thetitbits1942-1966

Of course, Barks never hinted where Duckburg was situated but he did reveal that the town was in the state of Calisota (a contraction of California and Minnesota). Based on 'hints' from his stories, Don Rosa and the Italian Donaldists find that they have got sufficient material to pinpoint Duckburg on a map. The site equals Barks' homelands in Oregon!

Fan Malcolm Willits had discovered Barks' identity in 1957 but he did not actually contact Barks until 1960 because he was in the army at the time.

Garé Barks actually drew one front cover for Western. It happened in WDCS405 and showed Donald riding - well above - a wild horse, and it was her husband who came up with the idea. Later, he made a painting of the idea.

Barks avoided political issues in his comics. Although he had strong opinions himself, he felt kids were not interested in politics.

Barks is one of the very few comic book artists who is read equally by children and adults.

Like Fulldrip Pulpbugle in WDCS188, Barks had severe bouts with hay fever. He claimed his nose would swell up like a red balloon.

When Barks invented Gyro Gearloose he was only supposed to be an occasional character in the stories. Later, when the character became enormously popular, Barks expressed his vexation that he had not drawn him in a simpler way, i.e. without hair, hat, spectacles and waistcoat.

Due to his many allergies Barks never kept pets. He said he liked dogs, though, particularly huskies with their expressive faces. He drew them in several stories, always managing to capture their unique, humorous, husky personality.

In 1960 Barks reached an unprecedented career record as he produced 358 comic pages, 294 manuscripts, 15 front covers, and 4 ideas for same.

In the 1940s Barks drew the cartoon character Droopy after a modelsheet which did not tell the dog's name. He then named his comic book hero Happy Hound.

Barks was one of the very few artists at Disney's who both wrote and drew his own stories. Another one was the Mickey Mouse artist Floyd Gottfredson.

It is well known that Barks modelled Uncle Scrooge partly after Ebeneezer Scrooge in Dickens' Christmas Carol. But he also used Sidney Smith's character Uncle Bim from the Gumps daily strips which premiered in 1917. Furthermore, he - by his own admission - fashioned the duck after himself...

Barks never saw his original comic book drawings again after he delivered them to Western for printing. He always thought that they filed them, but in fact they just threw them away!!!

Barks never had any trouble with the fact that he was unknown to the readers of his Disney stories. He once stated that if his identity had been revealed earlier, he would not have had the necessary time to make stories.

In the beginning of his comic book career Barks had to buy his own drawing paper.

Carl Barks' comics had about 10 million American readers during the 1950s.

Barks only drew Ludwig van Drake once. It happened in a U$54 one-pager.

In the early years of his comic book life Barks was often insecure about his work. Sometimes he looked upon himself as 'a failed chicken farmer'.

In FC0422 The Gilded Man Barks placed his ducks in British Guiana to enable them to meet El Dorado, the legendary figure of a gilded man. However, Barks was mistaken when assuming that the figure - which was said to be the leader of the Chibcha Indians - was from the modern British Guiyana; the figure is supposed to come from Guiyana, an enormous area which originally covered all of the northeast South America from coast to coast.

According to Garé her husband was generally disappointed that he was not allowed to sign his stories. From time to time he would sneak in his signature or other means of identification, but the attempts were always discovered by Western and removed before printing.

The story U$71 King Scrooge the First, which Barks only scripted, is 21 pages long. Still, Barks got paid for 24 pages by mistake.

According to Barks himself, he reached his artistic peak in 1949. It was the year of (among others) Lost in the Andes and Luck of the North.

Barks only produced two works with Mickey Mouse; the comic book story The Riddle of the Red Hat in FC0079 and the front cover for WDCS296.

Most of the stories sprung from a desire to draw a specific locale - a forest, a sea, a cave or whatever. Then Barks evolved a story around the theme.

Barks used to go to the drug stores in an attempt to see who actually bought his comics. But never once did he witness a kid buying one of his creations. They were always choosing Superman or Oswald the Rabbit.

Carl Barks used a well-known technique which is not always recognized by the reader. When drawing his ducks he usually took out a piecut shape from their eyes in the opposite direction of where they were looking. In that way the characters' eyes would look more alive and shining and it was also easier to understand what they were looking at.

In the 1940s Barks only saw comic books as a passing fad of no real value.

In WDCS104 Barks had Donald Duck invent a method to raise a sunken ship by using lots of air-filled Ping-Pong balls. The idea was used in real life when a freighter carrying 6,000 live sheep sank in Kuwait's harbour in 1964. The Danish engineer Karl Kroyer pumped 27 million Ping-Pong balls into the hull of the ship, and it surfaced.

At one time, when Barks was employed by Western, he was asked to draw a variety of characters outside his duck universe. He did it - reluctantly - with his usual skill except for one character, Bugs Bunny. Barks was simply not able to draw the rabbit's facial expressions satisfactorily, and other artists had to redraw them afterwards.

In 1950 Barks drew his story WDCS127 'April Foolers'. On the first panel of the second page there is a book with a cover reading Mein Kampf. This is a book by Adolf Hitler, the initiator of the Second World War. Carl Barks put this book on the trash dump to make a statement about Hitler who belongs in the lowest of places - the trash. This is the only instance where Barks made a direct political statement in his comics.

Generally the comic stories containing Grandma Duck's Farm Friends and Daisy Duck's Diary were only drawn by Barks. He regarded the work as a nice break because it meant easy money, and he did not have to do the writing which was not that well-paid anyway.

Donald Duck's beak changed appearance over the years. Its length depended to a great extent on other people's opinions.

The first time Carl Barks' work as a Disney artist was publicly recognized was in 1955 in a magazine named Fortnight. In the article Charles Beaumont called him 'The Dalai Lama of Scripsters'.

Barks liked drawing front covers because they paid 50 dollars - better than story pages at 34 dollars.

Barks always thought of his ducks as some sort of human beings which in one incident might have caused some confusion for his readers. He later came to think that the Scrooge story Only a Poor Old Man should have been titled Only a Poor Old Duck.

Barks always finished one story before even beginning to think of the next. He could not concentrate on more than one story at one time.

It is common knowledge that Barks recycled some of his ten-pagers. This was done for two reasons; because Barks was pressed for time on deadlines and hadn't sufficient time to dream up new ideas, and because Western in fact encouraged him to do so. They thought that some of the old stories were far too good to bury, and that new kids were growing up all the time, and they would not have any knowledge of the first ones. Obviously, they did not think of collectors!

In U$64 Treasure of Marco Polo Scrooge is attempting to hide in the Duckburgian embassy while in Unsteadystan. Apparently, Barks considered Duckburg to be a city state, because the official building is flying its own flag, a rendering of a duck.

Barks was a smoker for many years, but he managed to quit the habit before his retirement.