In 1991 he started creating The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, a twelve chapter story about his favorite character. The series was a huge success, and in 1995 he won an Eisner Award for best continuing series. After the end of the original series, Don started producing additional "missing" chapters. Some of the extra chapters were turned down by Egmont because they were not interested in any more episodes. Fortunately, the French publisher Picsou was eager to publish the stories. From 1999, Don started working freelance for Picsou as well. Some of these chapters were recently compiled as The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion.

For more information on Don see: Don Rosa

 Biography

In 1985, he discovered a Gladstone Publishing comic book in the window of a small comic shop. This was the first American comic book that contained Disney-characters after the 1970s. Since early childhood Don Rosa had been fascinated by Disney stories about Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck. Artist Carl Barks was an especially big idol for him and would remain so for the rest of his career. He immediately called the editor, Byron Erickson, and told him that he was the only American who was born to write and draw Scrooge McDuck comics. Byron agreed to let him send a story, and Don Rosa started drawing his first Duck story: Son of the Sun the very next day.

Son of the Sun was a huge success and was nominated for a Harvey Award. The plot of the story was exactly the same as his earlier story Lost in (an alternative section of) the Andes. As Don Rosa formulated it, he was just "(...) turning that old Pertwillaby Papers adventure back into the story it originally was in my head, starring Scrooge, Donald, the nephews, and Flintheart Glomgold."

Don Rosa did a few more comics for Gladstone till 1989. He then stopped working for them because the policies of their licensor Disney did not allow for the return of original art for a story to its creators. This was unacceptable to Don Rosa, since a part of his income came from selling the originals. Without that extra money, he could not make a living drawing comic books.

After making some stories for the Dutch publisher Oberon, the publishers of an American Disney children's magazine called DuckTales (based on of the animated series of the same name) offered him employment. They even offered him a much higher salary than the one he received at Gladstone. Don made just one script (Back in Time for a Dime). The publishers never asked him to make more, and due to problems with receiving the payment, he didn't care.

 His first real cartoon was a comic strip featuring his own character, Lancelot Pertwillaby. He created the strip in 1971 for The Kentucky Kernel, a college newspaper of the University of Kentucky which wanted the strip to focus on political satire.

Rosa later talked them into letting him feature adventures starring Lancelot Pertwillaby and drew the story Lost in (an alternative section of) the Andes. (The title is a reference to Lost in the Andes!, a Donald Duck story by Carl Barks, first published in April, 1949.) The so-called Pertwillaby Papers included 127 published episodes by the time Rosa graduated.

Meanwhile Rosa participated in a fanzine. His contribution was An Index of Uncle Scrooge Comics. According to his introduction: "Scrooge being my favorite character in comic history and Barks my favourite pure cartoonist, I'll try not to get carried away too much."

After receiving his bachelor degree, Rosa continued to draw comics as a side job. He did not earn very much though from his creations. His main source of income

 came from working in the Keno Rosa Tile Company, a company founded by his paternal grandfather and which had by that time been taken over by Hugo Rosa.

Rosa authored and illustrated the monthly "Information Center" column in the fanzine "The Rocket's Blast Comicollector" from 1974 to 1979. He also revived the Pertwillaby Papers from 1976 to 1978.

Rosa took a chance at more professional cartooning with his creation of the comic strip character Captain Kentucky for the Saturday edition of the local newspaper Louisville Times. Captain Kentucky was the superhero alter ego of Lancelot Pertwillaby. Publication started on October 6, 1979. The comic strip ended on August 15, 1982 after the publication of 150 episodes. After three years with Captain Kentucky, Don decided that it was not worth the effort. He retired from cartooning and did not draw a single line for the next four years. Years later, as his fame grew, his non-Disney work was published by the Norwegian publisher Gazette Bok in 2001, in the two hard-cover books The Pertwillaby Papers and The Adventures of Captain Kentucky.