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CASFS - In Memory
Bruce Hamilton Passes:
A Disney Duck Aficionado Succumbs To Illness
by Shane Shellenbarger
On June 18th, 2005 at 3:00 A.M., the comic book industry in general and Disney fine art collectors in specific lost a champion when Bruce Hamilton, age 72, lost his fight against complications from double pneumonia.
Hamilton, the driving force behind Gladstone and Another Rainbow Publishing, is known as a comic book historian, a fandom activist, and along with his partner, Russ Cochran, helped to bring "The Good Duck Artist," Carl Barks, out of the Disney shadow and into the spotlight of fan approbation.
Beginning as a dealer in Golden Age comic books and later expanding into heterogeneous areas such as cartoon cels, movie posters, and fine art lithography and porcelain, Hamilton was known by friends, fans, pros, and collectors for his ambitious plans and out-of-the-box thinking. No project was too big and no detail was too small for Hamilton s attention.
Hamilton's legacy includes his work as a radio DJ at various stations across the United States culminating at KBUZ in Scottsdale, Arizona in the '70's. He collaborated with musicologist, Jerry Osborne, and they developed over a dozen record price guides. While his friendship and influence aided in Robert Overstreet s development of The Comic Book Price Guide, he will be best known for his licensed Disney publishing and collectables.
In 1980, Hamilton and Cochran formed Another Rainbow and Gladstone Publishing, acquiring the Disney publishing license which Western Publishing had dropped. In 1981, they completed their first project, The Fine Art of Walt Disney's Donald Duck, which included all 122 full-color pictures of Carl Barks' Disney oil paintings produced to that date. Originally selling for $150.00, current prices are above $2,000.00, if you can find a seller. That same year, "Sailing the Spanish Main," the first lithograph in a series, appeared. Limited to a single edition of 245 copies, it is the rarest and most valuable of all the Barks lithographs. As of May 2000, its estimated value is $11,000.
Hamilton's greatest legacy would arguably be the Carl Barks Library, ten sets, each with three slip-cased books containing reprints of all the covers and stories Carl Barks did for Disney. Mostly in black and white, with seven in full-color, the library allows modern day fans to examine a piece of comic book history that would otherwise be unavailable.
Hamilton is survived by his wife, Helen, their daughter, Summer, her husband, Richard, and grandsons, Chase, Reese, and Hunter.
http://www.brucehamilton.com/gladstone/AAA%20Steve%20Files/BRUCE%20PASSES.htm