Carl Barks

Carl Barks was an American cartoonist and author born in Merrill, Oregon. After working a series of manual labor jobs and studying cartooning through correspondence courses, he joined Walt Disney Studios in 1935 as an in-betweener and story artist.

Barks contributed to several Donald Duck animated shorts before leaving Disney in 1942. He then began writing and drawing Donald Duck comic book stories for Western Publishing, a run that would last three decades and produce roughly 500 stories. During this period he created Scrooge McDuck, the Beagle Boys, Gyro Gearloose, Magica De Spell, Flintheart Glomgold, and the fictional city of Duckburg.

Because Disney comics were published without creator credits, readers knew him only as "The Good Duck Artist" until his identity became public late in his career. Barks retired from drawing comics in 1966 but continued writing scripts into the early 1970s. He was among the first three inductees into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1987.