Despite drawing more than 500 Donald Duck comics over the course of 24 years, legendary artist Carl Barks only ever drew one comic starring Disney‘s most famous character, Mickey Mouse. Barks is perhaps the most important figure in Disney history next to Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. He was such a good artist that, despite the fact artists weren’t allowed to sign their names in Disney comic books, fans were able to recognize Barks’ style of drawing and writing. The fans didn’t know his name, but they dubbed him “The Good Duck Artist.”
Carl Barks was associated with Donald Duck since the character’s early days, starting work at Disney as an animation in-betweener in 1935. Barks would submit gags to the cartoon writers in his spare time and would eventually be moved to the story room where he would contribute to Donald Duck’s first solo cartoons. Barks adopted Donald Duck and created an entire duck world, and after he was finished with animation, he would continue Donald Duck’s adventures in one of the most celebrated comics of all time. Carl Barks’ Donald Duck stories were known for their detailed and rich settings, inventive use of silhouette, and MacGuyver-like escapes and pursuits. They even helped serve as an inspiration to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg for Raiders of the Lost Ark.
If Barks’ Duck comics leaned more toward the pulp adventure genre, his single Mickey Mouse story is a solid noir complete with doppelgängers, gangsters and a standoff with guns. “The Riddle of the Red Hat” appeared in 1945’s Four-Color #79 and lovingly makes use of tropes and settings familiar to the Warner Bros. gangster films of the time. Barks used references from Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse comics to nail certain poses and angles, a common practice especially in an industry that places emphasis on things being “on-model.” In a September 18, 1970 response to a fan letter, collected by A Guidebook to the Carl Barks Universe, Barks wrote, “Strange to say, I had completely forgotten the story. Reading it, I could see my drawing style in the artwork. My old pay vouchers prove that I did do the art, so I’ll puff out my chest and brag that I did a pretty fair Mickey and Goofy.” Barks would say in other letters he never had much interest in Mickey Mouse, and likely did this comic as a fill-in favor. While Barks’ single Mickey comic is great, his interest in the character couldn’t compete with Donald Duck.
Barks made his comics anonymously for more than 25 years until his identity was officially revealed in 1968 after years of fan speculation. Two fans named Don and Maggie Thompson were able to use their detective skills to track Barks down and conduct his bombshell first interview for their 1968 comic fan zine Comic Art #7. After the revelation of his identity Barks lived in semi-retirement until gaining renown for his officially licensed original oil paintings depicting scenes from comics he had made throughout his career in a fully rendered and painted form.
Among Carl Barks’ creations were Uncle Scrooge, the Beagle Boys, and many other residents of Duckberg. The globe-trotting adventures would inspire the cartooning style of Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka, who paid tribute to Barks in a few of his manga. As popular as Disney comics were in America, this was dwarfed by its immense popularity all over Europe, especially Germany, where Uncle Scrooge remains one of the most popular and recognizable comic book characters to this day. Seeing Carl Barks draw Mickey Mouse feels like reading a Spider-Man story by Jack Kirby, and is a rare oddity in Bark’s long career. Carl Barks is easily one of the best artists to make Disney comics, and while he was popularly known as “The Good Duck Artist” for his work on Donald Duck, it’s easy to see from this Mickey Mouse story that he was a good Mouse artist as well.
