Carl Barks

Carl Barks was born on March 27, 1901, and spent nearly a century shaping one of the most beloved corners of American comics before his death on August 25, 2000. Working for Walt Disney Productions and Western Publishing across thousands of issues, he wrote and drew Donald Duck stories while simultaneously building out an entire fictional universe centered on the town of Duckburg. His most enduring co-creation, the miserly billionaire Scrooge McDuck, debuted in 1947 and was followed over the next decade and a half by a remarkable string of supporting characters — Gladstone Gander, the Beagle Boys, the Junior Woodchucks, Gyro Gearloose, Flintheart Glomgold, and Magica De Spell among them.

For most of his career Barks worked without a byline, known to devoted readers only through affectionate nicknames like "The Good Duck Artist" and "The Duck Man." That anonymity made the eventual recognition all the more striking. Animation historian Leonard Maltin called him "the most popular and widely read artist-writer in the world," and Will Eisner compared him to Hans Christian Andersen. His stories became foundational source material for the DuckTales animated series and its 2017 remake. In 1987, Barks was among the first three inductees into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, a fitting capstone for a body of work credited across nearly 2,700 issues spanning titles such as Walt Disney's Comics and Stories and Walt Disney Uncle Scrooge.