Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret, by Carl Barks

Bless Fantagraphics for publishing Carl Barks’ duck comics. One of the three original inductees into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame (along with Eisner and Jack Kirby), Barks was known for many years only as the nameless “good duck artist” in Walt Disney comic books. His stories read like Indiana Jones adventures, and the art is superb. Just looking at a Barks page make me feel good. My kids and I read Barks’ duck comics together, over and over again.

Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: The Old Castle’s Secret is the third book in Fantagraphics’ Barks library, and it contains all of Barks’ duck work from 1948, a very good year for duck comics. Fantagraphics went all out with the production quality: the pages were shot from the original art, and the re-coloring carefully matches the original colors in the comics. In addition to a number of great stories, like “The Old Castle’s Secret” (a 32-page story that marks Scrooge McDuck’s second ever-appearance) and “Rocket Race to the Moon,” there are a number of nice essays from Barks’ scholars and aficionados.

Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: The Old Castle’s Secret