The Disney Artist Who Developed Donald Duck & Remained Nameless for Years, Regardless of Being “the Most Well-liked and Broadly Learn Artist-Author within the World”

Don­ald Duck first appeared in Dis­ney’s 1934 automobile­toon The Smart Lit­tle Hen (beneath). In his sub­se­quent roles, he fast­ly devel­oped into that still-famil­iar fig­ure the New York­er as soon as described as “per­son­i­fied irri­tabil­i­ty.” However it could take him anoth­er decade or so to change into greater than an incom­pe­tent, quick-to-anger foil for Mick­ey Mouse. It will additionally take the thoughts and hand of Carl Barks, a for­mer Dis­ney artist who’d retreat­ed to the sting of the Cal­i­for­nia desert to boost chick­ens and draw just a few com­ic books for further mon­ey. That osten­si­ble aspect gig final­ed thir­ty years, dur­ing which Barks wrote and drew about 500 Don­ald Duck sto­ries, construct­ing a whole world round him now regard­ed as one of many nice­est works of Amer­i­can com­ic artwork.

At the same time as Barks’ comics grew to become enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar, he labored on them in complete anonymi­ty; followers referred to as him “the Good Duck Artist” (which now appears extra of a com­males­tary on the artis­tic stan­dards of Dis­ney comics on the time) or “the Duck Man.” As comics Youtu­ber matttt places it in the video above, “within the ear­ly 9­teen-fifties, the Duck Man was promote­ing three mil­lion comics each sin­gle month, and but nobody knew his identify,” as a result of “Dis­ney was intent on hold­ing alive the parable that Walt Dis­ney him­self per­son­al­ly drew the comics.” Regardless of that, it was clear to many learn­ers, younger and outdated, that one par­tic­u­lar Don­ald Duck artist was professional­duc­ing mate­r­i­al of excep­tion­al ambi­tion and “astound­ing­ly excessive qual­i­ty.” It will take the espe­cial­ly ded­i­cat­ed amongst them years and years of repeat­ed makes an attempt earlier than discover­ing out his identify.

“The duck comics have been, at their greatest, rip-roar­ing, edge-of-your-seat, globe-trot­ting com­ic adven­tures,” says matttt. “They really feel much less like Steam­boat Willie and extra like Indi­ana Jones or Star Wars — or, ought to I say, Indi­ana Jones and Star Wars really feel just like the duck comics, as a result of each George Lucas and Steven Spiel­berg grew up learn­ing, and are vocal followers of, the Duck Man.” Oth­er avowed Barks enthu­si­asts embrace R. Crumb, Matt Groen­ing, and even Osamu Tezu­ka, the “God of Man­ga” him­self. “Even after I open man­ga from a lot lat­er, like Drag­on Ball or One Piece, by artists who, to my knowl­edge, have nev­er learn a Don­ald Duck com­ic, I see the Duck Man’s influ­ence: in these half-page scene-set­ting splash­es, the massive eyes, expres­sive faces, the sense of movement and pac­ing.”

Barks solely got here into the pub­lic eye after his actu­al retire­ment, and in his lat­er many years discovered him­self fêt­ed world wide. Gen­er­a­tions of learn­ers had grown up famil­iar with not simply his sophis­ti­cat­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of Don­ald Duck and his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, but additionally town of Duck­burg he cre­at­ed and the char­ac­ters with whom he pop­u­lat­ed it: Gyro Gear­free, the Bea­gle Boys, Magazine­i­ca DeSpell, and most dis­tin­guished of all, Don­ald’s impos­si­bly rich uncle Scrooge McDuck. Like most mil­len­ni­als, I first encoun­tered all of them by way of Duck­Tales, the Dis­ney TV collection with a Bark­sian pen­chant for exot­ic trav­els and iron­ic finish­ings; this pre­pared me to appre­ci­ate Barks’ orig­i­nal sto­ries as Glad­stone Comics sub­se­quent­ly reprint­ed them within the nineties. And like all for­mer younger Barks followers, I’ve solely come to appre­ci­ate them extra in grownup­hood.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Walt Dis­ney Automobile­toons Are Made: 1939 Doc­u­males­tary Offers an Inside Look

Don­ald Duck’s Unhealthy Nazi Dream and 4 Oth­er Dis­ney Professional­pa­gan­da Automobile­toons from World Battle II

An Ear­ly Ver­sion of Mick­ey Mouse Enters the Pub­lic Area on Jan­u­ary 1, 2024

Watch 13 Exper­i­males­tal Quick Movies by Tezu­ka Osamu, the Walt Dis­ney of Japan

George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, Praised because the Nice­est Com­ic Strip of All Time, Will get Dig­i­tized as Ear­ly Set up­ments Enter the Pub­lic Area

The Comi­clo­pe­dia: An On-line Archive of 14,000 Com­ic Artists, From Stan Lee and Jack Kir­by, to Mœbius and Hergé

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the e-book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video collection The Metropolis in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­e-book.