Artists

CastyOn February 10th, Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories issue 703 (published by Boom! Studios in the United States) will start a new multi-part story arc titled “Mickey Mouse and the World to Come,” which was written and drawn by talented Italian artist Andrea Castellan, who goes by the name of Casty.

I had a chance to ask Casty some questions about his career as a writer/artist and his work for Disney. Casty shared with me his early start in writing comics, where he finds his inspiration, and details about an upcoming story that may be of interest to duck fans!

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On Saturday, Argentinian animator and cartoonist Jaime Diaz passed away at the age of 72. Diaz founded the Jaim Diaz Studio in 1975, an art and animation studio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that became a large supplier of Disney comics (S-coded stories) for foreign-market Disney comics from 1975 to 1989 and also for the Disney Comics books in the United States in the early 1990s, for which they produced material for Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck, DuckTales and several other series. Over the years the studio created over 1500 Disney comic stories (see index).

Jaime Diaz Studio staff photo from 1984

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Comicrazys has a wonderful collection of paintings by Floyd Gottfredson up on their website. Between 1978 and 1983 the legendary cartoonist made a total of 24 paintings commissioned by collector Malcolm Willits.

Each of the 24 paintings is based on a storyline from one of Gottfredson’s popular comic strips. He wrote and drew hundreds of newspaper strips starring Mickey Mouse and the gang from 1930 up to his retirement in 1975. His work had been printed in newspapers, magazines and comic books around the world, but as a Disney employee he was never allowed to sign it. Gottfredson’s identity was finally revealed in the mid-1960s by fan Malcolm Willits. Subsequently, reprints of his Mickey Mouse strips in the 1970s gave him credit.

A panel of judges have arrived at the 2007 nominees for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, considered the “Oscars” of the comic book industry. Among the nominees of this year is Don Rosa’s “The Black Knight Glorps Again”, from Gemstone’s Uncle Scrooge #354 (buy for $6.96), nominated for Best Short Story. It is the third story by Rosa to feature his original character, The Black Knight, whom first appeared in 1997. More »

The Karikaturmuseum in Krems, Austria has an exhibition titled “Donald Duck … and the duck became human, The Drawings and Poetic Works of Carl Barks”. The exposition is from 25 March to 4 November 2007 and has more than 400 original works of art, including 290 from the collection of Gottfried Helnwein.

Today would have been Carl Barks’ 106th birthday. He is considered by many to be the best comics creator of all time. He created many characters, including Scrooge McDuck, Gladstone Gander, The Beagle Boys, Gyro Gearloose. The quality of his scripts and drawings earned him the nick names The Duck Man and The Good Duck Artist. Fellow comic writer Will Eisner called him “the Hans Christian Andersen of comic books”. Barks died in 2000 at the age of 99. More »

This year is Uncle Scrooge’s 60th anniversary (he first appeared in 1947’s comic story ‘Christmas on Bear Mountain’ by Carl Barks), and for this occasion American Disney comic artist Don Rosa is creating twelve beautiful posters for the Egmont company in Denmark. Egmont publishes Disney comics and magazines in many countries around the world, and the posters will be featured in their magazines. In Germany the first one has come out in the January issue of Donald Duck Sonderheft. More »

Talented Italian Disney comics artist Luciano Bottaro died on 25 November at the age of 75. He was considered one of the most important Italian humor cartoonists. His first Disney story for the Italian editor was “Paperino e le onorificenze” written by Alberto Testa and published in 1952. Besides his work with the Disney’s characters, he also worked on other magazines, creating a lot of his own characters, and in 1958 he founded the Bierreci Studios with Carlo Chendi and Giorgio Rebuffi. More »

For the first time since 2000, world famous Duck artist Don Rosa will visit Germany in September and October 2006 for the Frankfurt Book Messe and a signing tour in several German cities. The exact dates are not yet fixed, but DuckMania already has a list of possible dates and places.

A new street in a residential area of the city of Almere in the Netherlands has been named after the legendary Donald Duck comic book artist Carl Barks. More »