Had a Barks post ready yesterday, and I had it on the blog for a few minutes. Then I found the answer to the question I posted.
And thus I deleted it.
But hey, I'll post the same image today.
But the text that goes with it is new. :)
What puzzled me was this payment slip from November 1963.
As you can see there's a payment for a 20 page story named "Voyage of Wending Wraith" and a cover to go with it.
The only 20-pager from 1963 is "The Thrifthy Spendthrift". So what was this? An unknown Barks story???
Well, I soon found out that the ship in "Cap'n Blight's Mystery Ship" was called "Wending Wraith". Someone must have typed 20 instead of 10. "Mystery" solved...
The only reason for posting this again is that we now know the original title of the story. (Or is this in the new Barks books?) It would have fit neatly in the title panel. Unlike the Cap'n Blight title that looks somewhat squeezed in.
Update February 5:
I found Carl Barks original plot in my drawers. And here it is for your enjoyment. A glimpse of how the master worked and what an idéa looked at the first rough stage. Before it was polished and fleshed out.
"Don + the kids get shanghaied aboard a mystery ship bound for some part of the far ocean. Aboard is a cargo of explosives, guns, etc for a revolution somewhere.
Perhaps a curious explosive device that is set to sink the ship if any navy ships appear. The captain and crew leave via lifeboats.
Don + kids left aboard to be blown up.
Don has eaten so much he can't get in lifeboat. No lifeboat will support him."
I don't see why it would have been hard to fit in that whole title with the word Captain. They could have just made the text slightly smaller.
ReplyDeleteMike: You got a point there. :)
ReplyDeleteCap'n Blight's Mystery Ship is in my opinion a more selling title than The Voyage of Wending Wraith. On a similar note, I think I read somewhere that Chase Craig came up with the title "The Swamp of No Return" while Barks' original title was something like "Help, I am someone else". Maybe the editor's input wasn't all bad sometimes, even for a genius like Barks.
ReplyDelete