At the time when Carl Barks drew his stories the pages of a typical funny animal story would show a distinct conformity; they would usually just be broken down into 8 equally sized panels. But, as all his fans very well know, Barks was never afraid of experimenting and 'go the extra mile' when composing his pages. He would occasionally stray from conventions and introduce different-looking, oversized panels of his own design. Today we have a name for such irregular panels: Splash Panels (meaning panels that are larger than - or different-looking from - others on the page), and they took up varying space in Barks' stories as you will see on the sub-pages. He used every imaginable type of Splash* but they were never done as 'fillers' or 'stretchers' in order to occupy otherwise vacant space. Barks' Splash Panels were always there for a good reason - to show many things at once, to show details in a better format, or perhaps to simply surprise the reader.

The readers were surprised in a positive way back then, and today we can still rejoice in the fact that Barks took such an interest in his stories that he drew elaborate panels that were often very time-consuming and hard to compose. One example is the half-page Barks made for U$34 Mythic Mystery 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! - The art has since been lost...
We, the fans, can only feel despondent for poor Barks - and for ourselves! - but, luckily, we have many other examples of Barks' oversized and memorable panels that we can savour. Here are some of them...

* Except one! Barks never used the very rarely seen so-called Double Splash Panel, which is a Splash that appears across two pages and form one large panel - a two-page spread.