00:02:41 -> 00:03:55
Q: Carl, could you tell us what you feel were your most important early influences, especially in terms of artists?
BARKS: It was reading the newspaper comic strips, and I can go clear back to start with Winsor McCay as one of the influences, but I would say that Barney Google and Happy Hooligan and, later on, the Disney comics of Mickey Mouse, were influences. I liked the Mickey Mouse stories because they had humor In them; and when you look at my later storles in the comic books, you'll see that I was trying to follow in the format that Floyd Gottfredson established, having Mickey and the other guys involved in funny situations at the same time they were having serious problems. And they solved their serious problems by funny means: some outrageous sort of thing would happen. And I guess that that's where I automatically learned the basis for my own story writing.
00:03:55 -> 00:07:17
Q: You had a lot of different careers in your youth, didn't you?
BARKS: I wouldn't call them careers. (laughs) I was a real misfit: I couldn't do anything good. I wanted to be a cartoonist, of course, all of my life, from the time I was a kid, but that required a little bit of training, and being a kid up on a ranch in eastern Oregon, I didn't have much opportunity to meet other cartoonists or learn anything. But I did do a lot of drawing from looking at the San Francisco Examiner and the other newspapers we would get that carried comic strips. But I just automatically had to drift into farming, driving a bunch of mules around a field behind a plow or a grain drill; it just wasn't anything that I liked. From that I finally saved up enough money to tell my Dad that I wanted to go to San Francisco and see if I couldn't get into cartooning down there. So I went to San Francisco and worked for a little over a year in a printing shop. That had nothing to do with cartooning, but it was at least a living while I would go once in a while to one of the newspaper offices and show them some sample cartoons and get rejected and practically thrown out of the place. They had good cartoonists working for them in those days; they didn't have to take on some kid that didn't have any training. But I could read all those wonderful newspapers full of cartoons, and I learned a great deal while I was there in San Francisco. Then after I left there, I had to go back to the ranch again, and from there I drifted into logging; and from there I drifted into working for the railroad in the car shops. I was there for about six and a half years on that lousy riveting gang. In the meantime I kept always trying to develop into cartooning. I realized that, in order to sell cartoons, you have to have an idea behind them, a little bit of writing to go along with them. So I began developing the art of writing a little humor to go with my cartoons. I got to selling gags to the Calgary Eye-Opener, and that led to me getting a job back there as staff artist. From that it was just a step into the editor job as they gradually got less and less money through the Depression and couldn't hire any editors. It just devolved on me to do it all. From there I got into Disney by sending some samples to the studio. So my whole life was devoted to trying, one step after another, to become a cartoonist.
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