Yes, he was still alive, he died this week at age 99. He was still giving interviews and meeting with fans.
I’m convinced that Carl Barks was the person who motivated me to become an avid reader: his stuff was so good, it grabbed my imagination every issue. I didn’t know his name, of course, he was just “the good artist.” We didn’t learn his name until much later, late 60s or early 70s, I think.
But, IMHO, he stands there amid the comic-artist greats: Walt Kelly, Al Capp, and a handful of others. He wrote stories that were engaging, well-written (not dumbed-down for kids), incredibly imaginative, and brilliantly drawn. Example: the ducks (Donald, Uncle Scrooge, and the boys) parachuting out of an airplane. First reaction: Barks conveys an intricately complex sense of motion as the plane moves forward, the ducks somersault out. Such motion is difficult to convey in a one-panel comic, but Barks (like Kelly) constant illustrates complex motion. Second reaction: It’s absurd, of course; these are ducks, after all; but the art work is so compelling that the reader never stops to question the reality.
One of my favorite Barks memories is when the gang find the lost cities of Cibola, destroyed by a huge booby-trapped rock… a concept later used in homage (acknowledged in interviews) by Spielberg in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.
Or the great money contest between Scrooge and Flinthart Glomgold to see who is the world’s richest duck, resolved by unwinding string through Africa. (They were tied in everything else.)
Or learning that earthquakes are caused by the Terries and the Fermies having their bouncing contests far underground.
Or meeting Goo, the Abominable Snowman.
Or sailing to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece, when Scrooge decided that he needed a replacement for his red broadcloth coat.
Or…
OK, enough. Barks brought enormous entertainment to the comic-book readers in the period (about 1945 to 1966), and we lament his passing.
The line about burrowing in the money like a gopher etc was, of course, directly from Barks’: Who’s richer, Bill Gates or Scrooge McDuck?