Barrier and Barks and Rowe

john garvin jgarvin at bendcable.com
Mon Sep 10 00:13:07 CEST 2001


steven rowe:
"you're right, it looks like we both read different articles in our
different worlds"

I'm confused.  Are you saying I'm misreading any part of what Barrier
wrote?  I'm prepared to quote it at length if I have to.

Barrier: "... Barks is being diminished in other ways, too, not least by
the sort of praise that stifles awareness of his most valuable
qualities. ... It was as Scrooge's creator that Barks was most readily
identified when he died...those stories *are* children's stories... But
the Uncle Scrooge stories are not Barks's best work...I don't blame
Barks because his work trailed off in the middle 1950s... There is no
cure for all these threats to Barks's standing as a comics creator,
except to keep asserting the value of his best work. (Barks's comic book
work from the mid 1940s to early 1950s.)"

Barrier's arguments get all muddled together and are not stated very
precisely, I admit, but careful reading makes it pretty obvious that
Barrier's biggest concern is that Barks's best work is being
overshadowed by many things.  The paintings, obviously, but also Barks's
more famous, lesser work, on Uncle Scrooge.

Also, I must say that I disagree with Barrier's comments on Don Rosa's
work.  Barrier does the same thing to Rosa that Barrier does to Barks's
later comic work and Barks's paintings: Barrier judges Rosa by the
yardstick of Barks's 1940s comic work.  It may be true that Barks's
best, most polished stories have been (to quote Barrier) "constructed
with care so painstaking that it renders itself invisible (the very
quality so sadly absent from Don Rosa's earnest Barks homages of recent
years)."  But what Barrier does not consider, cannot allow himself to
see, is that perhaps Rosa is not *trying* to construct his stories that
way.  Does not the very *act* of "homage" necessitate a certain
opaqueness of structure?  Barrier's tone when he says "sadly absent"
says it all:  Rosa is not Barks, Rosa does not create stories like Barks
did in the 1940s, therefore Rosa is to be dismissed and marginalized.
But Don Rosa can't take too much umbrage at this because Barrier says
the exact same thing about Barks himself:  Barks's later work, his Uncle
Scrooge stories and his paintings, are also to be dismissed out-of-hand.












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