Al Taliaferro

Charles Alfred "Al" Taliaferro (August 29, 1905 – February 3, 1969), was an American Disney comics artist who produced Disney comic strips for King Features Syndicate.

Taliaferro is best known for his work on the Donald Duck comic strip.

Many of his strips were written by Bob Karp.

In the 1930s, the Silly Symphony film series was at the height of its popularity, due to its innovations in storytelling and professionalism in production methods.

Other animation studios launched imitations with similar names, such as Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies, and Happy Harmonies.

Taliaferro and Ted Osborne started producing comic strip adaptations of specific short films, as a tie-in to whichever Silly Symphony the Disney studio was trying to promote.

In January 1931, Taliaferro was hired by Walt Disney Studios as an animator, but soon transferred to the comic strip department.

At the time, Disney comics were limited to the Mickey Mouse comic strip, with Floyd Gottfredson as its main artist.

Taliaferro was hired as an inker for Gottfredson's drawings.

Taliaferro also served as the inker for a model sheet for the Mickey Mouse character.

The model sheet would later be featured in Disney merchandising.

Disney soon launched a Silly Symphony comic strip (1932–1939), based on the Silly Symphony short film series.

The strip debuted on January 10, 1932, as a Sunday comic strip.

It would appear on a weekly schedule, in full color.

The original writer and penciller for the comic strip was Earl Duvall, with Taliaferro serving as his inker.

In 1933, Duvall quit the strip and the Disney studio, as he was hired by Leon Schlesinger Productions.

Taliaferro replaced him as the comic strip's penciller.

The new main writer of the comic strip was Ted Osborne, but the comic strip also featured a number of stories written by Merrill De Maris.

The comic strip had started by introducing a new character, not based on any previous Disney animated short.

The character was Bucky Bug, an anthropomorphic insect whose creation is credited to Duvall and Taliaferro.

Bucky Bug would continue to be the star of the comic strip until March 4, 1934.

He was the second Disney character (after Mickey Mouse) to become the star of his own comic strip series.

The Bucky Bug stories were typical for a talking animal series, though every character was

either an insect or another type of invertebrate.

The initial storyline of Taliaferro's comic strip was a coming-of-age story.

Bucky Bug is introduced as a boy, the only son of his family.

He has 16 sisters.

He departs the family home to see the world, eventually settles down in the city of insects called "Junktown", and marries a local girl, called June Bug.

June is the daughter of the town's mayor.

The city which Bucky inhabits was built on human garbage, every building or structure was once an item discarded by humans.

Besides Bucky and June, the most prominent character of these stories was Bo Bug, Bucky's best friend and sidekick.

Bo was depicted as a hobo and always wore a top hat.

While Taliaferro did not draw more Bucky Bug stories after 1934, the Bucky Bug series would eventually be revived in comic book form by Western Publishing.

Bucky and his supporting cast have since appeared in Disney magazines and newspapers in many countries.

In 1936, the comic strip started featuring the main cast of the hit short Three Little Pigs (1933).

Taliaferro was the first artist to adapt Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs into comics, as characters of serial fiction.

The Taliaferros trace their origins to Northern Italy and were one of the early families who settled in the Colony of Virginia during the 17th century.

The family name, originally Tagliaferro, literally means "Ironcutter" in the Italian language.

After his family moved to Glendale, California, Taliaferro studied at the Art Institute of Los Angeles, California.

Following his graduation, Taliaferro was hired as a designer for light fixtures.