Rosa, Don 1951- (Keno Don Hugo Rosa)

PERSONAL:

Born June 29, 1951, in Louisville, KY; son of Hugo Rosa (a company president); married Ann Payne (a school teacher), 1980. Education: University of Kentucky, B.A., 1973. Hobbies and other interests: Gardening, bird watching, wildflower cataloguing, camping, collecting comic books and Donald Duck figurines, movie and television history, movie soundtrack recordings, and mystery and adventure hardbacks.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Louisville, KY. E-mail—donrosa@iglou.com.

CAREER:

Writer. Keno Rosa Tile, Inc., co-owner, 1973-86; comic book writer and illustrator, 1986—, principally working on Walt Disney Co. characters Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck for Gladstone, Gemstone, and Egmont Comics, then licensed by all other Disney comics publishers and published worldwide.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Eisner Award, best continuing series, 1995, for "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" series; Eisner Award, best writer/artist, humor, 1997, for various Donald Duck stories; International Grand Prize, Frankfurt Book Fair, 2005; ORLA Award, DR Television Network; Premio U Giancu Award, U Giancu and Rapallo Comics Festival; Yambo Award, Lucca Comics Festival; Best Cartoonist of the Year, Svenska Serieakadamins (Swedish Comics Academy) and Serieframjandets Unghunden (Swedish Literary Society); Sproing Award, Norsk Tegneserieforum (Norwegian Comics Forum); Haxtur Award, Gijon Comics Festival.

WRITINGS:

Author/illustrator of numerous "Donald Duck" and "Scrooge McDuck" stories in comic books, including The Son of the Sun; Nobody's Business; Mythological Menagerie; Recalled Wreck; Cash Flow; The Paper Chase; Fit to Be Pied; Fir-Tree Fracas; Oolated Luck; Last Sled to Dawson; Rocket Reverie; Fiscal Fitness; Metaphorically Spanking; The Crocodile Collector; Fortune on the Rocks; Return to Plain Awful; TheCurse of Nostrildamus; His Majesty McDuck; The Three Caballeros Ride Again; The Beagle Boys vs. the Money Bin; The Crown of the Crusader Kings; Forget It!; Gyro's First Invention; The Master Landscapist; On Stolen Time; The Duck Who Fell to Earth; Treasure under Glass; Return to Xanadu; Incident at McDuck Tower; The Island at the Edge of Time; Super Snooper Strikes Again; War of the Wendigo; Of Ducks, Dimes, and Destinies; Guardians of the Lost Library; From Duckburg to Lillehammer; The Duck Who Never Was; The Treasury of Croesus; The Universal Solvent; An Eye for Detail; The Lost Charts of Columbus; The Incredible Shrinking Tightwad; Hearts of the Yukon; The Once and Future Duck; The Tenth Avatar; A Matter of Some Gravity; The Last Lords of El Dorado; The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff; Attack of the Hideous Space-Varmints; A Little Something Special; W.H.A.D.A.L.O.T.T.A.J.A.R.G.O.N.; The Black Knight; The Sign of the Triple Distelfink; The Cowboy Captain of the Cutty Sark; The Dutchman's Secret; Escape from the Forbidden Valley; The Quest for Kalevala; Attaaaack!; The Sharpie of the Culebra Cut; The Coin; Gyro's Beagletrap; Well Educated Duck; Forget Me Not; Leaky Luck; Give Unto Others; On a Silver Platter; The Pied Piper of Duckburg; Back in Time for a Dime!; Trash and Treasure; and The Money Pit."

Author/illustrator of"The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" series of stories, including The Last of the Clan McDuck; The Master of the Mississippi; The Buckaroo of the Badlands; The Raider of the Copper Hill; The New Laird of Castle McDuck; The Terror of the Transvaal; Dreamtime Duck of Never Never; The King of the Klondike; The Billionaire of Dismal Downs; The Invader of Fort Duckburg; The Empire Builder from Calisota; and The Richest Duck in the World. Also author/illustrator of Captain Kentucky and The Pertwillaby Papers, Fantagraphics.

SIDELIGHTS:

Don Rosa grew up in Kentucky reading the comic books created by "Duck Man" Carl Barks. Little did Rosa know, when he was a youngster doodling his own comics and a college student drawing comics as an avocation, that he would someday take Barks's torch and write and illustrate Scrooge McDuck comics of his own. Rosa co-owned a successful tile company in Kentucky until 1986, when he saw a Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck comic in a store and wrote to Gladstone Publishing with proposals for other Scrooge stories. Within a year Rosa was creating Scrooge comics full time, and he has since received two Eisner Awards for his original work on the series. Rosa's work is particularly popular in Europe, but his fan base is widespread in the United States as well, as he is perceived as a thoughtful, story-oriented artist who has enlarged Scrooge McDuck's history while remaining faithful to Barks's original conceptions of the character, his cohorts, and his milieu.

On the D.U.C.K.man Web site—one of many online sites dedicated to Rosa and his work—editor Byron Erickson commented on Rosa's contributions to Scrooge. "A Don Rosa story cannot be confused with a story by someone else," Erickson wrote. "Don's passion came through loud and clear in ‘The Son of the Sun,’ and it has continued to shine bright and clear in every story he's done since then. It's what makes them so memorable, not his great plots or his funny gags or his nifty lines of dialogue. We can tell just by reading one page that he puts his heart and soul into his work."

Rosa is perhaps best known for his "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" series of comics that trace Scrooge's life from his birth in 1867 through to his first meeting with Donald Duck in 1947. Through a dozen stories in this series, Scrooge engages in adventures in Mississippi, Texas, Montana, Scotland, the Transvaal, and the Yukon—to name a few of his destinations—attempting to amass the fortune for which he later becomes famous. In an online interview with Didier Ghez on Pizzaro.net, Rosa said: "If ‘Life of Scrooge’ is all ONE story, that's my favorite. But still, generally speaking, I dislike most all my work as a rule. I'm sometimes pleased with the overall, general result, but embarrassed by the amateurish particulars of the art or script."

Rosa's self-assessment is not shared by those who publish his work, or by his fans. One Web site estimates that he receives as many as thirty e-mails a day from readers, and he frequently attends comics conventions in the United States and abroad. One favorite hallmark of his work is his crafty, secret incorporation of the initials D.U.C.K. into the cover art or the first page of each of his comics. The initials stand for "Dedicated to Unca Carl from Keno," and they serve as his unofficial signature, as signing Disney comics is not allowed. A cult has grown around the D.U.C.K. phenomenon as comics fans search each new Rosa title for the hidden acronym.

Rosa's work, although not as widespread in the Americas as it is in Europe, Asia, and Africa, often receives positive reviews from critics. Regarding "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" series of stories, Blake Petit called it "one of the best comic book stories ever told," in a Comixtreme.com review. He went on to say that "in addition to being a simply beautifully-written story, Rosa's artwork is superb as well." On a ShakingThrough.net review, Kevin Forest Moreau called the same series "an immensely readable, family-friendly coming-of-age story about a classic character."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

ONLINE

Another Rainbow Publishing Co. Web site,http://www.brucehamilton.com/anotherrainbow/scroogelist.html/ (April 9, 2004), "A True Life Chronology of Scrooge McDuck."

Comic Book Resources,http://www.comicbookresources.com/ (August 13, 2004), review of "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" series; (May 30, 2006), review of "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" series; (July 26, 2006), review of "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" series.

Comixtreme.com,http://www.comixtreme.com/ (December 30, 2006), Blake Petit, review of "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" series.

D.U.C.K.burg,http://www.duckburg.dk/ducks/ (April 9, 2004), information about Rosa and bibliography of his comics; (December 30, 2006), Eirik Visted, "Donald's Rescuer."

DuckHunt,http://www.duckhunt.de/ (December 30, 2006), author profile.

D.U.C.K.man,http://duckman.pettho.com/ (August 12, 2003), "Introduc(k)tion to Don Rosa."

DuckMania,http://www.duckmania.de/ (December 30, 2006), Jano Rohleder, review of "The Money Pit."

Dynamic Forces,http://www.dynamicforces.com/ (December 30, 2006), Joe Rybandt, review of "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" series.

4th Rail,http://www.thefourthrail.com/ (August 22, 2005), Randy Lander, review of "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" series.

Lambiek.net,http://www.lambiek.net/ (August 12, 2003), brief biography of Rosa.

Nostalgia League,http://www.thenostalgialeague.com/ (December 30, 2006), review of The Pertwillaby Papers.

Perunamaa,http://www.perunamaa.net/ (December 30, 2006), author profile.

Pizarro.net,http://pizarro.net/didier/ (August 19, 2003), Didier Ghez, "Interview with Don Rosa."

popimage,http://www.popimage.com/ (December 30, 2006), Alex Bernstein, review of "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" series.

ShakingThrough.net,http://www.shakingthrough.net/ (January 31, 2006), Kevin Forest Moreau, review of "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" series.

SilverBulletComicBooks,http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/ (December 30, 2006), Gearalt Finlay, author interview.