Did you grow up watching DuckTales? If you’re a little older, you probably grew up reading the adventures of Donald Duck and family in comic books. Either way, the man most responsible for those childhood memories isn’t Walt Disney. No, Donald Ducks iconic nephews and stingy Uncle Scrooge were the creations of “The Good Ducks Artist”, Carl Barks!
Starting At Disney
“In Uncle Walt’s Collectory” by Carl Barks, #92/100.
Thirty-four-year-old cartoonist Carl Barks was hired by Walt Disney Studios in 1935. He was an “In-Betweener”, one of the guys responsible for drawing the frames of animation that really create the illusion of movement. His real talent, however, proved to be devising gags. He was moved to the story team in 1937, just about the time a new series of shorts was in the works.
Those shorts were to star Donald Duck. Donald had been around for a few years at that point, but as always as a foil or Mickey Mouse and/or Goofy. Now, Walt wanted to make Donald a star in his own right. Together with writing partner Jack Hannah, Barks would go on to write dozens of Donald Ducks cartoons. One of their early hits was “Donald’s Nephews”, which introduced the characters of Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
From Cartoons to Comics
Barks would quit working for Walt Disney Studios in 1942, though cartoons he worked on kept coming out until 1944. The best job for a cartoonist outside animation was in the rapidly growing field of comic books. And Barks had a leg up on a lot of other artists: he could draw Disney characters just like they appeared in the movies! This quickly landed him a job with Western Publishing, writing and drawing for their Donald Duck comics.
Not that any readers knew it. See, the comic book industry had inherited the practice of ghost artists from newspaper comics. Bob Kane, for example, farmed out his Batman stories to ghost artists for about twenty years. Western Publishing did something similar with all their Disney stories, listing them all as “Presented by Walt Disney” without crediting the actual artists. Therefore, Barks went uncredited on all the Donald Duck comic stories he wrote. One his most famous stories is 1947’s “Christmas on Bear Mountain”, which saw Donald take his nephews to visit their miserly great uncle at his isolated mountain chalet. That was the first appearance of one Scrooge McDuck!
“The Good Ducks Artist”
The Carl Barks Library of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck, Vol. 1
Barks would continue to fill Donald Duck’s world with colorful characters. From evil witch Magica De Spell to hapless inventor Gyro Gearloose to the bumbling bandit Beagle Boys, Barks had a unique gift among Disney comic writers for memorable creations. Man of his creations were beloved Disney characters for decades before they appeared in animation!
And while all the Walt Disney Comics & Stories artists were anonymous, the nascent comic book fan community was able to tell them apart. Barks’ work was the most beloved by fans and they gave him a nickname that reflected that: The Good Ducks Artist. That’s how fans would know him throughout the 1950s, including in correspondence with the publisher. By 1960, some enterprising fans were able to find out his identity and he found out just how big a following he had.
Retiring On Top
Carl Barks would retire in 1966 after more than thirty years working on Donald Duck. He planned to supplement his pension with some oil paintings of his ducks characters, under license from Disney. He opened his commissions in 1971, and quickly had more requests than he could ever handle. His paintings would sell for thousands of dollars when auctioned off at comic conventions. Unlike many anonymous Golden Age creators, he got to see just how beloved his work was.
In the 1980s, his work became even more accessible to fans. First, Another Rainbow began releasing beautiful hardcover slipcase collections of his comic stories as The Carl Barks Library (many of which come to auction this weekend). Second, he began working with various companies to put out limited edition screen prints of his Disney Ducks oil paintings (a collection which is now available in our online gallery). Carl Barks died at the age of 99 in the year 2000, having known the love of his fans and been recognized for his contributions to the Disney canon for over thirty years.
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