THEGREEKCONNECTION

Carl Barks wrote Disney comic book stories over a span of several decades. He started in 1942 and ended in 2000. One of his last commitments was an adventure story partly built on a famous, ancient Greek mythological story set in the city-state of Troy. The Greek army had for years had the Trojan city under siege, but it was only after they opened the city gate in order to let in an apparent special gift - a giant wooden horse, that the Trojans were finally defeated. The horse was hollow and filled with Greek soldiers, who, during the following night, sneaked out and opened the gate to their countrymen. Troy quickly fell.

In 1994 Barks was asked if he would consider celebrating the 30th anniversary of his own, official retirement(!) in 1966, and he was willing. The understanding was that he was to primarily participate as the plotman, but, as it turned out, he became sort of an overseer of the whole project. And he worked fast! Shortly after Barks had finished a full synopsis featuring Scrooge, Donald, and the nephews on a treasure hunt for the fabled, wooden horse. The story premiered a few months later in some European countries and was later the same year published in USA33 (Uncle Scrooge Adventures from Gladstone Comics) and titled Horsing Around with History.

Of course, Barks needed an artist to work with all the graphics, and a young, rising star was picked: I chose Bill Van Horn who lives in Vancouver to do the artwork. His drawing style is very Disney like. It looked quite a bit like my own drawing and his way of staging things is close to mine. I just wrote out the script with a typewriter and had been trying to sketch it out, and he got the feeling of what I was thinking of. He would read that little blurb and come up with a sketch just like I thought it in my head.
I had very few things to correct. He and I went over his pencil drawings quite thoroughly. I went over the whole way though, once before I even got to thinking: 'Well I have got to correct some things'. So I went back and looked at two or three small situations that required a tiny bit of changing. It could have gone through and made a successful story without my correcting at all. He was that good at interpreting what I wanted.

This page presents you to a small selection of Barks' contribution to the story (you can read van Horn's own account on the project HERE).

FROM START TO FINISH

Barks wrote a full synopsis covering the story's 24 pages. He dedicated a sheet of paper to each page and every sheet was divided into - mostly - 8 panels. For the panels, Barks made detailed remarks on graphics, narration, and dialogue. Above you are presented to 2 of Barks' synopsis pages (numbers 1 and 16) along with the corresponding, finished pages to the right.
It is truly awe-inspiring (uncanny, really) to see how Barks' very first synopses survived almost unchanged to the published product. He demonstrates that he was indeed a trained professional in his field by being able to collect his thoughts and ideas already in the first go without the need to have to alter much later in the process.

COMMENTS

(To get the full value of the commentaries mentioned in the above notes it is necessary for you to have a copy of the published story at hand.)
Because Barks was not directly involved in the graphic process, it was only natural that he would have a few critical comments and suggestions for alterations, when he was first presented to van Horn's graphic sketches. Barks had, of course, envisioned his story in a certain way, so he just jotted down a few comments to van Horn of panels that needed to be corrected or strengthened. This is one of Barks' comment pages.
Notice that he even sketched a nephew holding an ancient helmet in order to achieve the correct proportions in the panel. As for proportions Barks also pointed out that van Horn had initially sketched the proportions between the horse and the people incorrectly in the opening panel.

EXTRA BUSINESS

Throughout all of his comic book career Barks had a luxury problem; he often dreamed up more business than could possibly be included in the stories (Barks would often call a story's different work related tasks for Business)!
In later interviews he would sometimes 'complain' that he had had trouble dreaming up ideas for his stories: My God, the well's gone dry and I can't come up with another idea to save my life, he once uttered. This may well be perfectly true, but it was also true that Barks' inventive mind quite often worked overtime so that he would have business for 12-13 pages for a normal 10-pager. Just think of all the wonderful ideas that only his wastepaper basket saw!!!
For the present story Barks also made some extra business that never got in the story. Above is one of his brainstorming pages.