Carl Barks: comedy from adversity
I began noticing Carl Barks the same way everybody else did, recognizing him as the ‘Good Duck artist’ because his stories and his drawings were so good, quite different from the work of other artists. Eventually, I learned about the man behind the stories and proceeded methodically to read every story he had ever drawn. Not only his stories did not suffer when read multiple times, but they also seemed not to age with time.
Born on March 27, 1901, in Merrill, Oregon, uncredited for most of his career, Carl Barks is the most widely-read storyteller of the 20th century. With millions of copies sold, Carl Barks’ Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic books were the most successful publications in America.
Working almost for a quarter of the century as writer and artist of the Donald Duck comic book stories, Barks gave additional depth to the character of Donald Duck, introducing at the same time a cast of new characters: Daisy Duck, Donald’s girlfriend, his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie, his miser uncle Scrooge McDuck and the Beagle Boys who wanted to steal his fortune, Gladstone Gander, Donald’s lucky cousin, Gyro Gearloose the inventor, Neighbor Jones, and Magica de Spell an Italian witch that wanted to steal Scrooge’s prized first-earned dime, among others.
When I began learning details about Carl Barks’s life what I suspected all along proved true: Donald Duck’s misfortunes were Barks’s own! One of Carl Barks’s funniest stories and one of his favorites, ‘Omelet’ (Walt Disney Comics & Stories No 146, 1952), showcasing the adventures of Donald Duck trying to build a business selling eggs from a farm, seems to be inspired by his own misadventures as a chicken farmer.
Barks’s memories of his childhood were grim — every day he had to walk about 3 kilometers to go to school. In school because of his hearing problems he had difficulties understanding the teachers and returning home he had to work on the farm the rest of the day. In a 1994 interview, Barks said “I didn’t smile until I was 15, I was a real sourpuss”. Barks tried an infinite number of jobs to survive — after working at his father’s farm, he tried his hand as a lumberman, picking grapes in Southern California, as a carpenter, and working on the railroad among others.
His personal life was also distressful. It was only after two failed marriages that he married in 1954 Hawaiian painter Margaret Wynnfred Williams (who signed her paintings as Gare) that he found the peaceful way of life he was craving for.
What helped Barks overcome the harsh circumstances he lived through, was his capacity to view his life with a strong sense of humor. In his stories, it is this sarcastic attitude that comes across, along with the will to persevere, as he had always done in his life. Among the characters he used in his stories, you could say that Donald Duck represented the endless series of jobs he held and his troubles with bosses, and Scrooge McDuck the tenacity and the will to look forward that Barks had all his life. Finally, Gladstone was the one who had it easy no matter what he did — what an irony coming from Barks who had to fight every inch of his life!
The highlights of his stories are the misadventures of Donald Duck with an endless series of jobs and irate bosses, and the stories where Scrooge McDuck drags Donald and his nephews on adventures all over the world. Barks did not travel until his 90s, but the stories of Scrooge, Donald, and his nephews in exotic places exude an intense aroma of travel adventure.
Perhaps the best interpretation of Donald Duck’s character in Carl Barks’ stories was given by Peter Schilling, author of the book ‘Carl Barks’ Duck: Average American’ (2015), in an interview he gave to Comics Journal (February 27, 2015). He said: “I liken him to actors in Hollywood’s golden age — Cary Grant — in that he’s a personality that wears a ton of different hats, and part of our enjoyment is in watching that personality be thrust into different situations.”
Carl Barks developed into one of the most successful storytellers of the 20th century because he managed to turn the difficult times he lived through into inspiration for his work, inspiring in his turn millions of readers worldwide. Many generations of young comic readers were brought up with his comics and were influenced by them, including film directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg who included the boulder-rigged trap at the beginning of Indiana Jone’s ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (from Barks’ ‘The Seven Cities of Cibola’) as a homage to him.
