Rosa's own li'l Universe

Matthew Williams kingofduckburg at apptechnc.net
Fri Apr 2 16:20:08 CEST 2004


I don't want fire to rain down upon me, so I want to preface this message by
saying that I like Rosa and his fine stories overall, but I disagree with
the dominant opinions prevailing on the group concerning Rosa and canon.

Let me start off with a brief anecdote.  A couple of days ago, I was
checking out the "Jump the Shark" webpage.  If you're not familiar with the
site, it's a place where readers can post their own opinions about when
television shows "jumped the shark" (or went off course from a quality
standpoint).  On the DuckTales page, someone wrote:

"For those interested,Scrooge McDuck immigrated from Scotland with his two
sisters,Hortense and Matidla,in the early 20th Century.While he was going
all over the world building an empire his sisters stayed in Duckburg.Matilda
married Ludwig Von Drake.Hortense married Quackmore,son of Dabney and Elvira
Duck-farmers.They had twins,Donald and Della.Della later married a duck
named Daniel and they had triplets,Huey,Dewey and Louie.In Uncle Scrooge's
later years he tested the bravery of Donald and his nephews-and then took
them on all kinds of adventures."

The point I want to make here is that even if Rosa wants to confine his
ideas and character developments to his own universe, his fans are largely
not willing to do the same.  Heck, his ideas about Ludwig Von Drake haven't
even been put into a comic, but many, many fans accept the idea as duck fact
(pardon the silly word choice).  I'm amazed by the number of websites I've
seen that describe Ludwig as Scrooge's brother-in-law.

Rosa wrote Scrooge's biography (one of the most popular and acclaimed series
of Disney stories ever).  He filled in details about what Scrooge and Goldie
's relationship that Barks didn't touch.  He gave Helper an origin story.
He changed the citizens of Plain Awful.  If another creator, even the great
Van Horn I imagine, were tempted to deal with any of these originally Barks'
properties, fans would be outraged if the creator just overlooked Rosa's
developments.

What I originally loved about Rosa's work was that he brought stricter
continuity to the ducks.  Almost twenty years later, I'm not 100% happy that
parts of the duck world have permanently changed.  I'm not seething with
rage.  The ducks affect my daily, "real," life little, but I've been a fan
all of my life, and I dislike some of the ways the characters and storylines
have been closed or changed forever.  I wonder now if a certain lack of
continuity or at least the loose continuity that Barks worked under might be
preferable to all of this nailing down of dates and "facts" that this group
and Rosa's stories often engage in.

Matt




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