The Classic Duck
- ️Steve Ortman
The Classic Duck
Stuttgart Rolls Out Carpet for
Carl Barks, the "Duck Man"
June 25, 1994 - Heilbronner Stimme
- Wochenmagazin - by Siegfried Lambert
There are odd things happening in life: There is a failed chicken farmer who gets famous with a duck that he draws on paper and who has to see how others earn big bucks from his ideas. But Carl Barks has overcome any grudge he might have had. He knows that his friends everywhere celebrate him, when they congratulate Donald Duck to his sixtieth birthday.
The community of millions of so-called "Barksists"
are already heralding the autodidact from Oregon for several years. The today
93 year old American made it with his about 500 stories from Duckburgh possible
that Donald, the tragic comic loser, became the world's most famous feathered
animal. If Barks would have gotten a fair share of the commercialization he
would today be able to enjoy a daily bath in his fortune as his feathered
invention Scrooge McDuck But the creative inventor started his cartoon career
with $ 12.50 per page. Even later his salary was, Barks says, "one of the
lowest in the business".
It needed persistent digging by numerous Donald-fans
to find the "Duck-Man" in the sea of Disney drawers who remained anonymous
because of Walt Disney. But every one of the homemade 6371 pages with the
adventures of Donald Fountleroy Duck was clearly visible among the sea of
other comics because of its elegance in drawing, humor and fantasy.
Barks was from 1942 till 1966 chief drawer of
the ducks and is until today unattainable with his ideas. The "Duckists" owe
his him such legendary characters as the wealthy miser Scrooge McDuck, the
ingenious inventor Gyro Gearloose and the slightly simpleminded burglars of
the Beagle Boys Inc.
The most beautiful stories were made when the
Duck father send the Duck family into areas that he only knew from the "National
Geographic": to the Andes in "Lost in the Andes" where Donald meets the Plain
Awfultonians, to Unsteadystan or to the magical land of Tralla La in the
Himalayan mountains. In the German speaking area it was during the fifties
that with the extremely funny translation of Erika Fuchs his comics became
popular in Germany's "Micky Maus".
The intelligentsia of the Donaldists, altogether
scientists of the duck and mostly members of the influential D.O.N.A.L.D.
association ("Deutsche Organistation Nichtkommerzieller Anhänger des
Lauteren Donaldismus" which is translated the German Organization of non-commercial
admirers of Donaldism) mark the development of their hero along a three-stages-theory.
The Original Donaldism: Four buttons on Donald's dress and a long beak. Older
Classicism: Two buttons, eyes much closer together, bigger skull (from 1948
till 1956). Recent Classicism: Upright gait, thinner (1957 till 1966)
Last but not least: The late curiosity around
his work has amazed and touched the paragon of duck artists. For the sixtieth
birthday of his stars - counted from the first film appearance on June 9,
1934 in the animated cartoon "The Wise Little Hen" - the "Duck-Man" will
open his exhibition of 30 oil paintings starring the ducks in Stuttgart, the
home of the German publishing house of the Disney Comics "Ehapa". The exhibition
is in the Württembergischen Kunstverein Stuttgart (Schloßplatz
2) until July 3rd. (1994).