Carl Barks' 'Somewhere Beyond Nowhere' finally published.

This week, the Dutch Donald Duck magazine finally featured 'Somewhere beyond Nowhere', the last twelve page comic plotted by none other then Carl Barks himself in 1996!

The story was originally called 'Somewhere in Nowhere', with a script by John Lustig and art/inks done by Pat Block. Intended as a ten-pager it was turned into a longer story (two times 14 pages, so 28 in total) which was first published in Italian in November 2000. Artwork for this reworked version (with a slightly different title) was of course done by Dutch Disney artist Daan Jippes (left), based on a new script by Lustig, which keeps closer to Barks' original outline.

This is the first time ever this story features in the Dutch DD Weekly magazine, the original version was only published in the so-called 'Winterbook' in 2002, a special compilation of stories and little puzzles, published yearly during the holiday season in The Netherlands and Belgium since 1980.
Jippes has already recreated many of the later Duck stories Barks wrote, as he's really the only one who's perfected his way of drawing to emulate Barks own comic style.

The Jippes Version (2008).

Jippes' version, created in 2008 for Danish publisher Egmont was first published in Finland (Aku Ankka 11) in March last year, followed by Denmark (Anders And & Co. 15) and Sweden (Kalle Anka & Co. 15) in April. (Swedish translation was done by Reine Mårtensson, Danish version by Thomas Harder and the Dutch version by Jos Beekman.) The story was published in the USA last february by Boom Kids in 'Donald Duck' issue 363!

Check out this weeks great cover:

Barks final Duck Story.

The original story for 'Somewhere in Nowhere' was plotted by Barks in 1996 on his way to Orlando, Florida. (Barks was at the age of 95 then!)  John Lustig was hired as a freelancer by the Carl Barks Studio to write up the script, while Pat Block created the artwork, which he finished in April 1997.

Carl Barks (left) and John Lustig (middle) with Pat Block (right) in 1997 at Barks' birthday celebration at Disney World. Block shows his finished artwork for 'Somewhere in Nowhere'.
According to Block, Daan Jippes was already involved back then. Bill Grandey, Barks' manager had first asked Jippes to do the artwork and layout as well as flesh out the story, which grew from an initial tenpager into a more voluminous story, but he never got to make the final artwork. Having other commitments (apparently working on Disney's 'Tarzan' feature animation) Block was called in to do the job, which he gladly took upon him.

Although the story was finished in 1997, It wasn't published until Disney Italia aquired it and published it in a numbered, limited hardcover book in November 2000 (after Barks had passed away on August 25 at the age of nearly 100 years).

Beneath: cover of the orginal 28 page version, as published in the US in 2005 (Gemstone's Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge no.1). It features original concept art by Barks with final artwork done by Pat Block with colors by Gemstone's assistant editor Sue Kolberg:

Carl Barks' original plot for the story, as set up by himself back then:

Here's the original concept art sketch for the US cover from the master himself, and some preliminary artwork for page 13B (by Block) with notes. Underneath that the resulting colored page:

John Lustig wrote a lot of Disney stories and cooperated on  many of them with American Disney artist William van Horn. Beside scripts for Disney, he also writes for his own comic 'Last Kiss', based on artwork from old romance comics. Make sure to check out his official Last Kiss homepage or the entry on his blog on the rewrite with Daan here (with some Black/White original artwork too!)

Disney artist Pat Block continues to draw comics and is married to Egmont script writer Shelly Block. They always work together on their Disney stories. Check out her twitter page.