statement: "Some dialogue in this edition has been updated."
  • *In the story "The Lovelorn Fireman" at page 108, the word "holocaust" was replaced with "conflagration".
  • *The story "The Flying Farm Hand" has been removed from the second printing.
  • *Note: In the second printing, the disclaimer regarding altered dialogue is removed, and the original text is restored.
  • Volume 23 - altered dialogue
  • *The table of contents includes the statement: "The artwork in these comics stories is reproduced here in its entirety as first created in 1959-1960."
  • * The story "Trail Tycoon", has altered dialogues regarding Native Americans.
  • * The story "The Wax Museum", has altered dialogues regarding Native Americans.
  • *Note: The second printing restores all the original dialogue.
  • Volume 26 - Altered dialogue / altered content.
  • * The story "Bongo on the Congo" retains edits made by the publisher Gladstone from the 1980s, this includes altered panels and dialogue. The edits are also present in the second printing.
  • Volume 28 - Missing content.
  • *The cover for Uncle Scrooge #39
  • *The one-page story "Million Dollar Shower".
  • *Note: Both are mentioned in "Where did these Duck stories first appear? on page 196, while nowhere to be found in the actual book.
  • Volume 4 - Missing content.
  • *In "The Bill Collectors", the entire original page 3 is removed.
  • *In "Swimming Swindlers" a cigarette in a kid's mouth has been deleted from multiple panels.
  • Volume 3 - Altered dialogue / removed content.
  • * The story "Silent Night" has been omitted without explanation.
  • *Dialogues in "The Icebox Robber" are published in an old censored version.
  • Volume 2 - Altered dialogue.
  • * The story "Frozen Gold" has some altered dialogue.
  • Volume 1 - Missing content / altered art.
  • * The story "Good Deeds" has been omitted without explanation.
  • *In "The Mummy's ring" the dark makeup has been removed from the faces of the ducks in the last panel on page 18.

    Recognition

  • 2013 – The volume Uncle Scrooge: Only a Poor Old Man was nominated for the Eisner Award in the category, "Best Archival Collection/Project – Comic Books".
  • 2015 – The volume Donald Duck: Trail of the Unicorn was nominated for the Eisner Award in the category, "Best Archival Collection/Project – Comic Books ".
  • 2022 – The volume Uncle Scrooge: Island in the Sky was nominated for the Eisner Award in the category, "Best Archival Collection/Project – Comic Books ".

    Volumes and boxed sets

∗ The Pied Piper of Duckburg: pages 1–3 script and pencils by Carl Barks in 1959; pages 4–8 script and finished art by Don Rosa in 1990, respectively Daan Jippes in 2006.

∗∗ Only scripts done by Barks; for Junior Woodchucks stories, art by Daan Jippes.

Box sets

Release order
& date		Title figureTitleVol.ISBN
1: 2013-11-10Donald Duck"Christmas Treasury Gift Box Set"5 & 11
2: 2014-10-18Donald Duck"Lost In The Andes" & "Trail Of The Unicorn"7 & 8
3: 2015-11-23Uncle Scrooge"Only A Poor Old Man" & "The Seven Cities Of Gold"12 & 14
4: 2016-09-13Donald Duck"Christmas On Bear Mountain" & "The Old Castle's Secret"5 & 6
5: 2017-09-19Donald Duck"The Pixilated Parrot" & "Terror of The Beagle Boys"9 & 10
6: 2018-09-25Donald Duck"A Christmas for Shacktown" & "Trick or Treat"11 & 13
7: 2019-10-15Donald Duck"The Ghost Sheriff of Last Gasp" & "Secret of Hondorica"15 & 17
8: 2020-10-20Donald Duck"The Lost Peg Leg Mine" & "The Black Pearls of Tabu Yama"18 & 19
9: 2021-12-07Uncle Scrooge"The Lost Crown of Genghis Khan" & "The Mines of King Solomon"16 & 20
10: 2022-10-25Donald Duck"Christmas in Duckburg" & "Under the Polar Ice"21 & 23
11: 2023-10-10Uncle Scrooge"The Twenty-four Carat Moon" & "Island in the Sky"22 & 24
12: 2024-10-15Donald Duck"Balloonatics" & "Duck Luck"25 & 27
13: 2025-10-14Uncle Scrooge"The Golden Nugget Boat" & "Cave of Ali Baba"26 & 28

Softcovers

Fantagraphics has also published three paperback titles containing selected stories from the hardcover line. In comparison to the full size hardcover series which features stories in Barks' typical four-row format, the paperback line present the material in a two-row format at a page size of 7.3 × 5.5 inches.
Free Comic Book Day 2012
In 2011 it was announced that Fantagrapics would participate in the Free Comic Book Day promotion campaign in May, 2012. For this occasion they would release a comic book titled, , an issue featuring reprinted duck stories by Carl Barks. The issue contained the three stories: The Round Money Bin, Donald Duck's Worst Nightmare and Somethin' Fishy Here, as well as eight one-page gag comics.