Carl Barks (1901-2000) Creator of Uncle Scrooge

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/2000..._barks_dc.html The Great Duck Man Passes On LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Cartoonist Carl Barks, who drew Donald Duck comic books for three decades, turning the quacking, cranky waterfowl into an unlikely, universally loved ''Everyman,'' died on Friday at age 99 at his home in southern Oregon, the Walt Disney Co. said. As an artist, Barks was expert at creating ``poultry in motion'' and invented the character ``Scrooge McDuck,'' who went from the pages of the Walt Disney Comics & Stories to becoming a full-fledged film cartoon character on his own -- the world's funniest miser. Barks, whose work went unnoticed for years with many thinking that Walt Disney himself drew Donald Duck comics[Disney could barely draw a passable stick figure], developed a world-wide following for his vividly colored works. By the early 1940s, Barks had left Disney and gone to Western Publishing, which produced Walt Disney comic books and there he gave the famous duck a career-prolonging personality transplant. ``I get credit for practically raising Donald Duck,'' Barks told the Baltimore Sun in a 1996 interview. ``He was just a noisy, quarrelsome brat in the movies. When I started doing the comics in 1943, I couldn't do enough stories with him like that. So I changed Donald's character. I put him in a role where he had to act intelligently and speak well enough to put his thoughts across. He's a lot like a lot of us, though, wanting to speak his mind.'' He liked to say also that he had turned Donald into an ''Everyman,'' although one that quacks. Barks also created Scrooge McDuck, with his Gold Bin stuffed with gold and jewels. ``He's a stingy old millionaire miser but people love him because they see that he has as many troubles as people who don't have money,'' Barks told the Sun. Barks created ``Ducksburg,'' the town where Donald and his crew lived and he used photographs from the National Geographic to inspire the backgrounds for the stories he drew when Donald and his nephews -- Huey, Dewey and Louie -- would go on an adventure. In the more than two decades that he drew the monthly 10-page Donald Duck segment for Walt Disney Comics & Stories, he developed such other characters as Donald's super-lucky cousin Gladstone Gander and the addled inventor Gyro Gearloose. Paid only about $45 a page for his comic book art, Barks did not start to make money until his painting career took off. Disney had given him permission to paint its characters when he retired in 1966, but withdrew its permission in 1976 when fans began to sell photos of his work for $500 apiece. For the next five years, he painted scenes of American history using duck characters while the price of his Donald Duck portraits soared. Finally Disney relented and renewed permission for him to paint its characters and his prices reached into the six figures. ... The Heavens are a little brighter today ;0] __________________ Ahh, this is getting closer to the renots I know. Man that sure is a sad momment for me personally. Ducktales was one of my most favorite cartoons. Hell, I got this Uncle Scrooge comic book that's about an inch thick with tons of cartoons of ducktales. Such a sad day for me like when Charles Schultz passed away and Waterson quit drawing new Calvin & Hobbes. __________________ are there any comics left reading?