Michael Barrier's "Thoughts on Carl Barks's 100th Birthday"

john garvin jgarvin at bendcable.com
Sat Sep 8 23:42:06 CEST 2001


I finally found the issue of the Comics Journal that had Michael Barrier's essay on
Carl Barks.  All I can say is that Carl Barks's memory deserves better.  I have
written a response which is far too long to post on this newsgroup, but I have posted
a link to it from my new webpage.  Scroll down and look for the "response to barrier"
link.

http://www.enchantedimages.nstemp.com/

I apologise to list members who don't have access to Barrier's essay.  It is under
copyright and I can't reproduce it on my site, or here, not that I want to read it
again, let alone transcribe it.  But I have quote from it enough for you to
understand my responses.

Here is an excerpt from my essay:

Where did this resentment of Barks’s paintings come from? Barrier’s "Thoughts on Carl
Barks" stunned me. There were so many wrong-headed
notions contained in such a small essay it was hard to know where to begin. Barks’s
paintings are "awful kitsch?" To be good, a cartoon
character must be drawn with inked lines? Barks’s paintings are too realistic?
Barks’s paintings are as pointless as the covers of Dell giants?
Barks would have been better off if he had never painted a duck? Some of Barrier’s
notions, like the concept of Barks backgrounds and human
characters being too realistic, have been around since Art of the Comic Book. Twenty
years is far too long for such criticisms to go unanswered,
and as Barrier’s "thoughts" bear out, he is neither Barks greatest fan, nor expert.








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