June 30 - Carl Barks

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On this day, in 1966, Carl Barks officially, and reluctantly, retired from drawing Donald Duck comic books. Born on March 27, 1901 in rural Merrill, Oregon, Carl recalled having a somewhat lonely childhood. His parents were farmers and thus always busy, the nearest neighbor was a half mile away (and didn’t have any children) and there were only about ten students total at the little school he attended. He and his brother (they unfortunately didn’t share any common interests) put in long hours themselves on the farm, leaving little time for leisure activities. When Carl was seven, his father moved the family to Midland, Oregon, buying a cattle ranch near the railroad tracks. The mass of cowboys who frequented the Midland Marketplace were the first crows he’d ever seen. After four years of wrangling cattle, the Barks family had made enough to move to Santa Rosa, California trading in the ranch for orchards. The profits weren’t nearly as high, however, and by 1913 the Barks moved back to Merrill. Poor Carl was 12 at that point and still hadn’t finished elementary school with all the moving around. He did manage to finish by 1916, but that would turn out to be a watershed year for Carl: his mother died, his hearing noticeably worsened and, with the nearest high school more than five miles away, he had to end his formal education.

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Carl began a checkered career that could best be described as a jack of all trades, master of none. A partial list of the occupations he unsuccessfully tried to maintain includes mule driver, farmer, woodcutter, printer and cowboy. Later in life, he would attribute many of Donald Duck’s character flaws to this period in his life, namely the drifting from job to job and the inevitable building of frustrations. Ironically, his characters' innate wit would also come from this era. As Carl put it, if you didn’t have a sense of humor about those kinds of situations, you would go insane.

Eventually, after several career failures, Carl began to wonder if he could maybe turn his favorite childhood hobby, drawing, into money. Throughout his childhood, he had tried to imitate the comic strips in newspapers he occasionally found. At one point he tried to take a correspondence course to improve his technique, but his work schedule forced him to quit after just four lessons. In December 1918, he left Oregon for San Francisco. He worked odd jobs while trying to sell his drawings, but met with little success. He returned to Oregon in 1923, worked on his father's farm some more and continued peddling his art. He had some success with the Calgary Eye-Opener, a racy men's magazine based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He soon was hired on as Calgary's editor, moved to the Land of a Thousand Lakes and made a respectable $90 per month, albeit for less than respectable publications. 

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In 1935, Carl heard that the Walt Disney Studio was looking for more animators. He decided to apply, was accepted and moved to Los Angeles for a trial run. He passed the test and began work as a much more respectable inbetweener for a slightly less respectable $20 per week. He also started submitting gag ideas for the studios shorts that were so good he was transferred to the Story Department in 1937. Luckily for Carl, Donald Duck started getting his own shorts that same year instead of always being paired with Mickey or Goofy. Carl quickly became part of the team that was writing exclusively for Disney's resident fowl. His work can be seen in classics like Donald's Nephews (the first appearance of Huey, Dewey and Louie), Mr. Duck Steps Out (Daisy Duck's debut) and The Vanishing Private.

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Part way into World War II, Carl was becoming disillusioned with the working atmosphere at the Walt Disney Studio and with animation in general (he also thought the studio's air conditioning was affecting his asthma). In 1942, he resigned his position intending to go back to farming, specifically raising chickens in the region of San Jacinto, California. In order to make ends meet while getting the farm off the ground, Carl did some moonlighting as a comic book illustrator. His first job was splitting artwork duties with the fellow Disney animator Jack Hannah (not the crazy animal guy) on a special edition 64-page Donald Duck Dell comic, Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold. It was the first original story written for an American Donald comic and the first time Donald and his nephews ever searched for treasure.

Carl then asked Dell's parent company, Western Publishing, if they had any other Donald comics they needed illustrated. They gave him a ten page comic for an upcoming edition. Carl felt the story could use some improvements. Western was so impressed with his revised script that they let him do both the writing and the drawing on most of his Donald comics for the next few decades, not something that many artists were allowed to do. When The Victory Garden was published in April 1943, it was the first of nearly 500 duck stories Carl would produce during his career. That proliferation alone would earn him a place in the Disney Pantheon, but it's the world he created during those stories that really pushes him above everyone else.

When Carl got a hold of the Disney Duck universe, other people had already created Donald, Daisy and his nephews, Huey,  Dewey and Louie. But that was pretty much it. Carl would use those characters and introduce dozens of his own. Just try to imagine Duckburg (which Carl certainly expanded if not outright dreamed up) without the following citizens: Scrooge McDuck, Gyro Gearloose, Gladstone Gander, the Beagle Boys, Magica De Spell, Flintheart Glomgold, Daisy's nieces, April, May and June, The Junior Woodchucks or Cornelius Coot, just to name the highlights. All of them came, and tons more, from Carl's fertile imagination.

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For the first seventeen years of his comic book career, Carl toiled away in anonymity. The only name to appear on the books was Walt Disney's , although sometimes an small identification number would also appear. Avid readers soon learned to recognize Carl's style though, both artistic and story wise, and began referring to him as the Good Duck Artist. In 1960, two different people stumbled on his real identity and quickly let the comic book community know that the Good Duck Artist had a name and it was Carl (although they still mostly referred to him by his nickname). For the next several years, a growing fan base lifted him out of obscurity and into the limelight he so richly deserved. If only mother nature had played along. By 1966, Carl's eyesight was going the way of his hearing (he wore hearing aids all the time) and he could no longer do the fine detail work he was known for. He reluctantly retired from the business, sort of. He would draw one more Daisy Duck comic that was published in 1968 and he would write scripts for several more well into the Seventies. 

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In order to continue making money after leaving the comic book industry, Carl turned to creating oil paintings, mostly of farm life, that he exhibited and sold at local art shows. One day, in 1971, a fan asked if he would do a commission of the Disney Ducks. Carl contacted the company to see if he could get permission to produce some work. Disney surprised him by granting a royalty-free license. Carl was further surprised when word got around that he was taking requests and was inundated with them. By 1974, Carl stopped taking requests and began auctioning off pieces at various comic cons, bringing in thousands of dollars at a pop. Unfortunately, some fans made some unauthorized prints of one of his Scrooge McDuck paintings and Disney ended up rescinding his license.

Carl continued to make appearances at comic cons, though, creating long lines and frenzies wherever he went. In 1981, two different fans wanted to bring new appreciation to Carl's work and published a collection of his paintings and comic stories. By 1983, Carl was getting a little tired of all the attention and moved back to Oregon, quipping that his chicken farm was too close to Disneyland, fans kept dropping by unannounced. That same year, the Carl Barks Library was published, which included his entire Disney comic book oeuvre in an oversized thirty-volume set.

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Throughout the Nineties, Carl continued painting and had exhibits of his work in cities across Europe. In 1994, his final Scrooge McDuck story, Horsing Around with History, was published in Denmark and in 1997 his final Donald Duck Story, Somewhere in Nowhere, was published in Italy, both with artwork done by someone else. In 1991, Carl was officially declared a Disney Legend for his work in turning Donald and friends into international sensations. In July 1999, he was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. After unsuccessfully enduring treatments for nearly a year, he decided to stop them in June 2000. On August 25, 2000, shortly after midnight, one of the most brilliant minds to entertain the masses (even though he'd never even started high school) finally faded to black quietly in his sleep. He was 99.

June 7 - Del Connell

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On this day, in 1918, Del Connell was born in Sixteen Mile Stand, Ohio. His birthplace gets its name from the distance it is from downtown Cincinnati (it's still a burg of only a couple thousand residents). Del didn't live in Ohio very long, though, as his family moved to Los Angeles, California when he was only one. He first graduated from South Pasadena High School before attending Pasadena Junior College as an art student.

As another one of the great Disney artists who responded to an ad in the paper, Del joined the studio in 1939. Since his area of art expertise tended more towards the three dimensional variety, he was assigned to the Character Model Department. It's the job of a modeler to take an animator's 2D drawings of a character and sculpt a 3D figure of it called a maquette. The animator will then use the maquette to help him draw the character with better perspective from any angle. Del created maquettes for Dumbo, The Reluctant Dragon, Fantasia and Lady and the Tramp.

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By 1940, Del was moving into the Story Department. He wrote and made storyboards for a short titled The Pelican and the Snipe (it wouldn't go into production until 1944) and began working with Bill Peet on adapting Alice in Wonderland for the big screen. After a year spent creating storyboards for Alice, World War II came along and Del was drafted into the United States Army. He was stationed in Panama, where he spent most of his time up in blimps making detailed maps of the canal. He never stopped writing, though. While in the tropics, he wrote The Cold Blooded Penguin and sent it to the Disney Studio. Walt loved it, bought it for $500 and it eventually became the opening sequence of The Three Caballeros.

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Del returned to the Disney Studio at the end of the war in 1945. He took up working on the story for Alice in Wonderland again while simultaneously trying to adapt The Pied Piper of Hamelin (that feature would never be produced). In the early Fifties Del worked with Bill Peet again, this time on the script for the Academy Award nominated short Ben and Me. His final project working directly for Disney was as an artist and writer on early versions of the first souvenir guest guide for Disneyland.

In 1954, Del began working for Western Publishing, a huge comic book company. He worked mostly in the licensed character division, which included Disney comics as well as characters from Hannah-Barbera, Walter Lantz Studios, Warner Brothers and MGM. Over the next three decades, Del wrote and edited the scripts for thousands of comic book stories, creating all sorts of characters in the process. For Disney alone, he originated Daisy's nieces (April, May and June), turned Goofy into his popular SuperGoof persona and gave Goofy his ancestor, Mighty Knight. He also created several original series including Wacky Witch and The Close Shaves of Pauline Peril. His original series Space Family Robinson was eventually adapted into the television show Lost in Space. For twenty years, starting in 1968, Del wrote and drew the daily Mickey Mouse newspaper comic strip. During the same time he became Western's editor-in-chief of their west coast comic book division.

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After retiring from Western Publishing in the late Eighties, Del began working on an idea called The Historables, aimed at teaching history to young kids. He spent the next twenty years developing characters like Marie Ant-toinette. In 2012, a company was developing internet based apps for kids using Del's ideas, but the project didn't pan out. In 2011, Del was nominated for the Bill Finger Award given out at the San Diego Comic Con. The award is named after the uncredited co-creator of Batman and is used to honor comic artists who have gone under appreciated over the years. Since most of Del's work at Western was uncredited, three out of the four judges for the Finger Award had never heard of him. Needless to say, once they learned his story, Del was declared the year's winner and one of the judges quipped the award was one of the few times he ever had his name on anything. Unfortunately, Del was suffering from advanced Alzheimer's at the time and was unable to accept the award in person. He was reportedly lucid enough at one point, though, that he was aware of the nomination and was able to name several people he thought deserved the accolade more than he did. Shortly after receiving his honor, Del passed away on August 12, 2011. He was 93.

December 27 - Jack Bradbury

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On this day, in 1914, John Morin Bradbury was born in Seattle, Washington. Jack was always interested in the comic strips he saw in the newspapers growing up and felt that drawing them must be a pretty great way to spend one’s time. So he practiced his skills as often as he could, waiting for an opportunity to break into the business. In 1933, he saw the Disney produced Silly Symphony The Three Little Pigs and not only was enamored of it himself, but noticed how everyone in town seemed to be talking about it. He heard rumors that the Disney Studio was hiring and sent a portfolio down to Hollywood. He was invited to come down for a two week trial run, mostly at his own expense. Jack put $50 in his pocket and took the offer. He passed the test and, at just 20 years of age, started his life in cartoons for the princely sum of $15 per week.

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For the next four years, Jack worked as an inbetweener on such classic Mickey Mouse shorts as The Band Concert and Through the Mirror. As work ramped up on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he began working under Eric Larson and Milt Kahl. The employees of the studio were encouraged to work up their own little pieces of animation and actually have them filmed so they could be critiqued and given pointers on how to improve. As the big drive to finish Snow White wound down, Jack made a couple of those pieces and asked Ham Luske, who’d been supervising animator for Snow White’s title character, to look at them. Ham approved of them and showed them to Walt, who also approved.

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In 1938, Jack became a full animator. He worked on shorts like Ferdinand the Bull (one of his sequences is when Ferdinand sits on the bee) and Barnyard Symphony. He also lent a hand to the next several features the studio produced. Jack’s work can be seen in some of Figaro’s scenes in Pinocchio, the Pegasus family in Fantasia and the stage fight in Bambi. Then, in 1941, Jack got caught up in the big animator’s strike at the studio. After being out for several weeks, he was invited back to work when the strike ended but his return didn’t last long. By the end of the year, Jack was one of a number of animators who would be permanently laid off.

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From 1942-44, Jack went across town to work for Friz Freleng at Warner Brothers, mostly working on Bugs Bunny shorts. Following his stint there, he went to work for American Comics Group working on comic book stories for characters like Fremont Frog and Spencer Spook. In 1947, Jack began working for Western Publishing, the company that produced comic books based on works by Disney, Walter Lantz and Warner Brothers. For the next 31 years, he drew practically every Disney character that existed for comic books and the Little Golden Books. He was so adept at it that Walt reportedly told Western that if Jack drew it, it didn’t need to be submitted for approval.

Starting in late 1969, Jack would begin to suffer from macular degeneration. As his eyesight worsened, he gradually moved from drawing comics to writing them instead. He finally had to call it quits for good in 1978. Towards the end of his life, Jack enjoyed a resurgence of interest in his work and would occasionally make appearances at various comic cons. He would pass away from kidney failure on May 15, 2004 in Sylmar, California. He was 89.