THECOMICCONS

The best place for a comic book artist to meet his readers is at the many annual comic book conventions (Comic Cons) devoted to popular culture being held all over the world. The best known in the USA are situated in a great variety of cities and are called Comic Con, Comic-Con, Disneyana, and Newcon. The conventions mainly consist of showcasing artists' comic books, science fiction and fantasy issues, as well as film and television presentations along with seminars, workshops, and panels with comic book professionals. The most successful is the one formerly known as the San Diego Comic Con (today Comic-Con International), which was started in 1970.

Carl Barks attended several of these gatherings primarily as an official guest. He was there to promote books written about him, sign lithographs, participate in panels, present and sell new work, and to receive awards. All in all splendid forums when you wish to blow your horn, but also rather intimidating places to be when one's fans lack normal decorum; at one time Barks got surrounded by hordes of autograph hunters who nearly ran him down, and his wife Garé got separated from him. An experience so frightening that they never attended any more conventions together. But the conventions also had their good moments for Barks; at the 1976 Boston Newcon a man approached Barks and said: I just want to shake your hand and tell you that you made my childhood much happier with your stories...
This page presents you to a kaleidoscopic tour among some of the conventions Barks attended.

AWARDS

The Inkpot Award

8/76 Porky of the Mountains

Barks was presented with numerous awards during his golden years; some of which were awarded at comic cons. The first one, The Inkpot Award, was given for lifetime achievement in comics and related areas. Barks received it at the 1977 Comic Con in San Diego.

In 1987, at the same convention, Barks was given The Kirby Award named after the famed comic book artist and writer Jack Kirby (in 1988 it was renamed The Will Eisner Award after writer and artist Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit). Barks also entered their Hall of Fame.

In 1995 Barks was presented with The CBG (Comics Buyer Guide) Award at their annual convention in no less than 4 categories! The year after Barks won The Comics Buyer Guide Fan Award, and his 1976 painting 8/76 Porky of the Mountains made it to the front cover of CBG's 1997 price guide.

See more Awards HERE

SALES

Barks' chief reason for attending conventions as a private person was to promote his work. This comment to his daughter Dorothy from October 1993 indicates that he had an ambivalent relationship to the commercialized goings-on, though: ...I was in Atlanta for a big comic book seminar in June, and a week at Disneyland for a Disneyana Convention in September. I was treated like a V.I.P. but felt more like a piece of merchandise. Oh well, its good for business, and it helps make jobs for many, many people...
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109/75 She Was Spangled and Flashy

(1994) Sport of Tycoons

143/95 Surprise Party at Memory Pond

In October 1975 Barks attended Boston's Newcon where his latest duck painting 109/75 She Was Spangled and Flashy was auctioned off. It fetched an astounding 2,500 dollars, and the event marked the beginning of an escalation of the prices Barks' paintings would obtain in the coming years. See more on the painting HERE.
The following year Barks returned to Newcon, this time to auction off the highlight of the convention - the largest duck painting he had ever done - 119/76 July Fourth in Duckburg. It sold for a then record high amount of 6,400 dollars!!! See more on the painting HERE.

During his last years Barks started a new career! He began designing figurines in porcelain and bronze. As for the latter the figurines were made for the annual Disneyana conventions in Walt Disney World and Disneyland, and Barks produced figurines from 1994 to 1998 to be sold at the conventions. See more figurines HERE.

It took Barks 3 months of concentrated work to finish his painting 143/95 Surprise Party at Memory Pond. The painting is unusual, because it is the only one in which Barks depicted Disney characters from long ago: The early Donald Duck, The Wise Little Hen, Peter Pig, Horace Horsecollar, and Clarabelle Cow. The commercial idea behind the painting was to produce a series of serigraphs, and they were signed by Barks and sold at the Disneyana Convention in 1997. See more HERE.

SESSIONS

Barks was invited to sit in several panels during the conventions. Here are three examples with some of the attendees and a mentioning of some of their characters. See more about the artists and their characters HERE.

1976
Boston Newcon

Among the attendees were:
Dick 'Green Lantern' Giordano,
Mike 'The Shadow' Kaluta,
Gil 'Superman' Kane,
John 'Little Lulu' Stanley,
Jim 'Captain America' Steranko.

1977
San Diego Comic Con

Among the attendees were:
C.C. 'Captain Marvel' Beck,
Jack 'Captain America' Kirby,
Joe 'Tarzan' Kubert,
Harvey 'Frontline Combat' Kurtzman,
Stan 'Rick O'Shay' Lynde.

1982
San Diego Comic Con

Among the attendees were:
Will 'The Spirit' Eisner,
Chuck 'Bugs Bunny' Jones,
Hank 'Dennis the Menace' Ketcham,
Frank 'Barney Baxter' Miller,
Leonard 'Kelly Green' Starr.

TITBITS

May 1973

In a letter Barks wrote to a fan:
...Recently a collector in Iowa, Russ Cochran, contacted me with an offer to advertise some of my paintings in his collector's catalog of original comic strip art for $500 each, just to see how the market would go at that price. I hurriedly did two paintings for him. They sold immediately, and he could have sold several more...
...Now I am doing four paintings in a hell of a hurry for Cochran to take to conventions ... to see what comes out of them pricewise...

For a number of years Barks' sales managers of his duck paintings, Bruce Hamilton and Russ Cochran, visited a great many conventions successfully promoting and selling Barks' work.

June 1979

Barks wrote a letter to Dorothy summing up his and Garé's visit to a convention in Los Angeles (see more HERE). Some of it read:
...We spent most of Memorial Day weekend in L.A. as guests of Abbeville Press, which outfit prints the big hardback DONALD DUCK and UNCLE SCROOGE books. The occasion was the American Booksellers Convention at the Convention Center. I was asked to come in and autograph uncountable copies of the books. Sadly, the Uncle Scrooge books never arrived from the printers, but the number of Donald books I signed staggers the imagination...
...I enclose an ad of the Broadway department stores, at one of whose chain I autographed books for over an hour, or until they sold out, I'm not sure which ... Donald and the other ducks are really riding a wave of popularity...

February 1995

Barks wrote to Dorothy after having returned from the Disneyana Convention in Disneyland:
...The bronze statuette of Donald as Sheriff of Bullet Valley was the star seller of the whole affair. Already licensees are working on bronzes for the next Disneyana in Florida in September, and the pressure is on me to be there. I’m hoping to develop fallen arches or something equally disabling before then...

The letter continued:
...there is something kind of rewarding about that unrehearsed fan frenzy. For a few seconds each of those babbling people actually meant the flattering things they told me about my influence on their lives, and although I am very cynical about such utterances, I find it feels good to believe them...

September 1996

In a letter to Dorothy Barks commented on the three new videos being released about him:
...I find such tapes so boring I can’t conceive of anyone wanting to watch them. Surprising to me was the way fans at the Disneyana Convention I attended last week in Florida were buying the tapes frantically at $40 apiece...