Sometime in April of 1960, a shy, retiring, hard-of-hearing comic-book artist named Carl Barks got a letter at his quiet suburban home. When he opened it, he found that it was a letter from a stranger named John Spicer. And to his astonishment, he found that it was — a fan letter.

“Believe it or not, I have been planning this letter for about four or five years,” Spicer wrote. “I have been kept from doing so for the simple reason that I knew not your name or address. I tried several times, however, but all were in vain.”

Spicer’s letter was how Barks found out that he was, and had been for at least a decade, a legend — and the most popular comic-book artist in the world.

And at first he refused to believe it. Wary of some trick, or a prankster pretending to be a fan to humiliate him, he hesitated to engage with it. But then he decided, why not?

And that’s how the world started to learn, for the first time, who Walt Disney’s elusive, anonymous “Good Duck Artist” was.... (Merrill, Klamath County; 1910s, 1920s, 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/24-03a.carl-barks-the-duck-man.html)