Don Rosa article

Ad Astra per Elmo morrow at physics.rice.edu
Fri Apr 29 21:18:23 CEST 1994


>From the [Louisville Kentucky] Courier-Journal, Sunday, 3 April 1994.
Reprinted without permission.

				Comic Art

Louisville cartoonist finds fame in Europe with Uncle Scrooge

by Vince Staten (special writer)

At a Norwegian convention center, the tall bearded man can't walk the halls
without being besieged for autographs.  Fans flood around, just to get a
glimpse; reporters trail, asking question.

    No, he's not an Olympic ski champion or luge hero.

    He's Louisville's Don Rosa.

    Rosa, who doesn't even get so much as a second look when he roams the
aisles of a local Kroger [sic], is treated like an Olympic champion in many
European countries.

    What's going on?

    Rosa writes and draws Uncle Scrooge comics for a European comic-book
publisher.

    Rosa is an international star among comics fans--and there are millions
of them in Europe.  They love his unique rendering of Scrooge McDuck,
Donald's rich uncle.  They adore his recent 12-part history of Uncle
Scrooge.  And they appreciate his encyclopedic knowledge of comics, comic
characters and comic artists.

    If the name Don Rosa sounds familiar, it should.  Rosa, a Louisville
native, has been part of the local pop-culture scene for two decades, since
returning to town after his graduation from the University of Kentucky in
1973.  He was a regular guest on Milton Metz's WHAS radio show, answering
trivia questions.  He's a regular at comics conventions and shows.  And
he's probably best-known for his Captain Kentucky comic strip, which ran
for three years in SCENE in the early 1980s.  

    Best-known for Captain Kentucky until now.  Now it is his Uncle Scrooge
comics that are bringing him renown.  

    Rosa started drawing Uncle Scrooge for Gladstone Comics in 1987.  How
he got the job is a story in audacity.

    ``A little tiny company in Arizona got the Disney license because
nobody in America wanted it anymore,'' he says.  ``I saw one of the comics
in a bookstore in '86.  So I called up the company and told them I was the
only person who was supposed to write Uncle Scrooge.  It was my manifest
destiny.''

    He explained how he had been an Uncle Scrooge fan since he was old
enough to turn the pages of a comic book.  He told them he owned every
Uncle Scrooge comic published.  The audacity worked, and the next day he
was at work on his first Uncle Scrooge story, ``The Son of the Sun.''

    Although comic books continued to be popular in Europe, they had all
but disappeared in America, supplanted by ``collectible'' superhero
adventure comics.

    Until 1986 that is, when four Disney comics fans in Arizona formed
Gladstone Comics--named for good luck for the character Gladstone
Gander--and snared the Disney license for America.  They then landed Rosa
to draw and write for them.

    Rosa turned out Uncle Scrooge comics for Gladstone for two
years--``until Disney started screwing around with them, telling them
things, like they couldn't return my artwork.  I needed the artwork (to
sell to collectors) because I didn't make that much off the comics.  When
they told them not to return the artwork, I had to quit.''

    Since Rosa had liquidated his family business, the old Keno Rosa tile
company, he needed to find work.  So he did--with Disney.

    ``I did a little writing for Disney animation,'' he says.  ``I wrote
the two first episodes of `Tale Spin.' '' ``Tale Spin'', based on ``The
Jungle Book'', is an animated TV show, part of Disney's syndicated
afternoon cartoon block that runs in Louisville on WBNA-21.

    ``It was a good job; it paid real well,'' Rosa says.  ``But there were
too many fingers in the pie.  And I never intended to be a TV screenwriter
anyway.  People try for years, and here I fell into it.  I didn't enjoy
it.''

    In the meantime, he was contacted by a Denmark-based publishing
company--``Egmont, founding 125 years ago by Egmont Peterson.''  Rosa stops
to chuckle at the cartoon-sounding name of Egmont Peterson.  ``It's a
worldwide business,'' he continues.  ``They didn't name it `Peterson'
because that sounds funny in some languages.  `Egmont' only sounds funny in
English.''

    Egmont held the European license to Disney comics, and once again Rosa
was writing and drawing his childhood friend Uncle Scrooge.

    ``Before, they would never have given me a chance because my artwork is
very un-Disney.  But they saw how popular the Gladstone comics were and
asked me to draw Uncle Scrooge.''

    he has been drawing Donald's rich uncle for Egmont since 1990.  And it
has brought him fame--in Europe--if not necessarily fortune.

    ``I figure I am the best-selling, most-famous, least-paid artist in the
world because Disney takes all the money for itself.  There is no royalty. 
It gets frustrating, but I knew that's the way it would be so I can't
complain.  It's just great to be able to do something that's so much fun
for a living and get paid fairly well.''

    Nowadays, Rosa says, a typical issue of Uncle Scrooge will sell 50,000
copies in North America.

    ``When I was a kid, it sold 3 million,'' he says.  ``In Norway it's
still published weekly.  They'll sell a quarter of a million a week. 
Norway is about the size of the state of Kentucky.  So to sell a comparable
amount, it would have to sell 70 million in America.  That's not going to
happen.''

    <Picture of Don Rosa head and shoulders> [announcement of autograph
session]

<sidebar>
    Uncle Scrooge visits River City [Louisville] at Derbytime

    Don Rosa's latest Uncle Scrooge project, ``The Life and Times of
Scrooge McDuck,'' is a 12-part history of the wealthy duck.

    ``Part of their charm is they go on years and years and never change,''
he said of the Disney characters.  ``These stories aren't designed to
change them but to show how they got where they are.''

    Rosa says his interpretation of Scrooge's history is ``based 100
percent'' on the Uncle Scrooge comics that artist Carl Barks drew from 1947
until 1973.  

    ``There may be one sentence buried on Page 6 of an old issue that said
Scrooge was on a gold rush to Taboolie.''

    Rosa takes that one offhand remark and turns it into part of the Uncle
Scrooge history.

    The series takes Uncle Scrooge from age 10 to the present, the present
being the 1950s.  He says most of his Uncle Scrooge stories take place in
1955--``that's when...I was first reading them.''

    Uncle Scrooge's history even include Louisville.

    I knew that in the 1880s Scrooge had worked on riverboats, probably for
his Uncle Pothole McDuck on the Mississippi,'' Rosa says.  ``I needed to
start someplace in the United States on the Mississippi.  So the first
place he stops upriver is Louisville, where he knows his Uncle Pothole is.

    ``It's Derby Eve 1880, the sixth annual Kentucky Derby, and he finds
his uncle in the Galt House.  That's where he meets the Beagle Boys, who
are attracted to Louisville during Derby week.''

    Rosa says he devotes four pages to Uncle Scrooge's Louisville
adventures in the Scrooge history.  ``And when they leave Louisville, they
head to Monkey's Eyebrow downriver.''

    Gladstone Comics of Arizona publishes Rosa's Uncle Scrooge comics for
U.S. distribution.  The first installment of ``The Life and Times of
Scrooge McDuck'' was featured in ``Uncle Scrooge No. 285.''  The second
installment, in issue ``Uncle Scrooge No. 286,'' features Scrooge's early
adventures in Louisville.  It has just arrived in comics stores.

<Roughs and first draft dialog and finished panels for three Louisville
panels from Lo$>  Caption:  Don Rosa' work for ``The Life and Times of
Uncle Scrooge'' begins with the captions and roughs of the artwork.  Then
he supplies the finished artwork, and someone else copies in the captions.
--
"An idealist is one who, on noticing a rose smells better than cabbage,
concludes that it will also make better soup."--H.L.Mencken
  
elmo (morrow at physics.rice.edu,morrow at fnal.fnal.gov)



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