Barks in Norway

[Wilmer Rivers]

Geir,

Thanks for your excellent stories of Barks's trip to Norway!
Did anyone take a photograph of Barks in the Viking ship?  That would
really be something to hang on your wall!  A few pointless comments
and questions:

> On Monday 6th the Norwegian Comics Forum had rented the Nobel institute
> auditorium and filled it with appr. 120 eager Duck fans and collectors
>
Can you imagine anything like that happening in the USA?  If a major
American lecture hall were rented for a lecture on Donald Duck, the
newspapers would have a field day mocking the attendees, portraying the
event as a gathering of kooks and dingbats.  (Of course, in the USA,
those might in fact be the only people who would show up at such a
lecture.)  That would be the ONLY way any story on Barks or Disney
comics would make its way into a USA newspaper, I assure you.  It's
incredible for us in the USA to read these postings about the Scanda-
navian press and television coverage of Barks's tour.  I doubt that the
name "Carl Barks" has ever appeared in print even once in 99% of the
most prominent newspapers in this country, nor has it ever been men-
tioned in any American TV broadcast.  And you get hour-long programs
on Barks over there!!!!

> Let me just add that I thought it was humiliating to call Soeland to
> know about Barks=B4 whereabouts, I was told about a private dinner for
> collectors but I had to ask if I was intended for that one, which
> I wasnt.
>
This was of course the real purpose of the tour, I'm certain - to meet
with collectors so that Grandey could dig deep into their pockets.  Not
that there's anything inherently wrong with that; Barks deserves to
make a profit selling them his wares, and the rich guys deserve to be
able to spend their money on whatever they wish.  It's just too bad that
the whole tour is based on selling expensive art to collectors.  Barks
has been announced as a guest as a Disneyanna [is that a word?] conven-
tion at Disneyland in September, the purpose being to auction off a
statue of Uncle Scrooge.  Barks will probably attend the convention
for only a few minutes to meet rich collectors, and Grandey will pro-
tect him from having to be exposed to any other types of fans.  Again,
I can't begrudge Barks for making only appearances like that, except
on general principles - if it weren't for the audience of "just plain
folks" who bought Barks's comics at ten cents each, there wouldn't now
be any collectable market for his art commanding tens of thousands of
dollars!  That's why I was so glad to read Bjoern Are's and your reports
on the large gathering of 600 or more fans attended by Barks.  It's
nice that the general public was able to participate in the tour to a
certain extent.  I can't imagine that happening in the collectable-crazy
USA comics market.

> This park has earlier arranged Duck exhibitions and rented the 313
> replica which I helped build in Trondheim some years ago.
>
Can you tell us more about this replica???

> At last I finished and got ovations, flowers and a t-shirt from the
> arrangement committee
>
And well deserved, I'm sure.  Have you ever written up this lecture
for publication?  Based on the newspaper article that you and Even Flood
posted some time ago, I'm sure it must be a real attention-getter!

> Thats it! A short report from the Norwegian part of the Barks trip.
> Could you Danes and Swedew tell a little more from your parts? Or were
> we Norwegians extremely lucky with what we got?
>
I would say so, yes!!!

Wilmer Rivers