Don Rosa

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Don Rosa bigraphy, stories - Writer

Don Rosa : biography

June 29, 1951 –

Keno Don Hugo Rosa, known simply as Don Rosa, (born June 29, 1951) is an American comic book writer and illustrator known for his stories about Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck and other Disney characters. Many of his stories are built on characters and locations created by Carl Barks. He has created about 90 stories between 1987 and 2006. In 1995 he won the Eisner Award for "Best Serialized Story" for his 12-chapter work "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck".

His work

In Europe, Rosa is recognized as one of the best Disney comics creators. Carl Barks and Rosa are some of the few artists who have their name written on the covers of Disney magazines when their stories are published. His stories are very easily recognized due to his unique drawing style, his pictures being extremely detailed. Rosa enjoys including subtle references to his favorite works of fiction as well as his own previous work. He normally uses about 12 frames per page, instead of the more common 8. He needs to use the extra frames because his stories usually are too long to be published if he does not minimize them.

Rosa has an especially large following in Finland, and in 1999, he created a special 32-page Donald, Scrooge, Gearloose & nephews strip for his Finnish fans; Sammon Salaisuus (translates to The secret of the Sampo, but it is officially named The Quest for Kalevala in English), based on the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. The publication of this story created a national sensation in Finland where Donald Duck and the Kalevala are important aspects of culture. It was published in many other countries as well. The cover for the comic book was a spoof of a famous painting by Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

Drawing style

With a bachelor of arts degree in civil engineering as his only real drawing education, Rosa has some unusual drawing methods, as he writes himself: "I suspect nothing I do is done the way anyone else does it."  Because of being self-taught in making comics, Rosa relies mostly on the skills he learned in engineering school—which means using technical pens and templates a lot. He applies templates and other engineering tools to draw curves, circles and ovals. He usually drew just under a page per day, but that depended on the amount of detail he puts in the picture.

Rosa’s drawing style is considered much more detailed and "dirtier" than that of most other Disney artists, living or dead, and often likened to that of underground artists, and he is frequently compared to Robert Crumb. When Rosa was first told of this similarity, he said that he "drew that bad" long before he discovered underground comics during college. He went on to explain these similarities to underground artists with a similar background of making comics as a hobby:

"I think that both my style and that of Robert Crumb are similar only because we both grew up making comics for our personal enjoyment, without ever taking drawing seriously, and without ever trying to attain a style that would please the average comics publisher. We drew comics for fun!", translated back from Greek original article in Komix magazine #172, September 2002, translated by Kriton Kyrimis

Carl Barks

"I want to take everything Barks wrote and forge it into a workable timeline. My original dream was to become the new Carl Barks. I wanted to write, draw, and letter all my own stories. People tell me that my pencils look just like Barks, but my inks are pure Rosa, and I can’t letter properly! So I’ll have to settle for being Don Rosa." – Don Rosa in 1987

"Don Rosa has often been called the heir of Carl Barks, especially for the way in which he has carried on the Ducks’ Family Saga. But I don’t think so: in my opinion Don Rosa […] is an author who has used Barks’ characters to make stories that are completely new, ‘Donrosian’ rather than ‘Barksian’, just like Barks can’t be considered the heir of Al Taliaferro only because he has worked on the Ducks after him." – Carlo Chendi, Italian Disney comics writer (see Italian Wikipedia: Carlo Chendi)Chendi, Carlo. Don Rosa and me, in Castagno 2011, p. 17