Bill Peckmann &Comic Art &Illustration 08 Jul 2011 06:58 am
Sheriff of Bullet Valley – 1
- Bill Peckmann sent me the first installment of Carl Barks‘ comic story, “Sheriff of Bullet Valley.” There will be two other installments to follow. Here’s the note Bill sent with the scans:
“Sheriff of Bullet Valley” was reprinted in Another Rainbow Pubishing Company’s “Carl Barks Library” in 1984. Most of the “CBL” was printed in B&W, fortunately “Sheriff” was printed in color and what a beautiful job they did. The coloring is done in wonderful flat tones, no color gradients and that seems to be just what the doctor ordered for Carl’s style.
Barks’ was at the top of his game when he did this story and because of that, a great deal of enjoyable time can be spent studying each page and each panel. A lot of people have explained Carl’s art much better than I can, but to me, he always had the ability (and still does) to make a world on the printed page as real as the one outside your window. What he packed into those pages by way of writing, continuity, panel and page design, backgrounds and landscapes, his posing and the acting ability of his characters, wow,in this day and age it seems like such a super human effort.
Here then is the first installment of “Sheriff of Bullet Valley” by Carl Barks.
1(Click any image to enlarge.)
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To be continued
on 08 Jul 2011 at 10:37 am 1.The Gee said …
I have yet to read it.
Just looking at the thumbnails and enjoying seeing the very readable layout both with in the panels and the panel layout itself.
It might seem silly or stupid to mention but just notice how the characters go from place to place. There aren’t jarring changes and nothing confusing to disrupt the pacing. No showboating by Barks to show he could draw or to make any of it more cinematic, like a lot of modern comics stories using half-pages or splashes or trying tricky layouts.
He just uses slight variations on an 8 panel grid…
I’ll get around to reading it as intended later.
Thanks.
on 09 Jul 2011 at 12:48 pm 2.Oscar Solis said …
I’ve only just been getting into Carl Barks work, so this post was a pleasant way to start the morning. Unlike a lot of comics today, Barks’ work is simple to read, but in no way is it simplistic. I’ve always been surprised by how sophisticated his plots could be and how many twists and turns he could put into a very simple situation. One of the things I’ve noticed with Bark’s work is that more happens in one of his 20 or so pages (even his 6 grid stories) than happens in today’s graphic novels at 5x’s the length.
Can’t wait to see what happens next.