Carl Barks — American Artist born on March 27, 1901, died on August 25, 2000

Carl Barks was an American cartoonist, author, and painter. He is best known for his comics about Donald Duck and as the creator of Scrooge McDuck. He worked anonymously until late in his career; fans dubbed him The Duck Man and The Good Duck Artist. In 1987, Barks was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame... (wikipedia)

I always felt myself to be an unlucky person like Donald, who is a victim of so many circumstances. But there isn't a person in the United States who couldn't identify with him. He is everything, he is everybody; he makes the same mistakes that we all make.
I was never a Boy Scout, but oh, I wanted to be one when I was a kid about ten or eleven years old. But there wasn't anyplace where I could ever join the Boy Scouts.
I've always looked upon the Ducks as caricature human beings. Perhaps I've been years writing in that middle world that J.R.R. Tolkien describes, and never knew it.
I read some of my stories recently and thought, 'How in the hell did I get away with that?' I had some really raw cynicism in some of them.
There was no difference between my characters and the life my readers were going to have to face.