A US legend – Carl Barks

Carl Barks, one of the most popular biographers of comic character Donald Duck, spiritual father of Scrooge McDuck, Gyro Gearloose, Gladstone Gander and Magica de Spell, as well as co-founder and architect of Duckburg, was born on March 27, 1901 near Merrill in the US state of Oregon. His parents were already over 40 at the time. Even though Carl had an older brother named Clyde, he grew up almost like a single child on his parents' ranch. The Barks family moved so often that little Carl had a difficult time at school and wasn't exactly a model student. After he graduated from grade school at age 15, he couldn't attend high school since the next one was too far away and beginning hearing problems made it difficult for him to understand his teachers.

But since Carl had always liked to draw and therefore imitated the drawers of the comic stone age such as Winsor McCay and Frederick Opper, he signed up for a correspondence course in drawing. Due to the First World War he couldn't finish the course, but it was a solid cornerstone for his later career, which, as he said, was the basis of his entire concept of his dramatic and humorist presentation. In 1918, Barks moved to San Francisco to work as an illustrator for a newspaper. Instead, he became a trainee in a print shop, then returned to his parents' ranch, married for the first time, worked as a woodcutter, had a number of other jobs, but finally he returned to drawing. His ambition to draw for humorous papers even ruined his first marriage.

From 1928 Barks worked as a freelancer for humorous magazines. From 1931 to 1935 he finally got a permanent employment with the humorous magazine Calgary Eye Opener in Minneapolis. Apart from that he also drew for the nobler humorous magazine Judge. By the way, his first contribution for the Judge was set at the Klondike in Alaska - in a place that later would become important for the character of Scrooge McDuck.
In 1935 Barks heard that jobs were available at the Disney Studios. Since he had learned that they were planning to produce Snow White, he made a few drawings for that and send them, and in 1935 he became a Disney employee, first as an in-between for several weeks. He then worked at the Disney Studios as a story boarder for seven years, which means it was his job to think up stories, draw single pictures of them and put them together as large storyboards. Alone or together with others, Barks was responsible for 36 Donald Duck movies during his time in the Studios.

While Barks was still working in the Disney animation studios, the first Donald Duck comic book was created together with Jack Hannah in 1942, with stories that were re-prints from small comic strips out of newspapers. This book was called "Donald Duck finds Pirate Gold," a funny 64-pages adventure. It is an adaptation of a screenplay for a feature-length Donald Duck movie that has never been made, because Disney decided to only make feature films of fairy-tales and well-known stories. Shortly after that book was made, Barks left the Disney Studios. On the one hand, because the studio was more and more being used for war propaganda and he wouldn't have been able to quit for years to come, on the other hand for health reasons. The bad air in Los Angeles and the outdated air conditioning at the studio gave Barks a permanent cold.

After Barks now was on his own again and married for the second time, he moved to San Jacinto 75 miles from Los Angeles where he ran a chicken farm. However, the publishers of Barks' and Hannah's first Duck comic hadn't been idle in the meantime. They had like the book so much - probably not least of all because it as selling so well - that they asked Barks whether he would be interested in drawing more duck stories for the new monthly Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. Barks was interested. And he edited the manuscripts he received so well that they suggested he should not only draw the stories, but also invent and write them.

From April 1943 to September 1965, Barks, with very few breaks, wrote all 10-page Duck stories in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. His highest salary was $45,50 per page with text and pictures. For these stories, Barks invented Donald's uncle Scrooge McDuck for the December issue of 1947, a spiritual relative of the Scrooge from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The surname McDuck represents the Scottish thriftiness. He also invented Donald's lucky and pesky cousin Gladstone Gander, also the inventor Gyro Gearloose, the Beagle Boys Inc., the Junior Woodchucks and their Junior Woodchucks Guidebook, as well as Magica de Spell. Carl Barks often sent the Ducks on trips around the world. He researched decor and landscapes in order to put his anthropomorphic characters in a realistic environment. But he also used topics from the news, film and literature or adapted material from Donald Duck movies. He also made use of his own experiences and his many jobs. Just think of his time on the chicken farm, that he could use in the story of the town of Omelet, where Donald has a chicken farm and experiences one catastrophe after the next.

From 1954, Barks got help with the more and more extensive work from his third wife, Garé Barks, who wrote most of the texts. Carl Barks created 6,371 pages of comics for the Disney comic books, most of them about the Duck family. Apart from that he also created several hundreds of pages about the adventures of a bear family for a different animation movie company. In 1968, the last story drawn (but not written) by him was published in the US, because Barks retired. He continued to write stories about Huey, Dewey and Louie and the Junior Woodchucks until 1973, and occasionally even made layouts for them, but after that he completely focused on painting. Carl Barks, for a long time known as the "Good Duck Artist" by the readers of his stories, was discovered by fans in the US in 1960.

In Germany, Barks was only discovered in 1971, when the first public mention of him and the first appreciation of his work appeared in "Comics - Anatomie eines Massenmediums" (Engl: Comics - anatomy of a mass medium" by Wolfgang J. Fuchs and Reinhold C. Reitberger. So while the public only gradually noticed the existence of Carl Barks and many people started praising the drawing and storytelling genius, fans in the US had already influenced his further career. They had discovered that the retired man was making oil paintings - mostly sceneries - so they asked him to also make oil paintings of the Ducks. So between 1971 and 1976 - authorized by the Disney Studios - Barks made 122 oil paintings of the Duck family. This authorization was revoked because a fan made unauthorized copies of them. Afterwatrds, Barks returned to painting other things again, while his classic comics were reissued in a extravagant form and accompanied by critical and biographical information.

The Carl Barks Library, a complete edition of all of Barks' Disney stories was the first complete works edition of a comic author that could be compared to a complete works edition of other writers and thinkers. It was originally published as a 30-volume book edition and then was made available by Ehapa publishing in a newly colored album edition. At last Barks was authorized again to make paintings of the Ducks or publish them as prints. That way, a series of limited lithographies was published since 1982. The fourth painting of this second series of paintings was a homage for Donald's 50th birthday in 1984. So until the end of the 80s he made between two and three lithographies after his oil paintings a year.

In 1994 a collection of Barks' paintings went on a tour through Europe, they were displayed in Stuttgart, Germany with great success. Together with the paintings, the widowed Barks went on a tour of Europe as well. Even though he had sent the Ducks all around the world with his drawings, he had never really traveled himself. He received a triumphant welcome in Europe. In Munich, Germany, Barks met Erika Fuchs for the first time, who had been the editor in chief of the German Micky Maus magazine for years and had brilliantly translated his stories into German.

Barks had managed to keep his youthful mind even in his old age and even with 90 plus years remembered every detail of his stories and always stayed correct and modest enough not to claim ideas that hadn't been his own (such as Donald's license plate). Until he got ill Barks had continued working on further projects around his drawings, paintings and screen prints and on making sculptural objects of his paintings. The inhabitants of Duckburg lose one of their best-known writers with Carl Barks. For fans, friends and readers, Barks was a godfather who shaped their understanding of humor with his comic stories. But with his funny picture-stories he will remain a source of laughter and happiness for future generations.

Barks was an exceptional drawer and writer on the comic sector with his absolute feeling for jokes and timing, dramatic art and humor. His drawings are small graphic masterpieces, his stories full of comical ideas. The dialogs combine precision and great wordplays. As a painter as well, Barks tried to achieve perfection. If you look at his paintings closely, you see that he had a perfect grasp of picture composition.

The Disney Studios honored Carl Barks for his achievements. On October 22, 1991, during a small ceremony, he left imprints of his name and his hands in the cement outside the Disney Studios. He once said he didn't think about it much, but every time I read about the great Barks and the stuff he writes, I think they are writing about someone else.

That is not so. Carl Barks' modesty is well and good, but still - or maybe because of it - he was one of the most popular and best storytellers of the 20th century. His comics are individual creations. He once said about his own works that if he'd had one talent, it was that he could see whether something was funny, no matter whether he had written it or someone else. He used this talent in an excellent way.

He didn't live to celebrate his 100th birthday, on August 25, 2000, he died at the proud age of 99. The laughter he gave his readers will remain and with it the memory of him.

A small homage to Carl Barks with some photos can be found on the homepage of a fan club on www.carl-barks.net