Given all the strange and salty Last Kiss comics I write, you wouldn’t think I’d also be writing Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge comics for Disney. But, you’d be wrong.
This Wednesday (Oct. 28, 2015), “The Duck Who Came to Dinner” in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #724 hits comic shops. What makes this really special is that it was a story started decades ago by Disney legend and one of my personal heroes Carl Barks. Carl scripted seven and a half pages of what I presume was supposed to be a 10-page Donald Duck story. But he never completed it.
Segment of the first two panels of Carl Barks’s handwritten script for “The Duck Who Came to Dinner.”
My editor at Egmont (Disney’s main Northern Europe comic licensee) gave me the go-ahead to finish the script—as well as several other stories that Carl either started or left notes for. Some have been printed in Europe. But this is the first to appear in America. And it’s the story that Carl came the closest to finishing.
I’m happy to say that artist Daan Jippes—who’s a Disney legend himself!—was my artist on “The Duck Who Came to Dinner.”
I think Carl would’ve liked how it came out. But, ultimately, it’ll be up to readers to decide. So check it out—if you can find a copy.
Way to go. I’ll will track it down at my local CB shop.
I hope you enjoy it, Brian!
Awesome work, John. Congratulations, I can’t wait to get ahold of a copy myself.
Thanks, Bob!
Thanks much for continuing the tradition.
We hope for more to come!
In the meantime (as a Barks’ fan from Italy I have to write this) the story was published in the monthly Uack! (issue #4) last year in Italy.
All the best!
Thanks, Andrea. I did complete a wild Gyro Gearloose story that Barks plotted, but never fully scripted. And there are a handful of Barks story ideas that I turned into short pieces (less than 10 pages.) I think all of those have been published in Europe now.
I am sitting on some other Barks story ideas that I want to flesh out. But frankly I’ve been so busy with Last Kiss and some family matters for over two years that I haven’t written any duck stories.
I definitely hope to get back to writing the Disney ducks in 2016, though.
Actually the story “The Duck Who Came to Dinner” was published in Uack!#5 in Italy (thus correcting my earlier mistake).
The story you scripted “Gyro’s Manager” was published in Uack!#17 a few months ago.
All “latest” stories you scripted that were based on Barks’ drafts and drawn by Daan Jippes have been published in Uack! at this point.
http://coa.inducks.org/simp.php?d1=&d2=&d4=&creat=Carl+barks%2C+daan+jippes%2C+john+lustig&exactpg=&kind=0
Are we missing any?
Please do keep up the good work with all the best for the new year!
🙂