Did Scrooge McDuck artist Carl Barks create Twitter?

Compelling new evidence suggests he did …

Late last year I was spending time on one of my two primary procrastination tools* to avoid working on university assignments. I was er … well … I was reading comic books.

As I worked my way through the complete works of Carl Barks — the duck artist, as he’s affectionately known — I stumbled upon something extraordinary.

Carl Barks — creator of Scrooge McDuck, Gyro Gearloose, and the Beagle Boys (among others) — also created … Twitter.

Well, perhaps not ‘created’ Twitter. But he certainly foretold it, as evidenced by the following comic panels.

Of course it’s not the first time Barks has been a source of inspiration, as evidenced by this Wiki entry about floating boats with ping pong balls.

And here’s more evidence of Barks’ genius in this article from cracked.com.

So … am I right? Is this how Twitter was conceived? See if you recognise the Twitter concept from the following pages of ‘The Many Faces of Magica de Spell’, written by Carl Barks in 1964.

In his 1964 Scrooge McDuck comic ‘The Many Faces of Magica de Spell’ (1964), Carl Barks shows how ‘Twitter’s works.

In his 1964 Scrooge McDuck comic ‘The Many Faces of Magica de Spell’ (1964), Carl Barks shows the results of using ‘Twitter’.

* FWIW, my other go-to procrastination tool is 1970s kung fu movies. Comic books and kung fu movies — there’s probably a theme going on there.

This post originally appeared on alcontent.com