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Okay these are just opinions. I happen to like Don Rosa's artwork. I think that Don choose not to put Rumpus on his Duck Family Tree because he doesn't think that he exists. Rumpus is not a creation of himself or Barks. He didn't even want to put Fethry on his tree but he did anyway because his publishers asked him to.

Quote from user: Gyro GearlooseIn my childhood I was a Rosa fanatic, but on reaching maturity I've realized that the minority that dislikes his stories have more right on their side.
I don't know about what has caused you to change your opinion over time, but my general impression is that many mature/grown-up people have a tendency towards forming their opinions, altitudes, manners etc. in order to gain accept from other people, and in particular from people that they see as some kind of idealistic and/or autorative. Thus changes in opinions, taste, etc. over time may as well be caused by one??s own expectations about other people??s expectations about these issues, than by growth in personal experience, knowledge and wisdom in general.

Quote from user: Gyro GearlooseTo being with, Rosa's artwork is rather unpleasant to look at; I believe Barks referred to it as being "outside the Disney tradition," or something similar.
May be so, and I think Rob once made the same notion, *but* he also agreed to my notion that there are others who are even more "off-model" than is Don Rosa. The most off-model Disney-artwork (page layout taken into account) is found within the modern day Egmont/Italian art. What I think about here is the (Marwell-inspired?) unbound page layout that I think was first introduced by Massimo Fecchi and later adobted by other Egmont-artists like Flemming Andersen Tony Bancells, Xavier Vives Mateu, Angel Rodriguez and Miguel Fernandez Martinez. I personally think that the worst (most extreme) cases of this "Disney Art Nouveau" could indeed be seen as "...rather unpleasant to look at..." and may "...induce discomfort in some readers...". I have however realized that the time is long gone when all Disney Art was supposed to look like Barks?? art, or follow some strict animational principles. There is no objective way of distinguish between good off-model art and bad off-model art ?? it??s all a matter of taste. From an *objective point of view* fanzine-/underground art is as good or as bad as any unbound page layout and other off-model styles.

Quote from user: Gyro GearlooseOnce introduced to Duck comics by Rosa, the whole continuity notion has gotten utterly out of control. The Barks/Rosa universe, a "universe" not at all of Barks' making, but somehow attributed to him, has even been imposed upon stories written before Rosa began his own stories--a case in point is Scarpa's "Secret of Success" story with Jubal Pomp--for its first American printing translator David Gerstein chose to make the secret of Scrooge's success a letter from Rosa's character Fergus McDuck, leaving me curious to know what Scarpa actually made the "secret" in the original story.
FYI: Scrooges father was actually introduced by Barks himself (in his unpublished Duck Family Tree) ?? Don Rosa only designed the character and gave him a real name, Fergus, besides the nick-name "Scotty" that was used by Barks.

Quote from user: GeoXI think you make some valid points here. Rosa's characterizations can be a bit one-note, and sometimes he wildly miscalculates what is funny and effective and what is not, with disastrous results--the abuse that Donald takes in "Escape from Forbidden Valley" is just horrifying, and the bit in "Last Lord of Eldorado" where we are given to understand that Scrooge is totally indifferent to Donald's potential death ruins the entire story for me. That said, when Rosa is On, he's REALLY On. The characterizations of Scrooge in "Return to Xanadu" and "Space Varmints" may be predictable, but I still find them highly effective, and, sentimental though it may be, the fact remains that, as far as I can recall, "The Old Castle's Other Secret" is the only duck story that has ever actually made me cry.

I can also see how the continuity could rub one the wrong way. I think you're somewhat misreading the Life & Times, however; especially in the later sections, I think the fact that Scrooge behaves in seemingly superhuman ways is meant to accentuate the fact that all this is more in the manner of legend than established fact. And really, you absolutely cannot blame Rosa if other writers felt constrained by his work.

I totally disagree about Rosa's artistic merit, though; sure, it's unusual for Disney comics, but there are Disney artists with all kinds of art styles, so I don't see the problem. And his positive obsession with cramming endless tiny details into his panels invests them with a level of depth and richness that is rarely seen in the medium, and can make even otherwise middling stories worthwhile. Now, if you just don't like his art, fine; there's nothing wrong with that, but this is one of those things where you can't present your subjective aesthetic sensibilities as objective fact.

Also totally disagree that Rosa isn't funny--he may be funny in a different way than his predecessors, but I find, for instance, his Scrooge vs. Magica stories--"On a Silver Platter," "A Matter of Some Gravity," "Forget it!"--to be hilarious, and the incidental details that he throws into his stories are often, to me, very funny.

Your post is certainly food for thought, however.
GeoX, I'd like to think that the Life and Times stories are intended to be taken in a tall-tale spirit, but when Rosa in stories like Last Sled to Dawson has a statue of Scrooge on the main street of Dawson, one is forced to conclude that, in Rosa's world, many of Scrooge's exploits did really happen. Personally, I prefer to picture the old-timers of the Klondike as being quite surprised to find that the miserly, cantankerous runt that they saw trudging down the street with a gold sack from time to time is now the richest duck in the world. In Barks' own North of the Yukon, Soapy Slick, who Rosa has made Scrooge's Klondike arch-enemy in Life and Time stories, seems quite unaware of his one-time antagonist's present-day wealth until he reads the Jolt! magazine article--which would hardly be the case if Scrooge had left the Yukon already famous.

I agree with some of your other points; while overall I found the Old Castle's Other Secret too self-conscious and too over-laden with real and pseudo-history, the showdown in the treasure room, with Scrooge rushing in front of Matilda to receive the villain's bullet, is indeed exciting and moving.

Actually, I didn't intend to say that Rosa can't be funny---what I meant was that his humor rarely comes from the characters, but from outrageous physical humor, which he can do quite well (particularly A Matter of Some Gravity and The Black Knight), but which can also miss the mark and be painful instead of funny, partly due to his over-realistic style. Donald's ordeal in the Forbidden Valley story is one of the worst examples, as you say, particularly when the hadrosaur forces him to eat a bug. The scene in which Donald gets dragged through the cactus field by the roadrunner is another bit too painful for humor, to my mind.

I think Fergus' name was introduced in Duck Tales 2 the video game but Don Rosa introduced the idea of him being Scrooge's father.

I think Scrooge was gleeful about burning those African villiages in Voodoo Hoodoo because he was potrayed more negatively after all Voodoo Hoodoo was written in 1949. Scrooge didn't have his own comic book yet at the time. These were more stereotypical times where rich people were potrayed as villians. Thankfully Barks later strayed away from that point in the early 50's when he made Scrooge a more sympathetic character. The reason he felt remorseful in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Part 11 was because he didn't want to make Scrooge a full fledged villian because that would have ruined the image that he had over the years and it would have confused modern readers.

Quote from user: Gyro GearlooseSigvald, I think I should be allowed to express rational criticisms of Rosa without being psychoanalyzed by you.
Sorry! My comment was not at all meant to be psychoanalytic. Please take a look at my comment again, and you will see that it starts with the following very important sentence: I don't know about what has caused you to change your opinion over time. So, my comment was not about you in particular, it was meant to be very general in order to show that there are many reasons that people from time to time, change their opinions, altitudes, manners etc.

Quote from user: Gyro GearlooseIf I was trying to somehow curry favor with influential people, it'd be much more worth my time to join the far-more-numerous Rosa fans.
Being numerous is not necessarily the same as being influential. My impression is that the influential people in the Disney comics business, and people who were active Disney comics enthusiasts well before the Don Rosa era, not necessarily are enthusiastic when it comes to Don Rosa??s ideas about structure, continuity, etc. in the Duck universe. My guess is that people wanting to be noticed by these people easily would find it suitable to endorse these people??s opinions, altitudes, etc. connected to the Disney Ducks.

Please notice that my comments here are again only general.

This is just my wacky theory, but I just do like the Ducks, after they've had their adventures, tell their stories to the writers. Like in D 2005-002. They're writing it down, and give it to the illustators. So, every writer and artist has his own view of Duckburg and how the Ducks look like. The real Duckburg? Well, we'll never get to know. We can only guess. :)
And, this means that the colorers can only guess the colors. It's simple like that! :D

My views of a "universe" coincide with an artist/writer's views on the characters. To Barks, these details did not matter. He had no reason to believe that readers would notice or care. In his "universe" each story is self contained.
Don, writing for a different audience, was able to put a different spin on stories. That is his "universe".
At the end of the day, I find it kind of silly to argue what "did" or "did not" happen while discussing stories about talking ducks. Of course, none of it happened.