This was powerful stuff for a young person and these readings helped fuel my interest in pursuing other outside and more formal research into these areas. There was a certain attraction to real-life people that intrigued me as well. For example, superheroes such as Superman, the Metal Men, the X-Men and the Flash were fine, of course, but I was drawn to heroes who were "super" without any special "superpowers" because of their other personal attributes such as Batman and especially the Green Arrow. In fact, I recall securing my first archery set and practicing relentlessly in the hopes that I too could be as good as the Green Arrow someday, and although this would never happen, I did become a proficient archer in the process. Throughout my childhood and well into early adolescence, I continued to spend an inordinate amount of my allowance on comic books and expanded my interests to other characters and art styles, such as Will Eisner's use of innovative vantage points such as top-down views to illustrate his famous "The Spirit" series, but I always found myself drawn back to Donald Duck, his nephews, Uncle Scrooge and the eccentric inventor, Gyro Gearloose, whose zany inventions always seem to go awry.

Although I eventually lost most of my interest in comic books upon reaching late adolescence because of other more pressing interests, of late I have found myself returning to my comic book collection and rereading some of my old favorites from the prolific...

Some casual research helped me understand why I liked these comic books in particular so much. It turns out that Barks wrote and drew all of the Uncle Scrooge and Gyro Gearloose as well as many of the Donald Duck comic books single-handedly, and was responsible for literally thousands of pages of comic books that I treasure among my collection today. Indeed, these early issues have been reprinted time and again by various publishing houses in the United States and Europe, and it is little wonder they continue to attract new fans today.
In the final analysis, it may have been worth the sacrifice of a big toenail to help me come to learn and love the comic book medium, at least in the form it was in when I was first introduced to it. Although there have been a number of efforts by other artists and writers to continue these series in recent years, most of these appear to lack the robust qualities that characterized Barks' work and they are mostly disappointing efforts that have a "let's wrap this up and get paid" quality to them. There have also been some true perversions of the comic book medium by others who have used it to produce pornographic works and this is just sad because it may prevent many parents from introducing their young children to the wonderful world that is contained in some of the better comics, especially Donald Duck and the fabulous wealthy but perpetually miserly Uncle Scrooge and his gigantic money bin. Thanks, Dad.