Barks, Karl

The early years

Barks was born in the city of Merill , Oregon . Talking about his childhood, Karl noted that he often had to feel lonely. His farmer parents owned a plot of land about one square mile (2.6 km²). The closest neighbor in the district lived about a kilometer from them, but was more familiar to Barks's parents than friend. The nearest school was three kilometers from the house, and little Karl was forced to cover this distance every day on his way to school.

In 1908, Father Barks, hoping to increase income, moved his family to the city of Midland, Oregon. Here they founded a new livestock farm and began selling their products at a local slaughterhouse. In 1911, they moved to California to Santa Rosa , but in the new place, the Barks were doing rather badly, and due to financial difficulties they had to return to Merrill.

For various reasons , 1916 was a turning point in the life of fifteen-year-old Karl. First, his mother passed away this year. Secondly, he had serious hearing problems (later he will have to purchase a hearing aid, which he will use throughout his life). Thirdly, due to hearing problems, which constantly made a negative contribution to his studies, he had to suspend the learning process.

Job Search

After that, Barks began to work. He often changed his workplace and tried himself in various fields (farmer, turner, lumberjack, printer, etc.), but could not achieve significant success. Subsequently, this period of life will have an impact on his most famous comic book characters - Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck . As Karl Barks himself said, he is familiar with such situations firsthand.

At this time, Barks began to think about how to combine work and his favorite hobby - drawing. He was fond of drawing from early childhood, copying the drawings of his favorite comic book artists. Until his sixteen years, he mainly learned to draw on his own, but still decided to take a few lessons. However, after the first four classes, he had to suspend his studies, as due to his work he had almost no time for such classes. But later he stated that these lessons helped him greatly in perfecting his style.

In December 1918, Barks left his father and left to find work in San Francisco . There he got a job in a small publishing house, trying to sell his drawings to newspapers and other print media, but with little success.

At that time, he met his first wife, Pearl Turner, whom he married in 1921 . They had two daughters - Peggy ( 1923 ) and Dorothy ( 1924 ).

In 1923, Barks returned to Merrill, where he again worked as a farmer for some time. Soon, he managed to sell several of his drawings to the magazine Judge , and later - to get a job as an editor in the men's magazine Calgary-Eye-Opener . At the same time, he continued to sell his graphic works to third-party publications.

In 1930, Barks divorced his wife and soon moved to Minneapolis , where Calgary-Eye-Opener was based . There he met Clara Balken, who in 1938 became his second wife.

Work and Creativity

In November 1935, he learned that Walt Disney was looking for new artists for his studio. Barks decided to try his luck. He was approved for testing, which soon entailed a move to Los Angeles . Karl became one of two interns hired. His initial salary was $ 20 a week. He began his work at Disney Studios in 1935 - a year after the debut of Donald Duck , which took place on June 9, 1934 in the short animated film " The Wise Little Hen ". At first, he served as one of the assistant animators, but in 1937 he was transferred to the scripting department.

The growing military tension in the world negatively affected the work of the studio, and in 1942, Barks was forced to leave work. Shortly before leaving, he worked as a comic book artist, creating about half of the illustrations for the comic strip “ Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold ” (“ Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold ”), released in October 1942. This story was the first original comic book about Donald Duck published in the American comic book magazine. However, this was not his first work on comics, as earlier in the same year he worked on the script for Pluto Saves the Ship . After leaving the Disney studio, Barks went to California , where he intended to organize his own poultry farm.

He soon got a job at Western Publishing, where he began working directly on comics about Donald Duck. In 1943, his ten-page story, The Victory Garden, was released, which was the first of the approximately five hundred works of Barks released for Western Publishing that he worked on over the next three decades. The main characters of his comics - Donald and his nephews (Huey, Dewey and Louis, also known as Billy, Willie and Dilly) - he surrounded with new eccentric characters. Among them: Scrooge McDuck, the richest drake in the world; Gladstone Gander, Donald's incredibly happy cousin; brothers Gavs , unlucky criminals; Flinthart Glomgold, Scrooge's main competitor; the sorceress Magica de Hypnosis and others.

Creative success negatively affected his family life, and in 1951, Barks divorced Clara. In 1954, he married for the third time. His new wife was the artist Margaret Williams, whom he met at the exhibition of fine art.

Later years

In 1966, Barks retired, but nevertheless continued to write comics for Western Publishing for some time. Soon he began to paint, which he began to sell at local exhibitions. On them, he depicted humorous scenes from life on the farm, as well as portraits of Native Americans. In 1975, one of the first Barks paintings was sold at auction for $ 2,500. Subsequently, prices and demand for his work were constantly growing, and in 1976 his painting “Fourth of July in Duckburg” was sold at a record price of $ 6,400. In 1981, Barks took part in the production of a limited edition comic book about Scrooge McDuck. From 1993 to 1998 he managed the Karl Barks Studio founded by him, which organized in 1994 a tour of 11 European countries to promote his own work.

In the period from 1994 to 1998, ten museums in Europe held an exhibition-retrospective of the works of Barks, which was visited by more than 400,000 people ^[5] .

Karl Barks died on August 25, 2000 in his new home in Grant Pass, before he lived a few months before a century.

• The American journal The Comics Journal has included comics about Donald Duck in the list of hundreds of the best English comics of the XX century, where he took 6th place. Barks comics about Uncle Scrooge on this list took 20th place ^[6] .
• Karl Barks created one of the comics about Andy Panda , published in 1943 (New Funnies 76).
• In honor of Karl Barks was named one of the asteroids - 2730 Barks ^[7] .
• The Donald Duck: Goin 'Quackers video game was dedicated to Karl Barks.

• Donald Duck
• Scrooge McDuck

• Karl Barks Biography on Lambiek Comiclopedia
• Carl Barks.dk A site dedicated to Karl Barks (English) (Danish)
• FanSite