THEU$MAGAZINE

It all started in 1947. This was the year when Carl Barks invented his most famous character for the duck universe - Scrooge McDuck usually referred to as Uncle Scrooge. But it would take 6 full years before the old miser was to star in his own comic book series titled the U$ Magazine. From then on Scrooge appeared in long adventure stories and he became involved in ancient history, legends and myths all in an attempt to get richer and richer. Still he always remained the same character but often with slightly different personality traits (bad memory or addicted to nutmeg tea).

When Barks was asked how he felt when Western Publishing approached him with an idea for a brand new series he replied: They wrote a letter from the office and asked if I would do a 32-page Scrooge comic book. I thought, well, it's so many pages at so much per page, it's so much money, and I can do it in so many days. I was beginning to find it hard to find something new for Donald to do. Suddenly I had another character on whom I could keep expanding for several years.

And he did indeed! Barks kept on producing long Scrooge stories for every single book in the series until his retirement in 1966. Furthermore, he made 1-pagers and front covers for almost all the books, and he also introduced the inventor Gyro Gearloose as a recurrent character in 4-pagers of his own in most of the magazines.

FC0386 (U$001)

FC0456 (U$002)

FC0495 (U$003)

Barks' first three Uncle Scrooge adventures were published in the FC series, but they are often referred to as numbers 1, 2, and 3 in the U$ series although this is not correct. On the other hand Western 'acknowledged' the three stories as valid for the new series because it in fact premiered with number 4!

U$018

U$029

U$039

Barks produced all the front covers for the magazine until his retirement and at first they were strictly gag covers without any bearing on the contents of the books.

U$045

U$057

U$068

Starting with #45 Barks solely produced front covers that referred to his main story inside the comic book. Some of the drawings were very close to the stories, while others were a more free interpretation where gag situations came into play.

U$135

U$144

U$210

After his retirement Barks' work was still used once in a while. Beside the fact that some of his stories were republished some new Barks front covers emerged from time to time. Here are three different examples that are all based on ideas and sketches by Barks:
U$135 from 1976 he later reused in a pastel (see HERE), U$144 from 1977 was later redrawn and inked by Barks - with a strengthened gag where Scrooge is holding out 6 cups - for The Carl Barks Library, and U$210 from 1986 had at first been rejected by Western in the 1950s and later inked by Dutch artist Daan Jippes.

See a detailed listing of all Barks' duck stories in the U$ magazine HERE.