Carl Barks

Carl Barks in 1994

Carl Barks (March 27, 1901 – August 25, 2000) was a famous cartoonist. He was the inventor of Scrooge McDuck, the Beagle Boys, Gyro Gearloose and many other Walt Disney characters. He was often called the most important artist in Disney comics.

Carl Barks was born on March 27, 1901, near Merrill, Oregon, as part of a farming family. At the age of 10, he became interested in art for the first time. When he was 15, his mother died, and he began to help his father on the family's farm. In 1935, he took a contract with Disney and started as one of the studio's artists. Some months later, he become a part of Ted Sears "Story Department" at the Disney studios, where he wrote more than two dozen stories for short films with Donald Duck and other characters until 1942.

In 1942 he went to "Western Publishing". There he started drawing comics with Donald Duck and later with other characters - most of them he created by himself. He held this job until 1966, when he retired.

By the early 1990s, Carl Barks had become a comic legend. In 1994, at the age of 93, for the first time in his long life, he traveled to Europe and visited around a dozen countries. Some months earlier, his third wife, Margaret, called Garé, had died at the age of 75.

In 1999, leukemia began to destroy Barks' body. The Duck Man died, aged 99, on August 25, 2000, at his home in Grants Pass, Oregon.