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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 \u2014 a fan letter.\n\n\u201cBelieve it or not, I have been planning this letter for about four or five years,\u201d Spicer wrote. \u201cI 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.\u201d\n\nSpicer\u2019s letter was how Barks found out that he was, and had been for at least a decade, a legend \u2014 and the most popular comic-book artist in the world.\n\nAnd 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?\n\nAnd that\u2019s how the world started to learn, for the first time, who Walt Disney\u2019s elusive, anonymous \u201cGood Duck Artist\u201d was.... (Merrill, Klamath County; 1910s, 1920s, 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/24-03a.carl-barks-the-duck-man.html)