Disney Comics Hall of Fame

[That Duckfan]

The idea for this thread spun out of the Disney Masters thread. I'd like to start a Hall of Fame, a list of the most distinctive and influential artists in the Disney comic community. Writers too, maybe. There are a lot of good creators, but just a few too many to keep track, and I think there are quite a few 'B tier' artists that are often slept on. There is no real minimum criteria, but you should be able to look at a story and say "ah yes, a XYZ story, this is a cut above the rest".

I'll start with the first batch of artists, doubtless there are more.

Newspaper comics
Floyd Gottfredson
Bill Walsh
Al Taliaferro

Western Publishing
Carl Barks
Paul Murry
Tony Strobl
Al Hubbard
Dick Kinney

Gladstone Publishing
Don Rosa
William Van Horn
Pat Block

Italy
Romano Scarpa
Giorgio Cavazzano
Massimo de Vita
Giovan Battista Carpi
Guido Martina
Marco Rota
Luciano Bottaro
Casty

The Netherlands
Daan Jippes
Freddy Milton
Mau Heymans
Bas Heymans
Ben Verhagen
Jan Gulbransson
José Ramón Bernado
Michel Nadorp
Mark de Jonge
Endre Lukács

Scandinavia
Vicar
Daniel Branca
Carlos Mota
Wanda Gattino
Cèsar Ferioli Pelaez
Kari Korhonen
Arild Midthun

France
René Guillaume
Gen-Clo


No Brazilian artists I'm afraid, I haven't read enough of their comics to make an informed opinion.
I'm holding back a few names because I'm not really sure they *have* their fans, like the onslaught of small army of Spanish artists that all received a special volume in the Dutch artists' series but that I can't tell apart for the life of me. I know there's also a bajillion other Italian creators, but I personally have trouble distinguishing between them because they were never credited when I was growing up, so I'll leave that open for now. If any artists on this list are *not* famous enough to have their own entry, let me know. But bear in mind, this isn't a thread for sniping about artists you don't like. (Famous last words...)

Which artists would you add to the Hall of Fame?

[RobbK1]

I would add Manny Gonzalez, Dick Moores, Bill Wright, and Merill De Maris to the newspaper strip section, add Jack Bradbury to The Western list, add Dick Matena, Jan Kruse, Evert Geradts, Frank Jonker, Volker Reiche, and Patty Klein (no nepotism intended) to The Dutch list, and remove Bernado and Lukács, I would add Gorm Transgaard, Santiago Scalabroni, and Ulrich Schroeder to The Scandinavian list. Although Ulrich Schroeder might seem like a strange choice, given that he has drawn only about 15 stories and a bunch of covers so far, his drawings (re-drawings) of 10 pages of Carl Barks' King Scrooge The First in Barks' 1955 style were so absolutely the same (to the nth degree0 as Barks' work, Carl himself, thought he drew the page he was shown, and was perplexed that he couldn't remember having drawn them. They were much, much more exactly Barks' style than the Barks mimicking done by Daan Jippes (whose work is miles above all others, in my estimation). So, the fact that Ulrich can draw Disney Comics that well, although only a half page has survived a flood in Schroeder's basement, is enough for me to want him in my Disney Comics Hall of Fame. I don't mean to disparage Bernado's or Lukacs' artwork. It's just that I can't abide their styles used for the Disney characters they drew. I also absolutely HATE. Cavazzano's style for Disney Comics. But, I realise that he is so very famous, and has probably over a million fans, and an entire school of Italian artists emulating his style, so it might be ridiculous to leave him off.

[cheechako]

Your list covers many of my favorite artists. The ones I would add are the Italians Tito Faraci and Silvia Ziche. Faraci's stories are full of absurdities that are, however, always funny instead of annoying. For me, with regard to writing humoristic scenes and dialogues, I can't think of a writer who does it better than Faraci. Ziche has a drawing style that I personally like a lot, and although she is primarily an artist, she has also written a few stories. Of those I read only 'Paperina di Rivondosa', but that one is easily among my favorite Disney comics. Among the Brazilians I think Ivan Saidenberg certainly deserves a place. He was one of the most prolific Brazilian Disney authors and played an important role in shaping the distinctly Brazilian Disney comics tradition, introducing characters such as Jose Carioca's friend Pedrão and Fethry's alter ego the Red Bat.

[caballero]

The top 10 most important Disney comic creators in my opinion in this order (not the list of my top 10 favourite Disney comic creators):

1. Carl Barks
2. Floyd Gottfredson
3. Don Rosa
4. Al Taliaferro
5. Romano Scarpa
6. Walt Disney
7. Marco Rota
8. William Van Horn
9. Paul Murry
10. Daan Jippes

@that Duckfan: among Brazilian creators, I believe Renato Vinicius Canini is the most significant one.

[RobbK1]

Oct 23, 2022 14:18:08 GMT caballero said:

The top 10 most important Disney comic creators in my opinion in this order (not the list of my top 10 favourite Disney comic creators):

1. Carl Barks
2. Floyd Gottfredson
3. Don Rosa
4. Al Taliaferro
5. Romano Scarpa
6. Walt Disney
7. Marco Rota
8. William Van Horn
9. Paul Murry
10. Daan Jippes

@that Duckfan: among Brazilian creators, I believe Renato Vinicius Canini is the most significant one.

I don't know how Tony Strobl can be left out, who was the most prolific artist for Disney Comics for over 20 years, even if you don't like his artwork, given that you used the criterion as "important" rather than "favourite", or "best technically".  I think his 1947 to 1958 work was decent enough.  I think Murry's Ducks are tremendously ugly and off model, and his Mouse stories were terribly weak after the 1950s.  I like both of their 1940s work best, and felt their 1950s work was decent and workmanlike.  So why have curry in the list and not Strobl?  I can understand wanting to put Walt Disney in the list, because he "invented" Mickey Mouse.  But, he seems out of place in a list of comic book story artists and story writers, and seems to be in a quite different category from the rest, where adding Western Publishing's longest tenured chief editors might be more appropriate than adding Walt. 

[caballero]

RobbK1 There was an era within the history of Mickey Mouse comics when Paul Murry was the top guy. I don't think there ever was an era within the history of Donald Duck comics when Tony Strobl was the top guy. Which is why Murry ranks higher in my opinion.

As for Disney, I included him not just as the creator of Mickey Mouse but also as the person who started the creation of the first ever Disney comic, "Lost on a Desert Island".

[Mesterius]

Oct 23, 2022 20:50:27 GMT caballero said:

RobbK1 There was an era within the history of Mickey Mouse comics when Paul Murry was the top guy. I don't think there ever was an era within the history of Donald Duck comics when Tony Strobl was the top guy. Which is why Murry ranks higher in my opinion.

As for Disney, I included him not just as the creator of Mickey Mouse but also as the person who started the creation of the first ever Disney comic, "Lost on a Desert Island".

In addition to "Lost on a Desert Island", Walt Disney also wrote the next few sequences of the Mickey Mouse daily strip. Perhaps most notably, he started the storyline "Mickey Mouse in Death Valley", where he introduced Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow in comics form and also created Sylvester Shyster together with artist Win Smith. And the "Death Valley" story was of course important for establishing the tone and style of the Mickey strip.

Was there ever really an era when Paul Murry was the one "top Mickey guy"? Romano Scarpa's career as a Mickey artist (and writer!) started around the same time, and I think Scarpa had Murry beat from the start.

[Ramapith]

I think Paul Murry was effectively the top Mickey guy in 1960s and 1970s USA—and 1960s northern Europe—before Romano Scarpa's works were easily available in those areas, and for that matter before Gottfredson's early works were regularly reprinted.

As late as the 1990s, new artists in these markets were still more or less forced to mimic 1971 Mickey model sheets by Murry, only enhancing the feeling that he was the guy who set the style.

The situation was completely artificial, but it was what it was; in the land of the blind, one might say, the one-eyed mouse is king.

[fredj]

I would add Paco Rodriguez under Scandinavia. I think he’s easily one of the most skilled Disney artists.

[Mesterius]

Oct 24, 2022 14:16:26 GMT fredj said:

I would add Paco Rodriguez under Scandinavia. I think he’s easily one of the most skilled Disney artists.

Yeah, he definitely belongs on the list. It's very strange that neither he nor César Ferioli got even one book in the Norwegian Hall of Fame series. Whereas Arild Midthun, who I don't think is as good, got 4 Hall of Fame volumes. Of course, that's not surprising given that Midthun is Norwegian, but STILL...

[caballero]

I would most certainly not add Paco Rodriguez to any kind of "hall of fame". I am sure he is a good artist, but he had to work in that completely boring and uninspiring Egmont/Comicup style like all those Spanish and South American artists that created all those run-off-the-mill comics for Egmont. Imagine if each and every one of them had been allowed to draw in their own individual styles!

[Mesterius]

Oct 25, 2022 10:55:00 GMT caballero said:

I would most certainly not add Paco Rodriguez to any kind of "hall of fame". I am sure he is a good artist, but he had to work in that completely boring and uninspiring Egmont/Comicup style like all those Spanish and South American artists that created all those run-off-the-mill comics for Egmont. Imagine if each and every one of them had been allowed to draw in their own individual styles!

I don't think Rodríques' stuff looks like the stories accredited to "Comicup" at all. In my eyes, he DOES have a distinctive style in his Disney comics.

[Matilda]

Paco Rodrigues standing out from the crowd: There's Himalayan Hideout, of course, which benefits from an irregular layout. In general, I like the traditional layout of panels for Disney comics, but this story for me is an instance of "occasionally it's really worth it!" The page with various views of Magica is one of my favorite *pages* of Disney comics art ever. And then, take a story like Gaute Moe's The Anti Gravity Spell --that one makes my re-read list due to the wonderful views of Duckburg from above. I also find the art memorable in Janet Gilbert's The Onion Rose. Or just look at the first page of the McGreals' McDuck in Love!

[crazycatlord]

In Brazil, besides Saidenberg, I will add Irineu Soares Rodrigues (Saidenberg was more a writer, Soares Rodrigues an artist, I think)

[mousemaestro]

If folks want, I would be glad to start a Disney Comics HOF Blog on Google Blogger as a sort of "permanent residency" for selected folks. Obviously, we would need bios written complete with photos and work examples. I could handle some of the Mouse artists/writers but I would need to outsource most of the other bios to more knowledgeable fans.