Carl Barks (March 27, 1901 – August 25, 2000) was a famous Disney Studio illustrator and comic book creator, who invented Duckburg and many of its inhabitants, such as Scrooge McDuck (1947), Gladstone Gander (1948), the Beagle Boys (1951), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Flintheart Glomgold (1956), John D. Rockerduck (1961) and Magica De Spell (1961). 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. The following is the text of the resignation letter tendered by him when he left Disney in 1942.

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Box 193, Ramona Blvd.
San Jacinto, Calif.
November 9, 1942

Mr. Hal Adelquist
Disney Studio

Dear Sir:

I tried to see you last Friday to tell you that I have decided to leave the studio and try farming at my San Jacinto estate (five acres of Russian thistles). I had not planned to leave so suddenly, in fact, I might have stuck around indefinitely had not gasoline rationing forced me to move while it is still possible to do so. My reasons for leaving are several, the chief one being that I spent too many years in too dark a room. Walt could make money growing mushrooms in 2-D 1.

Seriously speaking, I have become tired of working for wages and have decided to make one reckless effort to survive on my own. I hope that my farm and chickens will support me while I build up an income from free-lance cartooning. I feel that with more time to develop my long-neglected knack for drawing human figures I may be able to break into the comic magazine field. Probably I won’t have enough on the ball to click in that racket, but if I don’t give it a try I will never know.

Certain of the boys have the mistaken idea that the little job of drawing that I did on a duck one-shot last summer gave me comic-strip delusions and accounts chiefly for my itchy feet; such however is not the case. I was working nights to develop a comic-strip technique long before I even heard of the Whitman Publishing Co. I have no promises of work from the Whitman people in the future, and I doubt very much that they would offer me any lest the studio feel that they had in some degree lured me from the fold.

I hope that Walt wont be inconvenienced by my leaving. He probably knows that I haven’t earned my wages the past year and that actually I am doing him a favor by taking a powder. I wish to say here that he is the best boss that I ever had. It has taken a lot of courage to leave his employment.

So suppose that we consider my services terminated as of Friday, November 6th. I will leave my badge with the gateman when I pick up my check the latter part of the week. I haven’t yet checked with the mailman here to see if the above is my correct address. I shall let you know if it is or isn’t with in the next few days. I have some bonds or parts of bonds to be sent me from the studio.

I suppose the circumstances of my leaving precludes the possibility of my wheedling a letter of recommendation from the studio. Well, thanks anyway.

Yours truly
Carl Barks