Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold

The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library #1

by Carl Barks

The very first Donald Duck stories by Disney Legend Carl Barks!

At last, Fantagraphics presents Carl Barks’s very first Donald Duck stories! This is where it all started, as Carl Barks took control of Donald Duck’s comic book adventures and began a series of clever, creative, complex, and comedic stories that would continue under his cartooning brilliance for more than 20 years ― and guarantee his place in comics history.
Volume 1 in The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library is, naturally, filled with firsts: Barks’s first comic book story (starring Pluto), the first Donald Duck story created for an American comic book (and also the first to see Donald and his nephews go on a treasure hunt), Barks’s first Donald 10-pager, Barks’s first truly solo Donald Duck story, and Barks’s first solo longer-form Donald Duck adventure (“The Mummy’s Ring”). With more than 200 pages of story and art, each meticulously restored and newly colored, and the insightful story notes by an international panel of Barks experts, this long-awaited collection of stories makes clear what generations of Disney fans have always known: Carl Barks's work as The Good Duck Artist is some of the greatest American cartooning in the history of the medium.

Full-color illustrations throughout

Genres: Comics, Humor, Graphic Novels, Childrens, Adventure

242 pages, ebook

First published August 26, 2025

About the author

Carl Barks was an American cartoonist, author, and painter. He is best known for his work in Disney comic books, as the writer and artist of the first Donald Duck stories and as the creator of Scrooge McDuck. He worked anonymously until late in his career; fans dubbed him "The Duck Man" and "The Good Duck Artist". In 1987, Barks was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
Barks worked for the Disney Studio and Western Publishing where he created Duckburg and many of its inhabitants, such as Scrooge McDuck (1947), Gladstone Gander (1948), the Beagle Boys (1951), The Junior Woodchucks (1951), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Cornelius Coot (1952), Flintheart Glomgold (1956), John D. Rockerduck (1961) and Magica De Spell (1961).
He has been named by animation historian Leonard Maltin as "the most popular and widely read artist-writer in the world". Will Eisner called him "the Hans Christian Andersen of comic books." Beginning especially in the 1980s, Barks' artistic contributions would be a primary source for animated adaptations such as DuckTales and its 2017 remake.

Reviews

[Hal Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are ways in which these early stories are clunky, but “Pirate Gold” (and to a lesser extent “Pluto Saves the Ship”) offer a fascinating glance of what could have been, a peep at the comic book form before it ossified. Here, over a half century before comics got “decompressed,” the storyboard origins of “Pirate Gold” ensure long, silent, slapstick sequences in which the “closure” between panels is minute. One moment Black Pete raises a knife above Donald; the next moment (i.e. panel) he swings as Donald falls (off a mast); a third panel catches Donald in midair.

Ensuing decades would push storytelling the opposite direction, with Superman blasting through the time barrier or rounding up a gang of crooks between panels (more or less the way the medium started out, in books like Obadiah Oldbuck). But it didn’t have to be that way. And briefly, in the early 1940s, it wasn’t.

[Sarah B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a nice change of pace from reading the usual books. And it seems it's been forever since I read something with Donald Duck. The comics in here seem to date back to World War II, from 1942 and 1943. Or that's what the dates on some of them say. One even has Donald trying to plant a victory garden.

So while I had fun reading this and it certainly was entertaining, it wasn't exactly a five star read. Some of the stories in here seemed a tad too long or something, like the pirate one with Black Pete and Yellow Beak. I don't know if I have forgotten how Disney writes these stories or what, but lots of the events in there just seemed so totally obvious? I felt the same way about the Egyptian mummy story too.. I just wasn't interested in the plot. I think with the mummy story I had difficulty believing in the plot events. In fact now that I think about it, I had that problem with the pirate story too! And that is a problem. I remember thinking (with the pirate story) how could that stuff still be sitting there all that time, especially that dead tree?

The other stories didn't ask me to believe in details. They were just Donald doing stupid stuff and reacting to situations. So I actually enjoyed them more.

I did like the rather long one that started Pluto. That was a war story too where two dogs are guarding the new Navy ship. I was actually considering if this one was my favorite but then I think about the other rather funny ones in here: Donald fighting with a shark on the beach to impress a lady duck and another one where Donald places traps to catch a fox. Of course the nephews are in all of these.

Two more in this volume include a horse ride out into the desert where Donald gets hopelessly lost and then there's one about a rabbit's foot bringing good or bad luck.

The longest stories in here are the pirate story (Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold) and the mummy story (Donald Duck and The Mummy's Ring) and the Pluto comic (Pluto Saves the Ship).

There are some black and white small strips at the back. Otherwise the book is in full color.

I read the whole book in less than two hours.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is the first of the Carl Barks duck story collections, and it starts out pretty strong - a little rough around the edges but all the pieces in place.

[carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Canavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

✭✭✭