Carl Barks; Donald Duck Illustrator, Writer

Carl Barks, the Disney illustrator credited with giving Donald Duck his distinctive feisty and comical personality, died Friday at the age of 99.

He had been receiving chemotherapy for leukemia but “was funny up to the end,” said his caregiver, Serene Hunicke.

Barks drew Donald Duck for Walt Disney Studios from 1935 until 1942 and continued afterward as the creative genius behind the Donald Duck universe.

Although other animators had a hand in the duck’s activities, Barks polished up Donald, rounding him out and shortening his beak, and gave him a personality that was more jolly, though still spiked with that trademark temper.

Barks’ early writing credits included the 1937 Donald Duck short “Modern Inventions,” in which Donald runs into trouble at an exhibit of labor-saving devices, including a robot butler.

In 1942, he turned from cartoons to illustrating comic strips and books. He gave Donald a hometown--Duckburg--populated by such characters as Uncle Scrooge McDuck, Gladstone Gander, the Beagle Boys and Gyro Gearloose, and he is credited with giving Huey, Dewey and Louie--Donald’s nephews--their distinctive personalities.

Barks got his start drawing one-panel “gag strips” for magazines when he was in his 20s and 30s, but the job lost its allure.

“I was thinking then that I’d like to do comics with whole stories,” Barks said in a 1994 interview. “You know, like ‘Prince Valiant’; stuff with continuity, not single, one-shot gags all the time.”

In 1935, he saw an ad for cartoonists to work for Walt Disney Studios in Hollywood. Leaving a steady paycheck in Minnesota, he packed his bag and decided to take a stab at animation.

He quickly advanced from drawing the tiny details between the characters and the main background to primary character artist, and his handiwork could be seen in more than 60 short subjects, many featuring Donald Duck.

When Western Publishing gained the rights in 1942 to publish Walt Disney characters in comic books, Barks was asked to illustrate a 10-page Donald Duck story written by someone else.

“The story just didn’t seem to hang together,” Barks said. “I made some changes. Western kind of liked it and asked me if I wanted to do my own stories. From there on, I was their fair-haired boy.”

Like every other artist in those days, Barks’ name never appeared on a comic book.

But that anonymity ended after he retired. Comic book fans came out of the woodwork in the 1970s with the creation of specialty shops, trade publications and conventions.

“I was astonished by the number of people who’d read my work and liked it,” Barks once said. “These comic book fans seem to want to shake the hand of the guy who drew all that stuff. It’s still mystifying to me.”

Barks stopped drawing in 1966, but continued writing duck tales until his retirement in 1973.

He painted Disney figures in oil at his home in Grants Pass until he contracted leukemia 13 months ago.

Barks is survived by a daughter, Dorothy Gibson of Bremerton, Wash., four grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and eight great-great-grandchildren.