But...how do you know?

[Per Starb{ck]

Rich Bellacera asked how we know about the specific artists and
writers for older Disney comics, as there were no credits in the
books before Gladstone.

Really, there isn't much known about writers, but most of the old-time
Disney artists are identified, as it is possible to learn to tell one
artist from another by their styles.  Then you have to know their
names, though...  I think some of this information originally came
from payrolls from Western Publishing, the publisher of Disney comics
in ye olde times.  If you know that artist X got paid for doing lots
of stories in 1956 maybe you can guess which of the styles he is
responsible for, etc.  There are always some insecure information
floating around though.  Here's an example: For some years one artist
was called John Carey, but then someone disclosed that his name really
was Frank McSauvage, and that John Carey was someone totally else.
Even later they've told us that his name really is McSavage, without
the u.

As for me I'm gullible enough to take any information I hear or read
for granted, as long as it doesn't contradict anything else I've
learned, but of course all this information comes from somewhere
originally.  Quite a few of the artists have been contacted by fans,
and contributed information about themselves (of course) but also
about other people in the business they happened to know, so that's
one source at least.  Another source is the Little Golden Books and
other illustrated stories with Disney characters where the authors and
artists (who often did Disney comics as well) sometimes *were*
credited.

At first as a kid I never thought about the different stories having
different authors or artists.  Not that I imagined that Unca Walt did
them all either, I just didn't think about them in those terms.  I
sure noticed that the stories "reprinted by popular demand" were a lot
better than the other stories, and I remember thinking that either
that was because the stories generally were better in older times *or*
because those stories really were just the very best of the old
stories---sometimes there were "new" stories as great too.

The real reason was of course that those stories "reprinted by popular
demand" were by Carl Barks, and the other stories weren't, but I
didn't know that.  (I first got to know about Barks a few years later
in the foreword to "Jag Kalle Anka", the Swedish equivalent of the big
white book "Donald Duck" published by Abbeville Press.)

Let's return to the very beginning of Disney comics fandom, when the
first and the most important name was "discovered": Carl Barks.

Of course there were people who did realize that all Carl Barks's
stories were done by the same artist, even though they didn't know his
name, and when, in 1950, Unca Carl didn't do all the lead stories for
Walt Disney's Comics & Stories anymore, some of them even wrote
Western Publishing and asked them to please let "The Good Artist"
return.  Not that Barks got to know about that, though.  Western only
showed him three fan letters ever, and two of them were rather
critical.

During the 50's comics fandom started within science fiction fandom,
and among those people a few were interested in Carl Barks and Disney
comics.  Some of them tried to get in touch with "The Good Artist" or
at least learn his name by writing Western, but they had a policy of
not revealing that information.

But finally some people managed to get hold of his name anyway.  The
first was Malcolm Willits, who contacted Walt Disney Studios instead
of Western.  He told them that he would like to do an article about
their Donald Duck comic book artist for his fanzine Destiny.  He got
Carl Barks's name and address, but didn't do anything with it for the
time being.  This was around 1957--58.

So the first one to write Carl Barks a fan letter was the second one
to get hold of his address.  The brothers John and Bill Spicer had
also tried to get in contact with Carl Barks, but all they got were
letters saying that it was company policy not to disclose the names of
freelancers, but then at last they wrote a letter pretending to be
from a high school art teacher who planned a class with discussion and
examples of comic art, specifically Disney art, and more specifically
yet, certain stories by the very anonymous writer/artist who, he had
noticed, had been doing the Duck stories for about the last 15 years.
This "art teacher" wanted the artist's name and address to contact him
for comments about the technical side of writing and drawing comics.

They fell for it, and soon afterwards (April 11, 1960) John Spicer
sent the first fan letter ever to Barks.  (The second one was sent by
Malcolm Willits, May 25, 1960.)  Both the Spicers and Willits were
interested in science fiction; note the name of the author of the
story "Ten Seconds to Mars" in WDC 249 (Stranger Than Fiction)!

Then the name of The Good Artist spread from fan to fan, and the first
time he was mentioned in a fan article was in Richard West's "What Has
Happened to Disney's Comics" in Masquerader #6, 1964.  Soon afterwards
he was also mentioned in a Comic Art editorial (Don and Maggie
Thompson) and year by year he got more and more known.  Nowadays I
meet lots of people who aren't really comic book fans or Disney fans
but who anyway know about Carl Barks.
--       "
Per Starback, Uppsala, Sweden.  email: Per.Starback at student.docs.uu.se
 "Life is but a gamble!  Let flipism chart your ramble!"