The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library

The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library is a series of books collecting all of the comic book Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories written and drawn by Carl Barks, originally published between 1942 and Barks' retirement in June 1966. The series was launched in late 2011, and will comprise 6,000 plus pages over roughly 30 200- to 240-page volumes when it is finished.

The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library has been translated and published in Italy, Brazil, Russia, and Germany.

From March 2024, Disney restricted access to the Kindle editions outside of North America, making the entire digital collection unavailable to purchase officially outside of North America.

Background
The rights to Barks' works were licensed from Disney by Gemstone Publishing from 2003 until the end of 2008, when they ceased publishing Disney titles. When Fantagraphics Books publisher Gary Groth heard this, he contacted Disney and secured the publishing rights to Floyd Gottfredson's work on the Mickey Mouse comic strip, resulting in the Floyd Gottfredson Library series that began publication in mid-2011. Groth also tried to obtain the publishing rights to Barks' duck stories. Disney at first announced they would publish the stories themselves, but eventually changed their minds and passed the work on to Fantagraphics. In 2014, Fantagraphics also began publishing a companion series, The Don Rosa Library, collecting the Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck stories written and drawn by Don Rosa.

Format
Barks' duck stories have been reprinted extensively, especially in Europe. Before Fantagraphics there were two complete collections in English published by Another Rainbow. The first was the expensive, scholarly Carl Barks Library (1984–1990) in 30 hardcover volumes collected in ten slipcase volumes with three books in each, which was in black-and-white. The second was Carl Barks Library in Color in softcover album format with modern colouring.

Fantagraphics' 7.5 inches × 10.25 inches (19 cm × 26 cm) hardcover volumes are published in full color, as the stories originally were. When the series is complete, it will represent a chronological collection of Barks' stories. However, the volumes of the stories are being published out of order, starting with the volumes that the publishers believe will attract the most attention, starting with Lost in the Andes!, a volume containing stories from what is considered to be Barks' "peak" period (the late 1940s to the mid-1950s), including the title story "Lost in the Andes", which many fans consider to be representative of Barks' best work, and was Barks' own favorite.

The design work was done by Fantagraphics' lead designer, Jacob Covey. The pages are recolored by Rich Tommaso, using the original comics as a coloring guide, unlike some of Fantagraphics' more scholarly reprints, as the books are aimed at a more general audience than many of Fantagraphics' other offerings, which are often aimed at the comics cognoscenti.

The books are about 240 pages each—about 200 pages of comics, with the remaining pages made up of supplementary material, such as cover reprints and essays.

Restoration
Fantagraphics chose to have the artwork computer-recolored, using the original comics as color guides, rather than reprinting with the original off-register colors as they have in many of their other archival projects. Colorist Rich Tommaso has stuck closely to the original colors, although muting the originally garish ones somewhat in a concession to modern readers. Sometimes the colors were changed when it was known that Barks hadn't liked them, or when it was felt they could be corrected or improved. Some stories are printed from recently rediscovered original artwork.

Censorship
Volumes 5-20 were completely uncensored, including the racial caricatures that appeared in the originals that had been retouched in later printings. Starting from Volume 21, some stories were edited or removed:


 * Volume 21
 * The first printing includes the statement: "Some dialogue in this edition has been updated." An example of updated text can be seen in the story "The Lovelorn Fireman" at page 108.
 * In the second printing (released late 2022, but dated January 2023), the disclaimer regarding altered dialogue is removed, and the original text is restored. The story "The Flying Farm Hand" has been removed from the second printing.


 * Volume 23
 * The table of contents includes the statement: "The artwork in these comics stories is reproduced here in its entirety as first created in 1959-1960. Some dialogue has been modified." Specifically, dialogues concerning Native Americans have been rewritten in the stories "Trail Tycoon" and "The Wax Museum".
 * In the second printing, all the original text is restored.


 * Volume 28
 * The cover for Uncle Scrooge #39 has been omitted.
 * The one-page story "Million Dollar Shower" has been left out, either because of Native Americans in the comic or because the story was originally published in 1965 three years after its creation in 1962.


 * Volume 4
 * In "The Bill Collectors", the entire original page 3 is removed.

Recognition

 * 2013 – The volume Uncle Scrooge: Only a Poor Old Man was nominated for the Eisner Award in the category, "Best Archival Collection/Project – Comic Books".
 * 2015 – The volume Donald Duck: Trail of the Unicorn was nominated for the Eisner Award in the category, "Best Archival Collection/Project - Comic Books (at least 20 years old)".
 * 2022 – The volume Uncle Scrooge: Island in the Sky was nominated for the Eisner Award in the category, "Best Archival Collection/Project — Comic Books (at least 20 Years Old)".

Volumes and boxed sets
∗ The Pied Piper of Duckburg: pages 1–3 script and pencils by Carl Barks in 1959; pages 4–8 script and finished art by Don Rosa in 1990, respectively Daan Jippes in 2006.

∗∗ Only scripts done by Barks; for Junior Woodchucks stories, art by Daan Jippes.

Softcovers
Fantagraphics has also published three paperback titles containing selected stories from the hardcover line. In comparison to the full size hardcover series which features stories in Barks' typical four-row format, the paperback line present the material in a two-row format at a page size of 7.3 × 5.5 inches.


 * Donald Duck: Ghost of the Grotto, 130 pages, 2014-10-04,
 * Donald Duck: Sheriff of Bullet Valley, 98 pages, 2015-04-10,
 * Donald Duck: The Golden Helmet, 130 pages, 2015-10-03,

Related
Free Comic Book Day 2012

In 2011 it was announced that Fantagrapics would participate in the Free Comic Book Day promotion campaign in May, 2012. For this occasion they would release a comic book titled, Disney's Donald Duck Family Comics'', an issue featuring reprinted duck stories by Carl Barks. The issue contained the three stories: The Round Money Bin, Donald Duck's Worst Nightmare and Somethin' Fishy Here, as well as eight one-page gag comics.

Brazilian version
The Brazilian version is titled Coleção Carl Barks Definitiva and was initially published by Editora Abril from 2016 to 2018, when the publisher ended its contract with Disney. In November 2019, Panini Comics resumed the collection.

German version
The German version is titled Onkel Dagobert und Donald Duck von Carl Barks and started November 2022. It is published by Egmont Comic Collection.

Italian version
Two volumes were published by Rizzoli Lizard in 2012-2013 before being canceled after the second volume. In November 2019, Panini Comics resumed the collection publishing "Le Storie di Natale di Barks", a box set that is the translation of the first Fantagraphics box set with volumes 5 and 11. In November 2022 Panini continued with volume 6.

Russian version
The Russian version is titled Библиотека Карла Баркса and is published by АСТ since 2017.