...
U$19 - intended and final

Barks skretched many suggestions for covers of several of his adventure stories. Some were used, many were not. This example shows one of his versions for U$19 The Mines of King Solomon but as it turned out the editor had already decided on another gag cover. This seems to have been a wasted effort. I hadn't been told that the editors had a gag cover planned for this comic. At least, the published cover was also by Barks..

...
WDCS148 and 020 Christmas Carolers

In 1972 Western contacted Barks and asked him to paint a front cover depicting his former cover from WDCS148. It was to be used for a special Christmas annual, and Barks complied. That is why he left ample space on the upper half for Western to put in the logos needed. As it turned out, Western decided not to use the painting: The company has gone all out for selling comics in bags, four for 59 cents,and they no longer wanted seasonal stuff that will grow stale during long stays on store racks. Gladstone Publishing later used the painting as front cover in their Christmas Parade 1.

U$13 'The Lightning Story'

The 4-page Gyro stories for Uncle Scrooge #13 and #14 were sent back to me for changes. In the #13 story I'd used the nephews. Because of postal mailing laws, no characters used in other parts of the book could be used in the Gyro story. Hence the change to Mickey's nephews.

U$14 'The Speed Gasoline Story'

The 4-page Gyro stories for Uncle Scrooge #13 and #14 were sent back to me for changes. Because of postal mailing laws, no characters used in other parts of the book could be used in the Gyro story. The character 'Speedy' in #14 was originally Donald.

...
U$33 Tree Trick: The original art and the published art

All of Western's comic books had an area where they placed the so-called Indicia, i.e. technical facts about the issue, the publisher, the printer, and so on. In most of the books the indicia was placed at the bottom of page 3, which was where Barks had his first page of a 10-pager Donald Duck or a longer adventure story starring Scrooge. Barks knew this and, consequently, his start pages were always 3 rows high instead of the normal 4 rows leaving ample space for the indicia.
But sometimes Western would place the indicia on page 2 (the front cover's inner page). Here you would typically find a one-pager, and this presented a slight problem, because Barks usually drew his one-pagers in 4 rows. Quite understandable, because he would never know in beforehand where a certain page would show up in a particular comic book. So when Western occasionally (such as in U$23) decided to place a Barks one-pager on page 2 along with their indicia, they had to disfigure his art slightly.

It is plausible that Barks were told that some of his one-pagers would be cut by one panel, i.e. consist of 7 panels instead of 8, leaving room for Dell's Pledge for Parents that was placed in all of the comic books. But sometimes he miscalculated; in the one-pager Tree Trick from U$33 Western did not use the extra space. Instead they stretched the artwork so that it filled two panels...

....
Published panels from WDCS47, WDCS248, and U$34

Sometimes Western would need room for a half page or a full page advertisement for some toy or bubblegum, and they could decide to place it either between stories or inside a story thus interrupting the story's flow. It happened a few times to Barks' stories, but it rarely meant that his art was deleted for that reason.

Barks was aware of this danger but could, of course, do nothing to prevent deletion or disfiguration of his pages. In July 1960 he delivered two Donald Duck 10-pagers to the publisher (WDCS247 The Madcap Mariner issued in May 1961 and WDCS248 The Terrible Tourist issued in June 1961), and he said to a friend: Now will come the grisliest butchery of all, I fear - a page lifted from The Terrible Tourist. It may be that the managers managed to confine their cuts to other stories in that issue. Only time will tell. That particular story was not cut, but the first-mentioned was! By one entire page, which, Barks later recalled, contained some of the best gags.

In December 1960, i.e. before he knew the coming fate of his amputated 10-pager, Barks delivered the adventure story U$34 Mythic Mystery to Western. It contained a half-page which no reader has ever seen! The whole story was manhandled by the editor in order to make room for an advertisement, and Barks' art suffered: My chin hit my knees when I saw the big half-page stupender I did of Thor and Vulcan and a nephew riding above the busiest street corner in Duckburg in the gold chariot missing! Thor's horses terrified, thousands (at least) of people gaping upward in disbelief. Autos bumper to bumper, smoking, clanking. In short, I gave Vulcan something to be scared about. All wasted effort! - From that point on Barks stopped making half-page splashes...

....
Published panels from FC0291, FC0300, and FC0308

Barks ventured out on thin ice when he began to show real humans instead of humanized ducks and similar animals in his stories. This started with FC0291 The Magic Hourglass, went on in FC0300 Big Top Bedlam, and ended with FC0308 Dangerous Disguise. Barks recalled: As soon as I took 'Dangerous Disguise' in, and Carl Buettner (Western editor at the time) took a look at it, he said, 'That doesn't go good, having real humans. It takes the ducks out of their own world'.

On FC0328 In Old California! Barks later said: I would have preferred to have drawn the characters as real humans, but I was warned for using humans when I submitted 'Dangerous Disguise' four months earlier. From then on real humans were only seen sporadically in the stories.