All at Sea, all at once.

When I was a kid in the late 60s and very early 70s, on the rare occasions that I was deemed sick enough to stay home from ~~hell~~ school, my mom would buy comics for me; the bagged kind from the drugstore, three in a bag. (Along with the coverless copies of DC Giants I bought for a nickel during summer vacations at the shore, and my brief fling with grade-Z horror comics in the early 70s, those were the only comics I read growing up.)

I remember the bagged comics being Gold Key/Whitman; they featured a mix of licensed character titles, Casper, Little Lotta, Disney stuff. The stories I liked best were the Junior Woodchucks, especially 'Whale of a Good Deed' with Muddy Dick. But my favorite story of all, the one that stuck with me long after the comics had been relegated to the trash after one too many moves, was 'All at Sea' by Carl Barks. I didn't know it was by Carl Barks at the time, or that it was a reprint of a story that had been published two months before I was born. I loved the art, the story made me laugh, and the whole thing sucked me right into its world.

So it was a nice full-circle bit when 'All at Sea' came up for reprint in Uncle Scrooge Adventures in Color Album #31 in 1997. By that time, after working at Gladstone for ten years, I'd had a chance to become a Barks connoisseur of sorts, and like a lot of people preferred his earlier work. But 'All at Sea' held its charms as one of his best later stories. I assigned many of those late-period stories going in the albums to freelancers for coloring, but kept this one for myself.

Since this is a 17-page outing, I'm putting the whole thing up in one post. Enjoy. ; )

Story and art by Carl Barks, first published in Uncle Scrooge 31, September 1960. Color guides by Susan Daigle-Leach (USA in Color 31, 1997). All images © Disney.