Around 1954, Bill decided that he would one day work in animation and, upon his graduation from the California Colledge of Arts and Crafts in 1961, secured a position with Imagination Inc., a small animation studio in San Francisco. After working a number of years as a writer, animator, background artist, and producer of children's animated shorts, Bill began writing and illustrating children's books. "The first children's book I wrote was Harry Hoyle's Giant Jumping Bean. It sold on its first submission and, believe me, that was absolutely the last time it was every so easy."
In 1966, Van Horn married Frances Elaine Dixon and in 1980 they relocated fron the bay area to Vancouver, British Columbia. "My wife Elaine is a Canadian citizen, so she was able to get the rest of us in. The children [Noel and Tish] and myself are landed immigrants."
When Gladstone took over publishing Disney comic books from Western in 1986, Bill saw an opportunity to return to some of the pleasures of his youth and sent samples to Gladstone's then editor-in-Chief, Byron Erickson. But the task proved an ardous one for Van Horn. Although Erickson was initially impressed with Bill's work, he felt it to be too "off spec" to justify buying anything for publication. Undaunted, Bill continued his efforts until his stories began being accepted.
Byron's initial needs centered around one- to four-page filler material, which Bill was happy to provide, beginning with "A Sound Deal" (Mickey and Donald 2) and "A Pricky Relation" (Uncle Scrooge 226), in May of 1988. From that point, he went on to produce 29 more features for Gladstone. Van Horn successfully made the jump in 1989 when Disney began producing the comics, and finally began working for the Gutenberghus Group (now Egmont), producing Duck stories for the Danish market. Today, Bill is still producing stories for Egmont (which are picket up by Gladstone and reprinted in the U.S.), as well as drawing numerous covers and an occasional story for Gladstone.
This profile was written by John Clark, and run in WDC&S 603.