Van Horn, William

William Van Horn was born 15/2/1939 in USA, but lives in Canada. He is probably the most talented Donald Duck artist after Carl Barks. William Van Horn always enjoyed comics as a child, especially 'Mickey Mouse' as drawn by Floyd Gottfredson. He studied at the California College of Arts, after which he worked in the animation field for years. He left this field in 1977 and started to write children's books. It was not until 1985, when Van Horn created his first comic: 'Nervous Rex', about a small dinosaur. He contacted the American Disney publisher Gladstone in 1985. Van Horn had heard about the publisher's plans to create new Duck stories, and he was interested. Later on, William Van Horn moved from Gladstone to the Danish Egmont Comic Creation and has created over 800 'Duck' pages since. He introduced new characters to the Disney universe (Baron Itzy Bitzy, Rumpus McFowl).Van Horn has written nearly all of his own stories and he uses a very personal style in both his scenarios and artwork. In his stories, Van Horn focused on the absurdity of the situation, instead of the actual storyline. This gives his comics a distinguished style, which is more slapstick than other Disney stories.The drawings of William Van Horn has this extra touch of class and humour that only few artists can create. He posesses a large portion of the Disney magic that Barks was made of.