Carl Barks

Might have been, not sure what number issue it was, but I vividly remember just an indigenous man murdering dinosaurs at a young age.

I also had some old Carl Barks Scrooge McDucks from my Nana

around the same time.

Well, it's definitely great stuff when you're growing up.

And I'm always thrilled when, you know, there's those absolute classics.

And that's what any of, you know, comparing something great like that to the work of Karl Marx, that's what we aspire to.

It's so aspirational.

So, antigraphics...

yeah.

And Joe, let me just ask you, have you, have you spent much time looking at Carl Barks and how he handled the, the Scrooge books and stuff?

You know, I haven't this, um, My friend, this was a couple weeks ago, maybe, that he mentioned that.

And that was the first time that it really dawned on me.

And if you look at the OG animators, they didn't look like artistes.

They look like guys that would either be working at the docks or they're working at the cartoon factory, right? Karl Barks, the legendary creator of Scrooge McDuck, was a farmer, right? These guys were like blue collar

guys, family sold concrete.

yeah they had yeah they had a hardware store they sold building supplies like these guys were just like normal normal guys and gals but you know that's a whole nother issue walt didn't like the gals drawing stuff but that's a whole nother issue but like they were normal people who just they went to work at the cartoon factory right that that's what it was and now everybody's like i'm an artiste and my feelings and my artwork and it's like And everything's

This story was first published on February 25th of 2024 under the headline Lonely Oregon Boy Grew Up to Be a Comics Legend.

It's part one of a two-part presentation on the story of Oregon native Carl Barks, a.k.a. the Good Duck Artist, or Duckman.

He was the creator of some of the most iconic Donald Duck comics of the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s.

Here we go.

Sometime in April of 1960, a shy, retiring, hard-of-hearing comic book artist named Carl Barks got a letter at his quiet suburban California home.

When he opened it, he found it was a letter from a stranger named John Spicer, and to his astonishment, he found it was a fan letter.

Believe it or not, I have been planning this letter for about four or five years, Spicer wrote.

The company's official position was that Walt Disney was the author of all the comics, no matter who held the actual pen that drew them.

I would give them Calvin and Hobbes.

Uh, and I would give them, um, Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck and the, the nephews stories.

Oh, wait, that's...

How many am I supposed to do? Five? Okay.

Okay.

So we're gonna work our way up.

So they start with, let's have them start with Carl Barks' Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge.

Then do...

know? Yeah.

And, and then a, or a Carl Barks signature, any of those things would be very valuable.

I could see it.

Yeah.