Carl Barks' Duckburg - A Realm of Imagination

Dave Rawson TheGuy at DrawsOn.Com
Mon Apr 22 21:45:09 CEST 2002


Rob Klein wrote: 

> Duckburg was clearly at least a middle-sized city (based on an 
> amalgamation of all the long-range (overall) views of that city.
> In several stories Duckburg had a large seaport, large railroad station 
> and industrial area, as well as a large financial centre with tall 
> skyscrapers. If Duckburg appears to be a small town in a few of his 
> stories, it must be assumed that the small-townish area portrayed in 
> those panels is meerly a portion (district) of Duckburg, which is 
> suburban or semi-suburban. That portion is located near its east, 
> northeast or southeast (inland) boundary, adjacent to the beginning of 
> areas of opened farmland.  

When I chatted with Carl Barks he was adamant that in his view Duckburg was a state
of mind, deliberately a place of endless invention where any story could be told,
unconstrained by what had gone before, and that he was deeply opposed to any
canonical anointments which, he said, was a limitation of super-hero comics and that
he likewise feared that canonization would lead to a similar constricted downfall of
duck storytelling. 

I think the endless variations we see in Barks' stories are simply a reflection of
his stated conscious philosophy. When he needed a mountain to serve his story, he
made one. When he needed a bridge, he made one. Whatever served his story, in his
Duckburg, he would just make.

Bob Foster (champion of many a new Disney storyteller and the man who gave me my
start) once told me that he thought that many duck storytellers were mistaken to base
their efforts on Barks canon, but rather should seek their own interpretation.

Similarly, I've read here of Italian readers who lament the many artists who cloned
their styles from the brilliant Cavazano, instead of developing a unique style of
their own.

Indeed, in the arts themselves, we see that success always spawns imitators more
often than innovators.

I think Barks understood this challenge. He certainly transcended what  was handed
him and stood apart as his own man.

The challenge of every creator is to honor what has come before and then to journey
beyond it into new realms of imagination.



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