Don Rosa - Master of art and storytelling

In 1990, the first Don Rosa Duck-story appeared in Kalle Anka & C:o (the Swedish weekly). It was Mythological Menagerie (AR 104), and it appeared in the very first issue that year. I had never seen anything like it before! Another seven stories by the same artist (by that time I didn't know his name) followed in Kalle Anka & C:o that same year, and I got very fond of the art - real art! - and the fascintating storytelling. I recall having lots of trouble describing what made it outstanding from the art of other Duck stories. It was not untill many years later when I first heard Don's own description of his art - "needless and irritating detail", that I really understood what made it so special. Before that I called it "home made" because it looked much like a hobby-made comic (which it in a way was).
After a few years, I got to know Don by his name. When The Son of the Sun (AR 102) appeared in KA #28/92, I both got to read a very short biography of him (only a few lines), and that this was his very first Duck-story. As time went by, this story grew to be my absolute favorite for its splendid story- telling, the atmosphere and the scenery - and the art. By then I knew I was a Rosa-fan, and ever since I've collected everything I could that has to do with Don Rosa. Ehm, what is of *importance* to me as a collector, of course. ;-)


Who is this Don Rosa-guy anyway?

Don Rosa is a lifelong Louisville (Kentucky, USA) resident, who always has had a considerable weakness for comics. Beginning as a six year old he has also always written and drawn his own comics of various kinds and quality, and for the past ten years he has been writing and drawing "Duck-stories", published in the United States and in Europe.
Rosa is a figure nearly as fantastic and surprisingly obscure as Uncle $crooge. He's a great artist and a brilliant story-teller, and his work sells literally millions of copies around the world. His trips abroad amount to a media sensation. In Europe, Don is mobbed like a Rock Star. And yet he is virtually unrecognized in his home country, let alone his native city Louisville - except perhaps for "Captain Kentucky", a topical comic strip he drew for three, according to himself, increasingly frustrating years in the early '80s for SCENE magazine.
He may also be the most professionally fulfilled man in Louisville. Rosa says he loves doing his job, and he's convinced that it's his manifest destiny to write and draw Uncle $crooge.
Rosa started off as a comic book collecting brick layer, worked his way up, and is now making a living as, in many peoples' opinion, the greatest Duck-cartoonist since Carl Barks...


Other sources on Rosa on the net


Curiosa Rosa

My original intention was to have an archive here with 'rare' Rosa-stuff, but due to the lack of a scanner I can't add much at the moment. But more is to come, just be patient!



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