Al Taliaferro

Charles Alfred Taliaferro was the first and most important artist of the famous 'Donald Duck' daily strip. Drawing the strip from 1937 to 1969, Taliaferro and principal writer Bob Karp, shaped the comics character of Donald. They added characters from the animated shorts to the strip, such as Daisy Duck, the nephews, and Gus Goose. Taliaferro studied at the Institute of Art in California, and worked in the advertising field. He joined the Walt Disney studios as an animator in 1931, but soon transferred to the comics department. Among his first jobs was inking Floyd Gottfredson's 'Mickey Mouse' comic. After this, he did the first 'Bucky Bug' comics for the Sunday pages in 1932.

From 1932 to 1939, he drew the weekly 'Silly Symphonies' page, in which he adapted several of the famous Disney shorts to comics. Taliaferro began working on the 'Donald Duck' daily strips in 1938. The 'Silly Symphonies' page was replaced by a 'Donald Duck' page after two years, due to the character's popularity. Taliaferro's Donald comic strips became the most distributed Disney strip, and were immensly popular in the U.S.A. Taliaferro also contributed to a few Disney comic-book stories for Dell/Western publishing, such as 'Counter-Spy', a 'Bucky Bug' story and some 'Donald Duck' two-pagers. Al Taliaferro continued to draw the 'Donald Duck' daily until two years before his death.