Don Rosa: Difference between revisions

| notable works = {{unbulleted list|"[[The Son of the Sun]]" (1987)|''[[The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck]]'' (1992–94)}}

| awards        = [[#Awards|Full list]]

}}

Rosa created about 90 stories between 1987 and 2006, and in 1995 his 12-chapter work ''[[The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck]]'' won the [[Eisner Award]] for Best Serialized Story.

==Career==

===''The Pertwillaby Papers'' and early non-ducks work===

[[File:DonRosa-2.jpg|thumb|right|Don Rosa in his home in 2010|275px]]

Rosa created a few more comics for Gladstone until 1989. He then stopped working for them because the policies of their licensor, Disney, did not allow for the return of original art for a story to its creators.

===Egmont===

[[File:Drosa.jpg|thumb|Rosa making a drawing for a fan in Helsinki, Finland, in 1999]]

In 1991 Rosa started creating ''The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck'',<ref>{{cite web |title=Complete Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck |website=fantagraphics.com |url=http://www.fantagraphics.com/life-and-timesvol1/ |access-date=April 28, 2019}}</ref> a 12 chapter story about his favorite character. The series was a success, and in 1995 he won an Eisner Award for best continuing series. After the end of the original series, Rosa sometimes produced additional "missing" chapters. Some of the extra chapters were turned down by Egmont, because they were not interested in any more episodes. Fortunately, the French magazine ''[[Picsou]]'' was eager to publish the stories. From 1999, Rosa started working freelance for Picsou magazine as well. All of these chapters were compiled as ''[[The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion]]''.

Rosa, who had poor eyesight since childhood, experienced a severe retinal detachment in March 2008, which required emergency eye surgery. However, the surgery was only partially successful, and Rosa had to undergo further surgery in both eyes, making drawing even more challenging. In an interview at the Danish Komiks.dk fair on June 2, 2008, Rosa announced his decision not to continue creating comics due to various reasons such as his eye troubles, low pay, and the use of his stories by international Disney licensees in special hardback or album editions without payment of royalties or permission for the use of his name.<ref>[http://dcf.outducks.org/viewtopic.php?id=239&p=2 Message board post] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100329110205/http://dcf.outducks.org/viewtopic.php?id=239&p=2 |date=March 29, 2010 }} from Danish writer Lars Jensen, and [http://dcf.outducks.org/viewtopic.php?id=239&p=3 specifications] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110724063056/http://dcf.outducks.org/viewtopic.php?id=239&p=3 |date=July 24, 2011 }} by Sigvald Grøsfjeld jr., owner and maintainer of http://duckman.pettho.com/</ref>

Rosa is more popular with readers in Europe than in his native United States. According to him, even his next-door neighbors do not know his profession.<ref name="Perry">{{cite web|url=http://alumniweb.uky.edu/alumni/ukalumninet/ukalumni/pubs/pdf/Kentucky24-28.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101026113754/http://alumniweb.uky.edu/alumni/ukalumninet/ukalumni/pubs/pdf/Kentucky24-28.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-date=October 26, 2010|title=Linda Perry, "Going Quackers", ''The Kentucky Alumni'', Fall 2003, p. 26|access-date=June 9, 2016}}</ref>

==Personal life==

=== Character ===

===Hobbies===

Rosa also grows exotic chili plants and tends nearly 30 acres of a private nature preserve with wildflower fields and numerous forest trails. That and taking semi-annual European signing tours to visit his fellow BarksDucks fans, takes up all of his time. He is also working to complete his collections of all American comic books published between 1945 and 1970.<ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBpL3p8HAdc Don Rosa house tour 2 = Retrieved February 4, 2018</ref>

As most of the characters Rosa uses were created by Barks, and because Rosa considers Scrooge rather than Donald to be the main character of the Duck universe, he does not regard himself as a pure Disney artist, nor the characters really as Disney's. "Rosa prefers to say that the characters he uses are Barks's, Barks having reshaped Donald Duck's personality and creating everything else we know of Duckburg while working as a freelancer in 1942–1967 for an independent licensed publisher (Dell/Western Comics). Barks even claimed to have also created [[Huey, Dewey, and Louie]] while working as a writer on Donald Duck animated cartoons in 1937." Because of his idolization of Barks, he repeatedly discourages his fans to use an absolutist way of saying his clearly different drawing style would be better than Barks's, and he found that notion confirmed when Barks himself spoke about Rosa's style in a critical tone though it is uncertain whether those comments were Barks's or those of his temporary "business managers" who filtered his communications.

<blockquote>"Don Rosa has a style that is a little bit different from the Disney style. I know that there is a great deal of people that like that style, which is extremely detailed. So, there is room in the business for artists like Don Rosa and for others like [[William Van Horn|Van Horn]]. They have a different style. But if they have a good story and tell it properly, then people are going to like it." – Carl Barks, interview given at [[Disneyland Paris]], July 7, 1994<ref>Durand, Sébastien; Ghez, Didier (1994){{Cite web |url=http://didierghez.com/_private/interviu/barks.html |title=''Interview with Carl Barks'', by Sébastien Durand and Didier Ghez, July 7, 1994| access-date=March 4, 2013 |publisher=The Ultimate Disney Books Network}}</ref></blockquote>

In 1969, while still in college, Rosa won an award as "best political cartoonist in the nation in a college paper".<ref>Stajano, Francesco. ''Don Rosa interview: before the Ducks'', published in Castagno, Paolo (ed.; 2011). ''Don Rosa: A Little Something Special'', p. 37, published as a bilingual (Italian and English) print-on-demand book by www.papersera.net (no ISBN, but see http://www.papersera.net/papersera/DonRosa.php for information)</ref> "I'm not really an editorial cartoonist. I'd much rather be doing comedy adventure. But I must have done something right, for at one point ''[[The Journal of Higher Education]]'' named me one of the five or six best college newspaper cartoonists in the nation."<ref name="Blum">[[Geoffrey Blum|Blum, Geoffrey]] (1987). ''Portrait of the Artist as a Duck Man'', ''[[Uncle Scrooge]]'' #219, July 1987 (editorial to introduce Rosa to the readers, as part of the original publication of Rosa's very first Duck story, "The Son of the Sun").</ref>

International "Best Cartoonist of the Year" awards include:

==Biographies==

===United States===

* ''[[The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck]]''

* ''[[The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion]]''

===Other countries===

{|class="wikitable"

! Country !! Collection !! Year !! Remarks

[[Category:American people of Irish descent]]

[[Category:American people of Italian descent]]

[[Category:Artists from Louisville, Kentucky]]

[[Category:Writers from Louisville, Kentucky]]