was born in California on February 15, 1939. As a young
boy he enjoyed drawing war scenes, pictures of Mickey Mouse and other comic
book characters, but he never considered drawing comics for a living. At the age of twelve he first learned that you can make a living doing comics and it was then that he started dreaming of
becoming a professional himself. By 1961 Van Horn had graduated from the California College of Arts and Crafts and had gotten himself a job as a cel inker at Imagination, Inc., a small animation studio in San Francisco. After a few years there he married Frances Elaine Dixon with whom he has 2 children, Noel (who has followed in his father's footsteps) and Tish. After working 12 successful years in all the different fields of animation, Van Horn needed a change. The studio he was now working for didn't make any money so he left it and started drawing and writing 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 ever so easy".
By this time the Van Horns had moved to Canada, Elaine's native country, where they still reside. A few years and several children's books later Bill entered the comic book business with a story about a little dinosaur, Rex. The first two stories with Rex were finished in the spring of 1984.
"[...]I sent hand-colored xerox copies of them to Pacific comics. They liked Rex, but promptly went out of business. I was so busy with my children's books that I forgot about the Rex
samples until march of 1985. Steve Schanes, who with his brother had run Pacific Comics was by that time on his own with a new company called Blackthorne. When I called down to find out if I could get my samples back, Steve
said, "Oh, Nervous Rex! Can you do it bimonthly?" and so there I was." Nervous Rex ran for ten issues. Blackthorne also published two issues of another comic book by Van Horn, titled Possibleman, before the line was cancelled.
"I was, as they say, footloose and fancy free. I also needed a job! At that low point I remember saying to my editor Cliff MacGillivray, "I might as well be drawing Donald Duck!"
Don Rosa's debut story had just been published when Bill's joke became reality. Inspired by Rosa's debut, Bill spent 6 months trying to convince the editor at Gladstone, Byron Erickson, to give him a chance. During those 6 months Bill did his first 2 duck stories ever. None of those stories has ever been published in their original version. (New versions were later done for Disney Comics. The first story which originally was a six-pager was rewritten and became a 12-pager, "The Bees Have It", the second story, "Kid Stuff" was redrawn.) Two years and 36 Van Horn stories later Gladstone went out of business. Instead of being unemployed Bill decided to work for the other American publisher of duck comics, Disney Comics. During the time at Disney, Bill became more and more popular. The letter columns were soon filled with letters from fans who said they enjoyed his stories just as much as Barks' stories, and some liked them even more.
The really big step in Van Horn's career as a Disney comic creator was when he received a job at the largest producer of Disney comics in the world, Egmont. The former editor at Gladstone, Byron Erickson, had started working for Egmont and he asked Bill to come and work for him, and the rest, as they say, is history. Talking about history, in the end of 1993 Bill started working on a project together with Carl Barks. Carl's story, "Horsing Around with History" is about the (as Carl put it) "only treasure Scrooge hadn't already found and explored." It was the first story Carl had written in approximately twenty years so his editors were kind enough to let him choose an artist. The artist Carl admired the most at the time was also the artist who ended up drawing the story, William Van Horn.
When the two first met to talk about the story, Carl said, "Bill, if this story becomes a success I'll get the honor for it, and if it become a failure, you'll be blamed for it."With Barks statement in mind, Bill accepted the offer. Barks was very fond of the drawings Bill did later on, and so were the fans when the story was published in the end of '94. The success was a fact, and Bill was more famous then ever before.
One way to do so is by looking at the ducks' facial expressions. Bill is probably the artist who has introduced the largest number of facial expressions for the ducks since Barks put away his pencils at the end of the Sixties.