As the creator of 'Scrooge McDuck', Carl
Barks did more than any other comic book artist to widen the popularity
of Donald Duck, bringing in the process a vast array of memorable
supporting characters into the Disney universe, among them Uncle
Scrooge himself, Gladstone Gander, Gyro Gearloose (and his Little
Helper), the Beagle Boys, and the Junior Woodchucks.
Unlike many other artists working (all anonymously) for the Disney
company, Barks did not mindlessly churn out condescending, forgettable
stories of a childish nature during his 24-year stint on the Disney
Ducks. He consistently produced delightful top-quality material, both
in his scripts and in his art as well as in his dialogues, which echoed
with deep human resonance. "I polished and polished on the scripts and
drawings until I had done the best I could in the time available", he
said. In both types of stories -- the 10-page comedies and the longer
adventure stories -- he produced between 1942 and 1966, he managed to
convey the intricacies and subtleties of the full scope of human
emotions (from envy and cynicism and alarm and desperation to joy and
scorn and triumph and smugness) while capturing the essence of exotic
locations from the four corners of the world (from scorching deserts
and primal forests to humid jungles and freezing snow-clad mountains
through the urban setting of Duckburg).
His mastery at this is witnessed to by, among others, Newsweek's homage
to his artistry and by Time's conclusion that "Scrooge and his creator
Carl Barks belong in the great mainstream of American Folklore." Beyond
that is the plain fact that he was known to his readers simply as "the
good artist" (a descriptor necessary during a time when the Disney
company didn't identify any of its cartoonists). His publishers tried
in the early '50s to replace him on the 10-page comedies in Walt
Disney's Comics and Stories so that he could concentrate on the longer
adventure epics in Donald Duck and Uncle $crooge (these were the three
titles that contained the bulk of Barks' output through the years);
they were promptly flooded with a barrage of pleading and irate letters
from readers demanding that "the good artist" be brought back.
Among his many fans were George Lucas, and
Steven Spielberg, who were inspired by
the adventure comic books. One South American adventure in particular
("The Prize of Pizarro", Uncle $crooge nr 26, June-August 1959)
inspired sequences in all three Indiana Jones films (the booby traps
both in the lost temple in the opening pre-credits sequence of
Jäger des verlorenen Schatzes (1981),
and in the final scenes of
Indiana Jones und der letzte Kreuzzug (1989),
as well as the flood through the mines of
Indiana Jones und der Tempel des Todes (1984)).
In an homage printed in Uncle Scrooge: His Life & Times (edited by
Edward Summer and published by
Gary Kurtz), Lucas writes that when
he discovered the McDuck character as a kid, he liked him "so much that
I immediately went out and bought all the Uncle $crooge comics I could
find on the newsstand. My greatest source of enjoyment in Carl Barks'
comics is in the imagination of his stories .... The stories are also
very cinematic .... these comics are a priceless part of our literary
heritage." Indeed, the titles of his adventures (many of which were
inspired by the National Geographic) duly resonate with exoticism and
adventure: "The Mummy's Ring", "Terror of the River", "Mystery of the
Swamp", "Ghost of the Grotto", "Lost in the Andes", "Sheriff of Bullet
Valley", "Trail of the Unicorn", "The Golden Helmet", "The Seven Cities
of Cibola", etc...
His stories were constantly reproduced in Disney comics across the
globe, after his retirement in 1966 (the same year that
Walt Disney, who was born nine months after
Barks, died). And soon his 6,371 comics pages (according to one count)
from some 450 comic books were being reprinted (by then
computer-colored) in impressive coffee-table volumes and hand-sewn
hardback tomes, not just in the United States, but throughout the
western world (Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, etc...).
Certainly the most widely read comic book artist of all time, Barks is
also in all probability, what with Disney being the world's largest
publisher of children's magazines and books (every year over two
billion people around the globe read a Disney book or magazine, the
company claims), the most widely-read author of any type of reading
material of the 20th century.
Born to a homesteading family in Oregon on March 27, 1901, Carl Barks
left school at 15 and spent the next two decades "in grim and demanding
jobs" (to quote
Michael Barrier's "Carl Barks
and the Art of the Comic Book". These included rancher, logger,
railroad repairman and printer. During the Depression, he went on to
become an illustrator for a humor magazine, eventually becoming its
most productive member. He joined the Disney studio in 1935, where he
became a story man on the animated cartoons of a character created a
year earlier (a duck by the name of Donald) and worked with such people
as Harry Reeves,
Chuck Couch,
Jack Hannah,
Homer Brightman and Nick George.
Health problems eventually forced Barks to leave the Burbank studio
during World War II for the dry air of the California desert, where he
made the transition to comic books.
And so, it was after the age of 40, in an era when most people had
little more than a third of their lives in front of them, that Carl
Barks made the fateful jump of his life, the one that would leave his
name an immortal one in the annals of what the French call "le neuvième
art" (the ninth art form). And yet, it would not be until after his
retirement that his name would, slowly but surely, become known to the
mainstream public. It was during the 1960s that persistent fans (among
them his official biographer,
Michael Barrier) finally managed
to identify "the good artist" (also dubbed the Duckman and the comic
book king), become his correspondents, and proceed to make his name
known to the outside world.
Despite having retired (and as his name was slowly becoming famous),
"Unca Carl" did not remain inactive. He turned to painting,
specifically signed oil paintings of his Disney Ducks, paintings that
today easily fetch thousands of dollars and whose prices have
occasionally topped $100,000. Indeed, it is easy to forget that Barks'
retirement years lasted far longer than his comic book career and he
spent many more years before the canvas than he did over the drawing
board. In fact, Barks lived to the ripe old age of 99, and it is
somewhat amazing to realize how vast an amount of time this actually
means. His life spans such an extensive amount of time that his date of
birth is further removed from that of his death than it is to the Lewis
and Clark expedition to explore the untamed wilderness west of the
Mississippi (including Oregon, the region where the Barks family would
eventually settle).
He was sprightly and active until the very last. People half his age
reported that he could remember events they had long forgotten. His
pace was such that during his 1994 trip to Europe (his first outside
North America) to celebrate Donald's 60th birthday, young Disney
handlers and PR staff (imagine yuppies in their 30s) at Paris' Euro
Disneyland had to quicken their pace to keep up with the
then-93-year-old man. His philosophy could be summarized in these
words: "I worked hard at trying to make something as good as I could
possibly make it... I always tried to write a story I wouldn't mind
buying myself."
