The hunt for the anonymous cartoonist who transformed pop culture

Pop quiz. Who is the most popular American to ever work in the medium of comic books? It's not Stan Lee or Jack Kirby. It's not Todd McFarlane or Jim Lee. It's an artist most people couldn't even name. That's because this man, arguably the most influential comic artists in American history, was forced to remain anonymous by the Disney Corporation. His name deserves to be known. This is his story. Let's begin in an unusual place. In 1946, at a YMCA in Osaka, Japan, where a young Japanese medical

student was practicing piano. An American soldier heard him playing and came in to listen. After the student finished, the soldier responded by singing an opera. Due to their shared love of music The two became friends. The medical student was an amateur artist and offered to draw a portrait of the American soldier. As a thank you for that portrait, the soldier brought the medical student a stack of American comics. That stack of comics changed his life. He would later say of the soldier, “My fr

iendship with him might have been short, but it became the reason I decided to become a manga artist.” And that young man's name was Osamu Tezuka. If that name sounds familiar, it's because Tezuka is regularly referred to as the God of Manga and is the single largest and most influential individual in the creation of manga as we know it today. But what matters for this story is what was in that stack of American comics that inspired Tezuka to change the course of history. For a long time, no one

seemed to know or care what he had been reading. But thanks to the diligent work of comics scholar Ryan Holmberg, we actually have a good idea. In 2012, Holmberg gained access to the Tezuka’s American comic collection and published a list of what he found, as well as closely studying Tezuka’s early work for references to American comics. So what was it that inspired Tezuka? He famously never had much interest in superhero comics or even American crime or horror comics. No, the comics that held

the largest spot in his collection were Disney Comics, mainly those starring Donald Duck. And Tezuka wasn't alone in being enamored and inspired by the Donald Duck Comics. Around the world, people in the 1940 and 1950s had noticed their astoundingly high quality, clearly all being created by the hand of a single, brilliant artist. Only that brilliant artist was never credited. So dedicated fans around the world made up their own names; the good artist, the good duck artist, or simply the duck ma

n. Now, hold on, before you start thinking I'm some weird Disney adult, let me explain why this all matters. Because sometimes it feels like comic history gets rewritten a little bit. While superhero comics dominate the American comic market today, it's easy to forget that that wasn't always the case. In the 1940s and fifties, funny animal books were both common and extremely popular, and none were more popular than Disney Comics, especially the Donald Duck Comics drawn by the Duck Man. The seri

es that his stories appeared in was not only the best selling comic, but the second best selling periodical in the country, outselling every single newspaper behind only Reader's Digest. In the early 1950s, the Duck man was selling 3 million comics every single month, and yet no one knew his name. Fans, of course, had tried to find out his name, but any requests sent to the publisher were either denied or unanswered. You see, Disney was intent on keeping alive the myth that Walt Disney himself p

ersonally drew the comics. That's not a joke. Other artists regularly signed Walt’s signature to their own work. And while many kids really believed that myth, reality was just about the opposite. Some artists would later claim that Walt didn't even read the comic books. But after more than a decade of speculation, the Duck Man's fans were determined to find out his identity. One of those fans was named Malcolm Willits, and Willits had a plan to break through Disney's stonewall and finally get t

he real name of the duck man. But hold on a second before we get into Willits and his plan, we need to talk about why this matters. Why did anyone then or why should we today even care about who draws the Donald Duck comic? Let me ask you another question. Are comics art? Because this, I believe, is the question at the heart of the hunt for The Duck Man. Because how can an artist who doesn't get credit for their work be considered a true artist? Whose work is printed on low quality newsprint, wh

ose original drawings are destroyed, whose work isn't collected in books, whose subjects are characters created and owned by a giant corporation? That sounds like disposable mass media, not art. But The Duck Man's fans believed his work was important, and they knew that if nothing was known about him, written about him, discovered about him, his memory would be lost to time, as the only printed copies of his work turned yellow and ended up in landfills. So this begs another question: why did so

many people feel so strongly about these Duck comics? Well, here's the thing. The Duck Man wasn't only fabulously popular. He was also really, really good at making comics. This is technically a comic channel, so let's actually look at these comics, because they might not be exactly what you're expecting. Maybe you're expecting the early Disney short films where Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse would find themselves in a comic situation and then a series of visual gags would expand from that situatio

n and wrap up a few minutes later. But the Duck Comics were actually, at their best, rip roaring, edge-of-your-seat globetrotting comic adventures. They feel less like Steamboat Willie and more like Indiana Jones or Star Wars. Or should I say Indiana Jones and Star Wars feel like the Duck Comics? Because both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg grew up reading and are vocal fans of The Duck Man. This famous sequence from Raiders of the Lost Ark is a direct homage to the Duck Comics. And unlike the

Disney cartoons, the Duck Comics are filled with a cast of complex characters. The Duck man gives Donald, Huey, Dewey and Louie more defined personalities. He creates Duckburg and fills it with new characters. Most famously, Scrooge McDuck. and Duckburg is more than just a background. It's a place so brimming with characters and details that it feels real and lived in, like The Simpsons. Springfield. Or should I say Springfield feels like Ductburg. That's right. Matt Groening is another vocal f

an of the Duck Man. The Duck Comics are also genuinely funny. Despite the sense of adventure, they never avoid a good gag. And the gags work. The Duck Man uses funny animals to produce sharp commentary on society and our shared human existence. In that way, there are a lot like the works of very different cartoonist Robert Crumb, who would also use-- Okay. You probably see where this is going. Yes. R. Crumb, the genius of perverse and boundary pushing underground comics, has cited the Duck Man a

s one of his main influences, calling him one of the rare cartoonists to combine great art with great storytelling. So finally, let's talk about that great storytelling. There's a reason I started this video with Tezuka, because if there's anywhere today I can see the Duck Man's influence, it's in manga. Tezuka would become an avid fan of the Duck Man, putting Donald Duck in his own comics and traveling to America to pay great sums for copies of the Duck Man's work. And while Tezuka took what Th

e Duck Man began and pushed it into the stratosphere, it's hard not to see The Duck Man's large eyed characters, expressive faces, dynamic, rubbery body language, and his contrasting use of detail all alive in Tezuka's work as well as in the manga industry he helped give birth to. Even when I open manga for much later, like Dragon Ball or One Piece by artists who, to my knowledge, have never read a Donald Duck comic, I see the Duck man's influence in those half page scene settings, splashes, the

big eyes, expressive faces, the sense of motion and pacing. But here's the best thing about The Duck Man. None of this matters. He does everything so well that when you read one of his comics, all of that technique just disappears as you are drawn into the story. It's the kind of thing you see in movies by Pixar or Ghibli or Spielberg or like in Nintendo games where the level of technical craft is so high that it just disappears completely. And what you're left with is a pure, magical experienc

e. The search for The Duck Man mattered because people needed to know: How did he do this? What were his methods of working? Who influenced him? If they didn't find him, all of that knowledge would be lost to history. So Malcolm Willits made his plan. In 1950, like so many others, he had written a letter to the publisher asking for the name of The Duck Man. And like all of those others, he had been ignored. So a few years later, when he was running a fanzine called Destiny, he wrote a long, flat

tering article about Walt Disney to use as “bait,” as he called it. He mailed that glowing article to Disney's corporate offices, along with a request to interview The Duck Man in a future issue of his fanzine. Well, someone at Disney fell for Willits’ ploy, because a few weeks later he received this letter. For the first time in history, someone outside the industry knew the name of The Duck Man. His name was Carl Barks, and he lived in a small desert town outside of Los Angeles. But Willits wa

s too busy, or perhaps too nervous, to write to The Duck Man himself. But a few years later, Willits shared the name of The Duck Man with fellow fan John Spicer, who in 1960 finally wrote the world’s first fan letter to Carl Barks. For a long time, he got no response, but finally a letter came back. And what that letter said was quite surprising. Barks opens his letter admitting that he hadn't written back right away because he was worried that this fan letter was a prank. Despite writing the Do

nald Duck comic for 17 years, the publisher had only ever forwarded him three letters, two of which were complaints. This is absolutely insane. Not only did the outside world not know the name of The Duck Man, but The Duck Man himself, the most popular comic artist in the world, had no idea how popular and beloved his work was. So after doing some research, Barks had decided that maybe Spicer's letter was genuine, and he cautiously decided to respond. But Carl Barks was nearly 60 years old. He w

as approaching the end of his career, admitting in his letter, If in the future you notice a dropping off in quality of my stories. Don't be surprised. The mind is not a bottomless well of new ideas, and mine is about pumped dry. It was just a glimmer of who this genius might be. Of his attitude towards his own work. But now his name was out there and began to be traded among fans. Soon, Willits would go to California to conduct the world's first interview with Barks, to finally get the story be

hind this brilliant man. What would he be like? An introverted genius like George Herriman? A blustery showman like Stan Lee? A tortured artist like Wally Wood? Well, unfortunately, the world would have to wait to find out, because after Willits conducted his interview, the Disney company refused to allow him to publish it. Why? Well, for the same old reason, kids need to believe that Disney wrote the stories himself. Willits and his colleagues would be forced to sit on that interview until 1968

, after Walt had died. And sadly, in the intervening years, Barks had retired, retired from drawing comics before most of the world even knew of his existence. But finally, the world would know his name, would learn the story of one of the most important figures in 20th century American art. His life was about to change dramatically. But before we get into that, let's finally meet Carl Barks. And I realized that in order to sell cartoons, you have to have an idea behind them, a little bit of wri

ting to go along with them. So I began developing the art of writing a little humor to go with my cartoons. The Barks Willits interviewed wasn't a recluse, a tortured genius, a showboat or anything wild. In fact, Barks seems to defy all popular notions of what a genius artist should be like. He was a kindly older man in his early sixties with a slow, deliberate way of talking with a country twang and a gentle sense of humor. He described himself as a pseudo cowboy, and that certainly wasn't far

off. See, Barks had always wanted to be a cartoonist, but life seemed to constantly have other plans for him. He was born about as far from the world of art as possible on a ranch in Oregon in 1901. The cartooning bolt of lightning hit him early, in the one room schoolhouse he attended. A boy in his class had taken a correspondence course on how to draw cartoons, and Barks was obsessed. Leaning over his desk and watching him draw his little caricatures, Barks wanted to do the same thing, but he

wasn't from a family that valued that kind of thing. His father was a homesteader and a man of few words. The only book he read was the Bible. Barks and his brother were expected to help out on the farm. And although Barks loved school and learning, life at home often kept him away. But Barks was obsessed with drawing. He wanted to be a cartoonist, not a farmer. Finally, after a few years, his father relented and allowed him to enroll in a correspondence course on cartooning. But luck, again, wa

s against Barks. Because soon after, his mother passed away. Barks was forced not only to drop the cartooning course, but drop out of school entirely so he could go to work and help support his family. The boy who loved learning would never get any formal education past the eighth grade. But that correspondence course, short as it was, gave him the foundation to study the comic strips he read. Every Sunday, he would pore over the San Francisco Examiner, studying and imitating the styles of the g

reat early cartoonists like Winsor McCay, Roy Crane and E.C. Segar. And so, over the next two years, he saved up his money, and at 17 years old, told his father he was going to San Francisco to try and get a job in cartooning. He made it to San Francisco, but the papers were stacked with great cartoonists, and with many men returning from World War One, no one had interest in an untrained kid. Like it does for so many people, life forced him to put his dream aside and focus on his day to day exi

stence. He worked whatever jobs he could find from a print shop to logging. He got married and had kids. But in the evenings, when he had time, he still worked away at his cartoons and would mail them off to papers and magazines. And then at 28 years old, 11 years after he left home, he finally sold his first cartoon. It was to a small humor magazine called the Calgary Eyeopener. Finally, things were starting to happen for him. But yet again, his personal life had other plans. His wife had no in

terest in his cartooning career. She wanted to spend their evening seeing friends, living life, but Barks wanted to spend that time at home at his drawing board. Barks wouldn't give up on his dream now that it was in sight and ended up separating from his wife and ultimately losing touch with his daughters. He quit his job to focus on selling his cartoons mainly to the Eye-opener, but his finances were deteriorating. It got so bad that he tried to sell his overcoat, but it was too warm and no on

e would buy it. Finally, he ended up pawning his dishware so he could have enough money to eat and to send a telegram to the Eye Opener asking for more money. But then he got a break. See, the Eye Opener was so poorly run that the drunken editor printed a totally unfinished issue and no one even noticed. The management needed stability and they saw that Barks was, in his own words, a hard working son of a gun. So they sent him a telegram offering him a full time job. Once again, he left his old

life behind to start a new chapter in his pursuit to become a cartoonist. Now, The Eye Opener was not the San Francisco Examiner. It was filled with racy images, cheap gags, often about booze or women, and a lot of racist caricatures that I won't be showing here. This might not have been the prestigious cartooning career that Barks had envisioned. But finally, at 32 years old, he was a full time cartoonist, and that might have been enough for him. But then he saw something that changed his life.

An article about how the Walt Disney Studio, whose short films had become incredibly popular over the past few years, was struggling to find animators as it began production on its first feature film. So Barks put a bunch of his best Eye Opener cartoons in an envelope and mailed it off to Disney. And right away, a letter came back. Disney offered him a job, but deciding to take that job wouldn't be easy. When The Eye Opener found out about Disney, they offered him a sizable raise, double what D

isney would pay him. And the job at Disney was hardly a guarantee of success. See, Disney at this time was home to the best commercial artists in the world. Barks might have had a job offer, but that offer was more of a trial. Disney had a strict training regimen and anyone who couldn't keep pace was promptly cut. He could easily end up far from home and unemployed. But Barks thought it was worth the risk. He knew there was no future at The Eye Opener, but he just might have a future at Disney.

So once again, he upended his life and pursued his dreams. Unfortunately, Barks found Disney difficult almost right away. He was 34, a decade older than everyone else in his class of animators. The pace of work was intense, with art classes at night and drawing assignments all day. Like all beginning artists, he was assigned to work on the in-betweens. This work was difficult and repetitive, and Barks was having a tough time keeping up with his younger classmates. It seemed coming up to Disney h

ad been a mistake. Barks was sure he was going to be fired any day. But Disney also had a policy of asking the whole company to contribute to each film they worked on, and just like he had when he was trying to get into cartooning, Barks sent in submissions. Lots of submissions. Finally, he sent in this gag to the team working on a new Donald Duck short. Walt himself loved it and paid barks $50 for it. But more importantly, Walt realized that Barks’ skill was in writing, not drawing, and moved h

im into the story unit for the Donald Duck shorts. Barks’ career at Disney was. His time at Disney gives us another keen insight into his personality. While his peers at Disney would characterize him as a hillbilly who was interested in no music that wasn't Roy Rogers, no books besides Westerns, by night, Barks was studying, learning from grammar books or history books, trying to give himself the education that he'd sorely missed out on in school. And that work paid off over the next seven years

. He worked on 35 Donald Duck Short Films, some of the most popular films Disney produced. During this time, it seemed like Barks had finally found a job that suited him until things started to change. As World War Two began, budgets were being cut across the studio and animators assigned to work on projects in support of the war. The animators had gone on strike and the atmosphere at the studio was changing. They had moved to Burbank and the air quality of the new studio bothered Barks’ sensiti

ve sinuses. He was thinking about quitting, but then, almost as an afterthought, came the assignment that changed his life. See, at this time in 1942, the comic book craze was in full swing. One of the bigger comic publishers Western sought to capitalize on this popularity by licensing Disney characters for a line of their own comic books. At first, these Disney comic books were largely reprints of older Disney newspaper strips. But by 1942, they were running out of newspaper strips to reprint.

So they asked the studio, Do you have anyone who could draw an original comic? This led them to the Donald Duck Department. So Carl Barks and fellow duck man Jack Hannah adapted an unfinished Mickey Mouse film into the 64 page. Donald Duck finds Pirate Gold. Carl Barks was 42 years old. He had no idea the importance of that comic. In fact, a few months later, he quit Disney to raise chickens in the desert where the air was better for his sinuses. But as luck would have it, the comic publishers n

eeded more comics, so they tracked down Barks and sent him another script to draw. He ended up changing and reworking it so much they asked if he would do another and just write that one himself. And so he did. And so in 1942, for $12.50 a page, he began on his 24 year journey drawing Donald Duck Comics. And here, finally, we can begin to answer some of our questions from earlier to start to understand what made Barks so successful. Barks was working in an era when American comics were moving to

ward assembly line production and stricter editorial oversight. But Barks’ situation couldn't have been more different. He had quickly gained the trust of his publisher and was allowed to create everything entirely himself, with only his wife's occasional help on inking or lettering. He didn't submit scripts for approval, and he rarely got notes back on his drawing. He received the page count, produced his story, and turned it in. But beyond it, having no editorial direction, he also had no insi

ght into the reception his work had. Barks later speculated that this was because the publisher worried that if he realized how popular he was, he might ask for a raise. All he knew is that if he kept getting hired, he must be doing okay. But Barks turned that into a superpower. He would say that he was, in fact, GLAD he wasn't receiving fan mail because he might have written stories to please the letter writers rather than to please himself. I would argue that despite his massive popularity, de

spite being employed by a huge corporation, despite often referring to himself as a hack, Barks’ working style resembled more that of an independent fine artist than it did someone working in mass entertainment. And while this independent approach was half of his formula, the other half was the incredibly high standard of quality he held himself to. His publisher, his fellow artists, everyone around him seemed to believe that comic books were just a passing craze. The other artists in the indust

ry generally wanted to do the minimum effort to get a story by their editor and to turn out as many pages as fast as possible. But Barks wanted to make his story worth the readers dime, and so he would work his stories back and forth, often rereading and rewriting scripts 10 or 20 times. He would use his grammar books to find ways to cut down the dialog to be as short and punchy as possible, even counting the syllables in each line to make sure they read smoothly, like lines of prose poetry. We

also know from his time at Disney that Barks wasn't a natural when it came to illustration. He claims that he did as much a erasing as he did drawing, penciling each page in erasing it and penciling it again until he got it just right. And then he would paste those pages on a big board like they did at Disney, and he wouldn't hesitate to rework them or throw them away entirely if he felt they weren't perfect. Throwing away inked, completed work just because he thought he could be a little better

, a little funnier. This is a guy who's getting paid by the page. He got no fans or sales reports confirming that this work was even worth it. What was motivating Barks to work so hard? Well, Barks had spent many years at hard, laborious jobs and had always valued hard work. That much is clear. He also seemed to be grateful to have a job in cartooning, just as he had always dreamed of as a child. But beyond that, Barks respected his readers, their intelligence and their taste, even if they were

mostly kids. And he respected the medium of comics. In interviews, years before the term graphic novel even existed, Barks dreamed that someday comics might be printed in hardcover books on high quality paper and be considered fine literature. But that was not the world. Barks lived in. And sadly, Barks may have had another more personal reason for throwing himself into his work. You see, while the ducks traveled around the globe, Barks, by his own admission, had never been anywhere. When asked

about it, he would point to his stack of National Geographic's and say, That's my travels right there. But those fantastic journeys he sent the ducks on were an escape, not just for his readers, but a chance for Barks to escape his difficult home life. During this time, his second wife had become a serious alcoholic, prone to violent fits in which she would smash things around the house and destroy his artwork. But the worse things got hit home, the more his imagination seemed to come to life. B

arks would produce some of his greatest stories at the motel where he would go to escape her violent rages. They would finally divorce and Barks would move out, bringing only his clothes, his art supplies, and his collection of National Geographic magazines. But it was during this difficult period of his divorce that he created the Beagle Boys, Uncle Scrooge's money bin, and Gyro Gearloose. Barks soon remarried a fellow artist named Gare, who had been assisting him with inking. And finally, it s

eemed that his personal life was in order. But sadly, the difficulties were just ramping up in his professional life. Despite Barks enthusiasm for his work, he did eventually come up against the forces of working at a big company. While many of Barks greatest stories were the longer standalone Scrooge or Donald Adventures, the publisher began moving away from them, limiting Barks mainly to the ten page stories which curtailed his imagination. They also switched to lower quality paper. For some a

rtists, this might not be a big deal, but for Barks, this was devastating. As we know, Barks would spend a lot of time erasing and reworking his pencils. But on the cheap paper, his pencils would cut grooves. So even after erasing, his pencil would fall back in the same groove. Over and over, it became impossible for him to rework his drawings to perfection as he previously had. And those big, beautiful splashes he would spend days on? The publisher realized that they could cut them out and repl

ace them with ads. Barks decided to stop drawing them entirely. He was feeling defeated. While hiswork from this time still has merit, He would admit that he stopped putting as much effort into it. Eventually, Barks began to feel his stories weren't worth the dime anymore. He was 61 years old, and while he had been paid for his work, he had no money left for retirement. He was ready to quit to figure out a new career because he had no idea how popular he was. That is, until a letter from a fan a

rrived and changed his life. After the publication of Willits’ interview in 1968, which was accompanied by a short biography of Barks by Michael Barrier, his name began to grow and gain recognition in fan circles. But while Barks gained praise, he was still struggling financially. He ends his interview with Willits by admitting that he's currently painting a local high school for $300, an amount that to an old retired hack looks as big as Uncle Scrooge is money bin. But Barks’ fans worked tirele

ssly to get him the recognition he deserved, to elevate his reputation to something resembling a true artist. And then in 1971, a fan requested an oil painting of the ducks. Barks asked for Disney's permission, and they agreed. Once people saw it, a craze began immediately. Barks had a waiting list years long for oil paintings of the ducks. Over time, the prices of these pieces would grow to well over six figures. I do find it ironic that after all this talk about comics art, that the man who wo

rked so hard to elevate the status of comics would finally become wealthy in his seventies selling oil paintings to fine art collectors. But Barks’ story doesn't end there. In the seventies, he finally began to be invited to comic conventions and to take his place among the comic book celebrities. If I hadn’t stayed home, I would never have written the stories. But I stayed home and worked. And now I get all this praise and thank yous from people. And I see that I didn't waste my time. And thank

s to my friends at Ayakuweb who helped me out by researching Barks in Japanese sources, we know that at Comic-Con 1980, Barks actually got to meet arguably his most influential fan, Osamu Tezuka. The two had become friends, with Barks gifting Tezuka an original drawing and Tezuka sending Barks this adorable holiday card. And then in the 1980s, the man who 30 years earlier dreamed the comics might someday be printed hardbound on nice paper saw his own work given that very treatment. Today, his wo

rk is available in these absolutely beautiful editions from Fantagraphics, just as they deserve to be. But to end this story at 94 years old, Barks finally got to travel overseas. That small boy who dreamed of being a cartoonist, who didn't draw his first comic book until he was 40 years old, was now, at 94 years old, welcomed by rapturous crowds in distant countries, and sat in numerous interviews where foreign reporters unironically compared him to William Shakespeare. Like another Shakespeare

, your stories will continue to live, be read and enjoyed by generations to come. Do you ever think about that? Well, I often hope that that will happen. Yeah, it is a pleasant thing to sort of get a swelled head once in a while and think that I have written something that is undying literature and will go into infinity. But I have been disappointed in so many of such pipe dreams that I, I don't push it very far. Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this episode, you can really help ou

t by liking, subscribing or leaving a comment below, and subscribe to Ayakuweb as well. Barks’ story is a reminder of the powerful positive impact fandoms can have. Both Barks’ own story and this video would not have been possible without fans like Spicer, Willits, Autl, Barrier, Don and Maggie Thompson. And so, so many others, including artists like Don Rosa and Daan Jippes, who've continued his legacy. If you want to get deeper into Barks, his story, I really recommend Donald Ault's collection

of interviews with him as well as Michael Barrier's Funnybooks, both of which I relied on heavily making this video. Thank you guys so much. (Unitelligable)