Carl Barks had a great many jobs during his lifetime and these led to a corresponding number of written agreements in varying forms from his employers. The most important employee agreement Barks ever made was with Western Publishing for whom he made all his Disney duck stories from 1942 to 1966. From the start Barks served as a freelancer (astonishingly, he only became an official employee with regular, monthly wages of 700 dollars as late as in 1957!). Until then, the two parties mostly functioned on a mutual year-to-year basis as for agreements on work and payment.
This page presents you to the first genuine and legally binding contract Barks signed with his employer back in 1950. It was not a standard contract but set up personally for Barks by Western's legal department, which makes it somewhat dry and difficult to read, but if you go over the many points you will encounter several interesting passages (Barks was given a sort of overdraft credit, he was allowed to work from his home and to govern his own work time, just to name a few things). As a whole the contract was a lucrative charter for Barks, who, from the start, had been Western's most influential and best-liked artist by the readers, which, of course, was the primary reason for Western to honour him by producing this beneficial contract.

Remark 1: Barks' original copy of the contract does not exist anymore. The relatively poor copy you see below was taken from a facsimile (a Fax) sent from Western's legal department to Barks on April 7, 1995, upon his request.
Remark 2: This website carries several pages about Barks' direct association with Western, for instance, The Publisher, The Showings, and The Westerner. Also, you can find very many pages showing Barks' lifetime earnings in great details. See The Early Payments, The Comic Book Payments, and The Painting Payments.