Carl Barks

Carl Barks "The Good Duck Artist"

Unlike many other artists working (all anonymously) for the Disney company, Barks did not mindlessly churn out condescending, forgettable stories of a childish nature during his 24-year stint on the Disney Ducks. He consistently produced delightful top-quality material, both in his scripts and in his art as well as in his dialogues, which echoed with deep human resonance.

As the creator of 'Scrooge McDuck', Carl Barks did more than any other comic book artist to widen the popularity of Donald Duck.

Among his many fans were George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg, who were inspired by the adventure comic books.

His stories were constantly reproduced in Disney comics across the globe, after his retirement in 1966.Barks is also in all probability, what with Disney being the world's largest publisher of children's magazines and books.

Barks' approach to creating comics was to never write down to his audience. In the panel above, from 1944's Frozen Gold, 'penicillin' and 'feted' could easily have been 'medicine' and 'honoured,' but Barks didn't feel the need for condescension.

It was Bill Spicer who first discovered that Barks was the "good duck artist" and sent him his first fan letter. He was so used to anonymity, he thought it was a joke. Western had never told him that he regularly got fan mail and that there had even been a reader rebellion in 1950 when his work load forced him to skip several issues of his regular Comics and Stories strips. He never knew he was famous. Anonymous, but famous none the less.

After he was "discovered" in the early 60's, he began to reminisce and socialize with fans. He was awarded the first Shazam in the 'Best Humor Writer in Comic Books' category in 1971. He recreated many of his most famous comic covers in oil for fans in the 1970's until Disney revoked their permission in 1976. He attended a comic convention in Boston in 1976 and was the subject of a major retrospective in the 1977 Comic Book Price Guide.

Barks was an enthusiastic user of Esterbrook pens. He particularly used a Nº 356 model to ink and letter his Donald Duck comic-book pages. 

"... I used a #356 Esterbrook art and drafting pen which could do everything from thin 'fadeaways' to broad accented curve sweeps on foreground circles such as the ducks' forms. The trick of breaking in a new pen, I discovered, is to soak it for several minutes in the ink bottle. Then wipe off the ink and the pen's varnish. For some weird reason most new pens then start out flexible and free-flowing ..."

I grew up watching his cartoons and the art style and the sleek movements and the way the characters acted made them feel like they were alive and that someone made them with a heart and soul in mind.

Source links:
bio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Barks#Professional_artist
barks.htm