Bruce Hamilton and Barks at the San Diego Comic Con

Bruce Hamilton was known as a radio announcer and a professional dealer of various artifacts such as records and comic art, before he came to work for Barks. At that point he undertook the daunting task of struggling with The Walt Disney Company in order to negotiate deals and obtain licenses that allowed Barks to have new books published. Hamilton was the driving force behind the very difficult but successful negotiations, and great series of books saw the light of day in the coming years.
After having obtained the license to assume publication of the required Disney material, Hamilton retained all the best obtainable material publications with colour separations enabling him to reproduce the stories in the best possible way. Barks' original drawings had, throughout the years, been incinerated in Western Publishing's furnace, so the result obtained was the best possible under the circumstances.
All Barks' duck stories were then published in 30 oversized books divided into 10 slipcases - The Carl Barks Library. The volumes also contained Barks' many front covers in colour as well as several relevant articles. Years later the stories were reproduced, now in full, new colouring and following the original chronology, in 144 volumes titled The Carl Barks Library in Color.

Hamilton died in June, 2005, after a long illness.

Russ Cochran*

Russ Cochran started his career as a physics professor, but he is probably best known to the public as a publisher of numerous comic books such as EC Comics reprints, Disney comics, and a string of books containing topics as different as Hopalong Cassidy and Chet Atkins.
But there is more. Here is a small part of an interview, in which Cochran told about some of his projects: I met George Lucas and Steven Spielberg approximately 30 years ago and have helped both of them with their collections of original artwork. Lucas purchased many Alex Raymond and Flash Gordon originals and Frazetta paintings from me and Spielberg has purchased the original cover of Mad #1, several Carl Barks paintings, and more than a hundred pieces of vintage Disney animation art.
Barks got to know the versatile man in 1973. In a letter he 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...

* Cochran is a very private person who is rarely photographed.

PROJECTS
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Cochran and Hamilton at the Boston Newcon in 1976 auctioning one of Barks' paintings

From 1973 on Cochran and Hamilton functioned as Barks' sales managers of his duck and non-duck paintings. They visited a great many conventions successfully promoting and selling his work. Cochran reminisces: I met Bruce Hamilton at a comics convention in the early 1970s, and our mutual interests in the works of Carl Barks and in collecting original comic art led to us becoming good friends.

As time went by Cochran became the driving force behind the auctioning of Barks' paintings and he sold many at increasingly better prices while crisscrossing the country, and he also managed to place promotional articles and graphic advertisements in gallery magazines. Also, Barks furnished Cochran with lengthy lists of potential purchasers, whom he could contact.
Cochran was tireless in selling Barks' paintings. In one of his first reports to Barks he wrote: ... Green Persia and Secret Safe sold instantly, and if I had had ten more, I could have sold them all! The message is loud and clear. Your paintings are in great demand. They should be priced at $500 to $1000 depending on your estimation of them.
Barks was, of course, very pleased with the rising demand, but in several letters from then on he would express his vexation that he was unable to keep up with the increasing demand. Cochran on the other hand became so 'embarrassed' about his increasing percentage earnings that he insisted on a lower payment for his work!!!

In 1980 Hamilton and Cochran created two joint companies dedicated to a greater recognition of Barks' work. The first company's name was Another Rainbow Publishing (commonly known as AR). The somewhat enigmatic name derives from Scrooge McDuck's saying that 'there will always be another rainbow'. The other company's name was Gladstone Publishing, where the name was taken from Barks' primary character Gladstone Gander. It was a subsidiary company to AR and soon became the major (and for most of the time the only) publisher of Disney comic books in the USA. The books contained duck stories by especially Barks, but several new artists such as Keno Don Rosa and William van Horn were represented as well. A novelty was that AR had obtained the rights to also publish the artists' names in connection with their stories, thus breaking a steadfast rule in Disney's publishing policy.
Cochran reminisces: We formed a partnership known as Another Rainbow Publishing and Gladstone Publishing in 1980 to explore the possibilities of publishing the works of Carl Barks, including his oil paintings and his comic book stories. Bruce was an unforgettable character, full of idiosyncrasies which often made him difficult to deal with, but his natural intelligence and life-long love of learning made people respect him. He and I enjoyed many cross-country motor trips together where he would talk and I would listen. He was a rare and strange duck, and I will miss him.

The first publishing related to Barks was an imposing art book with the equally imposing title The Fine Art of Walt Disney´s Donald Duck by Carl Barks. The book lavishly reproduced all of the 122 duck paintings he had officially finished by that time. To obtain the splendid results, no fewer than 50 photographers from the USA and Canada were asked to photograph the paintings. The photos needed extra attention to secure the best possible reproduction as the normal printing process only consists of 4 colours. They succeeded and Barks was satisfied. The book had a run of 1,875 copies - all signed by Barks personally!
Shortly after AR began producing series of fine art lithographs of many of the paintings in strictly limited editions, and they ended up producing a small series of elaborate serigraphs in the beginning of the 1990s. All products were signed by Barks.

In 1983 AR aired an even more ambitious project. Hamilton and Cochran had obtained the rights from The Walt Disney Company to publish all of Barks' stories and front covers in a monumental opus of unequalled dimensions! It was called The Carl Barks Library (CBL) and consisted of 30 voluminous luxury books in 10 boxed, slipcase sets (i.e. 3 books to a set). The prestigious series of books was published over a number of years (from July 1984 to August 1990).
The books also contained numerous new contributions from both Barks and other artists. Furthermore the books were filled with many special features such as articles, interviews, sketches, storyboards, and modelsheets. It took a good 6 years to finish the giant undertaking but it was certainly worth waiting for as the comic book stories are perfectly reproduced - mostly in black and white. They also incorporated vast amounts of Disney material unknown to the public until then.

From 1992 to 1998 AR republished all of Barks' Disney stories, but this time in 141 handy albums. The name was The Carl Barks Library in Color (CBLiC), and it came close to the CBL apart from a few novelties; all the stories were in full colour, the stories came in the original chronological order, the albums contained special trading cards, and new articles and other material were added.

AR's last Barks related project was the launching of yet another ambitious project namely the manufacture of limited editions of 10 figurines made in fine porcelain. Barks based the motifs on recognizable subjects and events from his stories, and he made all the necessary and detailed sketches for the figurine manufacturer to follow (see more HERE).
As the figurines were handmade by the finest craftsmen using the finest materials they had to be heavily priced, and this fact led to less sales than expected, although the interest was very much present. This, in turn, led to one of the saddest events in Barks' professional career, as many of them had to be destroyed in 2001 (see more HERE)...