Let's talk about Don Rosa

I was six years old when I read my first Don Rosa story. It was “Your Majesty, McDuck” in a Dutch translation published in Donald Duck Extra. This is an important fact, as I can recall at that point realizing that not all comics were equal. 

As every Dutch boy growing up I read Donald Duck comics weekly. Before the age of 10 I must’ve read thousands of longform stories, serials and gag comics in that magazine. Some of the stories not involving Disney characters were signed with author names, but any Disney ones were only signed with the Mouse creator himself: Walt Disney. Even they were kept a secret to assist the main company’s branding, there were two names that I became aware of as Duck artists in that time: Carl Barks and Don Rosa.

Before I tell you why we should talk about Don Rosa, I should probably talk in general about why comics are worthwhile to talk about at all. Most people still consider them a lowbrow form of entertainment, specifically the weekly and monthly periodicals that are made by artists-for-hire who in some cases are still left nameless. Some might have some higher aspirations for what they call “ Graphic Novels”, but that’s about as colonized by a certain taste as the Oscars nowadays. No chance you’ll see a proper adventure story in one of those, let alone one with funny animals not used as an allegory.

But to me, comics are the most important art form of the twentieth century. They are an art form that uses abstraction for clarity, but doesn’t lose itself in pointless forms. It keeps a figurative tradition alive, one that can call back and reference other famous art. It stands still, but shows movement at the same time. It is a universal form, with local adaptations from all over the world, while still being clear to any reader.

It has a history like any art form, with pre-historic forms, the “starting point” of The Yellow Kid, stylistic development through the century and the use of different media with different goals. There is a difference between how a newspaper comic is laid out, how a weekly magazine works and how comics are proliferating on the web. There is space for all subject matter, from the deeply personal to mainstream popcorn stories.

And in this, even when the name of the artist is obscured by contracts and branding, you can recognize the difference in a creator’s hand and the different quality between hands. Certain artists shine through even these conditions.

This leads us to someone we need to talk about before we can address Don Rosa. That man is Carl Barks. A man who in the anglophone world is probably the most underrated comic book artist in history. Compared to the very niche bombast of the superhero comic, which in the US has become synonymous with comics in general, artists who worked on different types of comics are generally unknown. But before superhero comics became basically the entire comics industry in the US, the so-called ‘Funny Animals’ comics were some of the biggest sellers. And while most of them were thoroughly generic material, aimed at giving children an additional chance to spend money on their favourite characters, Carl Barks created Duckburg and engrossed readers in stories about anthropomorphic ducks that adventured all over the world.

Those stories, while nearly forgotten in the US after the 60s ended, lived on in prints and reprints around the globe. Carl Barks, for most people who read Disney comics, is a recognizable name as “the good Duck artist”. Even to those who don’t know him, they probably known the famous Indiana Jones boulder chase scene, which was inspired by his story “ The Seven Cities of Cibola”. When all is said and done, he is possible one of the most-read and influential creators of the 20th century.

But, even though one of the greatest unsung heroes of comic books, Carl Barks had his limitations. Limitations of his time, not his talent. Comics were a quick, pulpy medium, produced to be read and discarded. While his stories stand head and shoulders above other production of the time, he himself did not see them as something that would last, or that would be reprinted for decades. Why should he? Reprints didn’t happen regularly, comics were printed on cheap paper with limited colours and once they were off the stands they were gone. His stories reflect this. There is exceptional world-building, but it’s a shifting world, where locations, periods and people shift for the needs of the story. It was meant to be easy to pick up and to follow along, without needing the previous issues or the next one for a conclusion.

There was no thinking of legacy. That would only come after.

This finally leads us to discuss Don Rosa. He read Barks in his youth, having his sister’s old comics collection to go through. He would start collecting and corresponding with others about comics. He would even create comics himself with The Adventures of Captain Kentucky and The Pertwillaby Papers.

But his story truly begins in 1987, when his Barks-inspired story “The Son of the Sun” debuts. It is a story in the exact style that Carl Barks would’ve written one of his Uncle Scrooge adventures, with one major difference: Don Rosa is aware of Barks’ work. The story plays out like it would for Barks, but there is a different quality to it thanks to the artwork. While the style would get more refined over time, the basics are there. Don Rosa’s work has more lines than any other Duck artist I’ve ever seen. Where others try to do the bare minimum of lines to be able to produce quicker or to keep more in the style of Barks, Don Rosa puts in a lot more lines that somehow work for him and give the artwork a specific, Don Rosian character.

Also, the faces of his Ducks are more expressive in a realistic way. Barks’ Ducks are expressive in the way one expects from comic book characters, but Rosa’s work has a more cinematic quality to it, especially in the moments where drama is increased. This adds a quality to the storytelling that somehow ups the stakes, even though it in structure stays a traditional Barksian Duck story.

As a child I could sense there was something different to Don Rosa’s stories. They felt more real, more serious somehow, but still entertaining in the way you would expect from a Duck comic. It was the right blend of humour, adventure and education. It, like Barks’ work in the 50s and 60s, stood miles above any other Duck artist. While they were printed in Disney magazines, they should be categorized with other works of similar quality.

And that is the problem: Don Rosa gets compared to Barks and maybe some other Disney artists, but he’s never really put into an analysis with other contemporaries. This is because as an American working for a European publisher, his work in his native country and native tongue did not get as much attention as it deserves. It also doesn’t help that most of his contemporaries from his language and region had completely devoted themselves to superhero comics.

Still it’s interesting to put Don Rosa next to men like Frank Miller and Alan Moore. All three in some way ‘reimagined’ the way their respective subjects were seen. All three in a way subverted the expectations of the stories that were told in comics. Miller and Moore are seen as the men who gave superhero comics a more literary respect. One could argue that Rosa’s work does something similar for Uncle Scrooge. His Life of Scrooge definitely plays with some loftier themes and even has an internal literary device: the completely fantasized life of dime novel hero Uncle Angus, who throughout the series functions as a sort of connector, where characters can be seen talking about or reading his dime novels, which makes the stories link up in more than just having the same characters. It makes it clear this is a rich world, with things going on you’re not seeing. It makes you yearn for the adventures not seen.

I think especially comparing and contrasting Don Rosa and Alan Moore makes sense. While both have a very different approach to the copyrights of their works with Moore being quite public about how he feels cheated out of his DC rights, Rosa’s public mentions of this seem to be more that he’s alright with the work-for-hire he consciously agreed to, but not as much with the use of his name as a promotional tool without his input. Both seem to not care as much about the financial side of their work as they care about being consulted and involved in how their work is presented. The legacy within the medium seems to be what drives both of them in their interactions with the industry.

That being said, I think there is a big difference in the way they approach their subjects that is very important in why I think Don Rosa is one of the most important comic book artists of the 20th century. Alan Moore, in his most famous works Watchmen and The Killing Joke, looked to deconstruct the superhero genre, to show what makes it unrealistic. It is revolutionary work, but it’s only looking to change characteristics of the dominant form in American comic books. Don Rosa’s work is trying to redefine what forms can be relevant.