"Carl Barks' Duck" by Peter Schilling Jr.

So many images represent Walt Disney. There’s that mouse, of course, and all those movies. There’s so much music, countless cartoons, and aisles of toys Once there were even comic books. Characters like Donald Duck operated across many different media. We know about the cartoons starring an exasperated duck with a funny voice. But there was also an adventure series with Donald, his nephews, and a miserly Uncle Scrooge in comic books created by cartoonist Carl Barks.Barks, who worked for Disney from 1942 to 1966, is now singled out for his comic-book creations. Other people have depicted Disney’s duck but they don’t have their stories being reprinted in full-color hardbound books from Fantagraphics (the complete Barks series is slated to be completed by 2026).What sets Barks apart are his stories, said Peter Schilling, Jr., whose book, Carl Barks’ Duck, was published in 2014. “It’s the writing as well as the art,” he said.Schilling discovered Barks as a kid when he and his brother were avid comic-book readers. What Schilling discovered was that the comics that Barks created—anonymously under the Walt Disney umbrella—were different from those drawn by other artists. “We read other Donald Duck comics but they weren’t the same. They weren’t from that guy,” he said.That guy—Barks—toiled in anonymity until late in his career but the secret’s out now. “I look at his comics like little movies with Donald Duck as Cary Grant, whose career ran from comedy to serious drama,” said Schilling.Along with his wide-ranging stories and explosive artwork, Barks was a creator of characters. He came up with Uncle Scrooge, Gyro Gearloose, the Woodchuck Manual, and the Beagle Boys, said Schilling.As for a favorite story, Schilling cited several in his book but called “Vacation Time” “a forgotten masterpiece.”“The End of Baseball: A Novel” by Peter Schilling Jr.Another Schilling book, The End of Baseball—A Novel (2008), is a baseball novel of what might have been. Schilling writes a story featuring Bill Veeck, the real-life maverick promoter, who reportedly had a plan in 1944: buy the struggling Philadelphia Athletics franchise and replace the existing squad, a woeful bunch made up of players either too young or too old (World War II had depleted rosters for all teams) and replace them with star players from the Negro leagues.Veeck was a baseball man, through and through. His father, William Sr., was a Chicago sportswriter who became president of the Chicago Cubs. After his father died in 1933, Veeck became treasurer of the Cubs. In 1941, he bought the Milwaukee Brewers, then a Cub minor league property. Veeck raised attendance with promotions by giving away live animals or scheduling morning games with free breakfast for overnight workers. When it came to baseball promotions, no one could hold a candle to Veeck who, in 1951, sent Eddie Gaedel—all 3-foot-7 of him, up to the plate for one of the most famous one-day careers in baseball (he walked). Veeckis is also given credit for growing the ivy that still grows in Wrigley Field and introducing scoreboards that could dispense fireworks. That was reality. In his book, Schilling related that Veeck, back from WWII service where he was injured while serving in the Marines, shared his revolutionary plan to integrate baseball with then-commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. The baseball establishment then then thwarted the deal by having another buyer take over the Philadelphia franchise. Did Veeck actually plan such a move three years before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier? Schilling thinks so and his book imagines the season that might have followed, raising awareness of some of the great players in the Negro leagues as well as anticipating some of the problems such a team would have faced.In real life, Veeck headed a syndicate that bought the Cleveland India