Mon May 12, 2008 — by Aaron Rosenberg

Happy Birthday: Tony Strobl

A Master of Duckland

Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1915, Anthony Joseph “Tony” Strobl graduated from the Cleveland School of Art in 1937 (along with Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster—Strobl helped them fine-tune a character concept they were working on, which they called "Superman") and began working for Disney a year later.

His first project was doing “in-between” art (the frames between the ones the main animators drew) on Fantasia. Strobl also worked on Pinocchio and Dumbo before joining the Army during World War II.

After the war, he decided to switch from animation to comics, and in 1947 he went to work for Western Publishing. Western produced comics starring characters from Disney, Warner Brothers, and Walter Lantz, and Strobl did a lot of art on Disney’s “Duck” books.

After 1954, he was responsible for the monthly Donald Duck comic. In the mid-'60s Strobl began drawing Disney comics for the international market, and from 1986 to 1987 he drew a daily Donald Duck comic strip for them as well. Strobl died on December 29, 1991.

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