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Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.92: Carl Barks
No.92: Carl Barks
One of fandom and the industry’s most beloved and respected artists, Barks’s extensive career began as a cartoonist at Disney in the mid-30s. After a couple of years, Barks, who was a gag-writer and illustrator on the cartoon production line at the company, started work on the character that he would become practically synonymous with – Donald Duck. Words: Andrew Colman…
After leaving the studio in 1942, he found work at Western Publishing where he drew issues of anthology title Four Color Comics and then Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, the comic that he would make his own, along with Uncle Scrooge and others. After several years his style developed away from the roughs he had been used to at Disney Studios, becoming a virtuoso artist that had complete creative control over the tenor and ensemble of characters that he himself brought to the franchise, such as the super-rich Scrooge McDuck, the absurdly lucky and somewhat smug Gladstone Gander, crackpot inventor Gyro Gearloose, and perennial convicts on the run, the hapless Beagle Boys. All the more remarkable considering how little Disney were concerned with comics compared to their animated features.
His superb storytelling skills and characterisation were always treasured by fans, who were (due to his never signing his work) unaware of who he was until late in his career. His stories always were thematically strong, appealing to children of all ages, the sense of adventure and fable as compulsive as any other genre.
An inductee at the first-ever Eisner Awards, Carl Barks was always referred to as the Good Duck Artist, although he was to all intents and purposes the Duck Artist, a man whose work was published in many countries across the world, making Donald Duck one of the most globally recognisable. A classic example of a writer/ artist elevating the art form beyond what one would reasonably expect, especially for the time, the medium and his legion of fans have been lucky that he was so dedicated.
AC
Read the first nine entries so far here too
Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.93: Carmine Infantino
Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.94: Alan Davis
Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.96: Syd Shores
Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.97: Bob Fujitani
Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.98: Tim Sale
Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.99: Jim Aparo
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