Don Rosa's grandfather, Gioachino Rosa, lived in Maniago, a small village at the foot of the Alps in Northern Italy, in the province of Pordenone. He emigrated to Kentucky, United States around 1900, established a successful tile and terrazzo company, then returned to Italy to marry and start a family. In 1915 just after the birth of his son Ugo Rosa, Gioachino returned to Kentucky with his wife, two daughters and two sons. Ugo Rosa grew up and was later married in Kentucky. His wife was born to a German American father and a mother with both Scottish and Irish ancestry.

Don Rosa was born Keno Don Hugo Rosa on June 29, 1951 in Louisville, Kentucky. He was named after both his father and grandfather. Gioachino was called "Keno" for short. Don's father was named Ugo Dante Rosa, but used the name "Hugo Don" Rosa in America.

Don Rosa was exposed to comics at a very young age, as his 11-years-older sister was a comics hoarder, and had thousands of comics for Don to look at and later read. Rosa began drawing comics before being able to write. Until high school his featured characters were a large cast of stick figures featured in comedy-adventures like the Barks comics and old movies Don enjoyed most. He never tried to draw more than stick figures because the drawings, for him, were illustrations to get the story told. Only the story was important to him, not the actual drawings. His favorite comic books growing up were Uncle Scrooge by Western Publishing and Little Lulu comics from Dell Comics (Western Publishing), and his sister's collection of MAD comics and magazines. When he was 12 years old he also discovered and enjoyed the Superman titles by DC Comics of the editor Mort Weisinger period. When he became a serious collector of older comics, he particularly enjoyed the classic E.C. horror and science fiction comics of the 1950s, Will Eisner's The Spirit, Walt Kelly's Pogo, and most comics of the 1940s onward.

Rosa entered the University of Kentucky in 1969. He graduated in 1973 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in civil engineering.

His first published comic (besides the spot illustrations in his grade school and high school newspapers) was a comic strip featuring his own character, Lancelot Pertwillaby entitled “The Pertwillaby Papers”. 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 switched the strip to comedy-adventure which was his favorite style of comics, 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 in 1973.

Meanwhile Rosa participated in contributing art and articles to comic collector fanzines. One 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 his bachelor degree, Rosa continued to draw comics purely as a hobby, his only income came from working in the Keno Rosa Tile Company, a company founded by his paternal grandfather and which had 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. This was a question-and-answer feature dealing with readers' queries on all forms of pop entertainment of which Rosa was a student, including comics, TV and movies.. He also revived the Pertwillaby Papers in this "RB-CC" fanzine a comic book style story rather than a newspaper comic strip from 1976 to 1978.

By now having become a locally known comics collector and cartoonist, Rosa accepted an offer from the editor of the local newspaper to create a weekly comic strip. This led to 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. The pay was $25/week and not worth the 12+ hours each week's strip entailed, but Rosa did it as part of his hobby. 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 "Don Rosa Archives" volumes, The Pertwillaby Papers and The Adventures of Captain Kentucky.

Gladstone

In 1985, he discovered a Gladstone Publishing comic book. This was the first American comic book that contained Disney characters since the 1970s. Since early childhood Don Rosa had been fascinated by Carl Barks' 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 one Scrooge McDuck adventure. 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 success and Rosa’s very first professional comic story was nominated for a Harvey Award “Best Story of the Year”. The plot of the story was the same as his earlier story Lost in (an alternative section of) the Andes. As Don Rosa explained 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."

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, and the original art is the property of the freelance artists unless otherwise agreed upon. 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.

Egmont

After working with the DuckTales magazine, Rosa found out that the Danish publisher Egmont (at that time called Gutenberghus) was publishing reprints of his stories and wanted more. Rosa joined Egmont in 1990. Two years later, at Don's suggestion, Byron Erickson, the former editor at Gladstone also went to work for Egmont and has been working there as an editor and later as a freelancer.

In 1991 he started creating The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, a twelve chapter story about his favorite character. The series was a success, and in 1995 he won an Eisner Award for best continuing series. After the end of the original series, Don sometimes produced 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 magazine Picsou was eager to publish the stories. From 1999, Don started working freelance for Picsou magazine as well. Some of these chapters were recently compiled as The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion.

On strike

During early summer 2002, Rosa suddenly laid down work. As an artist he could not live under the conditions Egmont was offering him, but he did not want to give up making Scrooge McDuck comics either. So his only choice was to put down work for a while and try to come to an agreement with Egmont. His main issues were that he had no control over his works. Rosa had discovered too often that his stories were printed with incorrect pages of art, improper colors, poor lettering, or pixelated computer conversions of the illustrations. Another matter was that his name was used in promotion of books and collections of stories without his agreement and without sending royalties to him. Rosa has never, to this day, received a penny in royalties for a single use of any of his stories worldwide.

He came to an agreement with Egmont in December of the same year, which gave him a bit more control over the stories and the manner in which they were publicized.

Retirement

Rosa's eyesight had been very poor since his childhood. In 2006 and 2007 he began having new difficulties which made drawing a very slow and tedious process for him, even more so than normally. In March 2008 Rosa suffered a severe retinal detachment and underwent emergency eye surgery that ultimately proved to be not completely successful. Further surgery in both eyes made drawing even more difficult. On June 2, 2008, during an interview at the Danish Komiks.dk fair, Don stated that he would not do any more Disney comics, citing eye troubles, low pay, and the constant use of his stories in special hardback or album editions by international Disney licensees without any payment of royalties or requests for permission for the use of his name.

Rosa is popular with readers in Europe. He considers himself rather obscure in his native United States. According to him, even his next-door neighbor does not know his profession.

Rosa married schoolteacher Ann Payne in 1980. They have no children. They live in a log house on a 25 acre (10 hectare) nature preserve in the Kentucky hills near Louisville, the maintenance of which now takes up most of the retired couple’s time.

In Europe, Rosa is recognized as one of the best Disney comics creators. Carl Barks and Rosa are some of the few artists who have their name written on the covers of Disney magazines when their stories are published. His stories are very easily recognized due to his unique drawing style, his pictures being extremely detailed. Rosa enjoys including subtle references to his favorite works of fiction as well as his own previous work. He normally uses about 12 frames per page, instead of the more common 8. He needs to use the extra frames because his stories usually are too long to be published if he does not minimize them.

Rosa has an especially large following in Finland, and in 1999, he created a special 32-page Donald, Scrooge, Gearloose & nephews strip for his Finnish fans; Sammon Salaisuus (translates to The secret of the Sampo, but it is officially named The Quest for Kalevala Scoop - Where the Magic of Collecting Comes Alive! - Don Rosa and The Quest for Kalevala in English), based on the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. The publication of this story created a national sensation in Finland where Donald Duck and the Kalevala are important aspects of culture. It was published in many other countries as well. The cover for the comic book was a spoof of a famous painting by Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

Drawing style

With a bachelor of arts degree in civil engineering as his only real drawing education, Rosa has some unusual drawing methods, as he writes himself: "I suspect 'nothing I do is done the way anyone else does it." Because of being self-taught in making comics, Rosa relies mostly on the skills he learned in engineering school...which means using technical pens and templates a lot. He applies templates and other engineering tools to draw curves, circles and ovals. He usually drew just under a page per day, but that depended on the amount of detail he puts in the picture.

Rosa's drawing style is considered much more detailed and "dirtier" than that of most other Disney artists, living or dead, and often likened to that of underground artists, and he is frequently compared to Robert Crumb. When Rosa was first told of this similarity, he said that he "drew that bad" long before he discovered underground comics during college. He went on to explain these similarities to underground artists with a similar background of making comics as a hobby:

"I think that both my style and that of Robert Crumb are similar only because we both grew up making comics for our personal enjoyment, without ever taking drawing seriously, and without ever trying to attain a style that would please the average comics publisher. We drew comics for fun!"

Carl Barks

Rosa's idol when it comes to comics is Carl Barks. Rosa builds almost all his stories on characters and locations that Barks invented. Many of Rosa's stories contain references to some fact pointed out in a Barks story. At the request of publishers in response to reader demands, Rosa has even created sequels of old Barks stories. For example, his Return To Xanadu is a sequel to Tralla La, where the Ducks return to the same hidden country. To add more to his admiration and consistency to Barks and Barks' stories, Rosa makes all his ducks' stories set in the '50s. This is because Barks writes most of the stories about Scrooge, Donald and all people of Duckburg in the '50s (it also conveniently resolves potential continuity problems, such as Scrooge's age). As explained in text pages in the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck and its companion volume, Rosa does intense research of time periods to ensure not only that he gets the physical details right, but also to ensure that all characters could have been present.

Barks either created most of the characters used by Rosa or is credited for greatly developing their personalities. Rosa thus feels obliged to make his stories factually consistent. He has spent a lot of time in making lists of facts and anecdotes pointed out in different stories by his mentor. Especially The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck was based mostly on the earlier works of Barks. Rosa admitted however that a scene of the first chapter was inspired by a story by Tony Strobl.

As most of the characters Rosa uses were created by Barks, and because Rosa considers Scrooge rather than Donald to be the main character of the Duck universe, he does not regard himself as a pure Disney artist, nor the characters really as Disney's. “Rosa prefers to say that the characters he uses are Barks’, Barks having reshaped Donald Duck’s personality and creating everything else we know of Duckburg while working as a freelancer in 1942—1967 for an independent licensed publisher (Dell/Western Comics). Barks even claimed to have also created Huey, Dewey and Louie while working as a writer on Donald Duck animated cartoons in 1937.” Because of his idolization of Barks, he repeatedly discourages his fans to use an absolutist way of saying his clearly different drawing style would be better than Barks's, and he found that notion confirmed when Barks himself spoke about Rosa's style in a critical tone though it is uncertain whether those comments were Barks' or those of his temporary "business managers" who filtered his communications.

Beside Rosa's constant effort to remain faithful to the universe Barks created, there is also a number of notable differences between the two artists. The most obvious of these is Rosa's much more detailed drawing style, often with many background gags, which has been credited as being a result of Rosa's love of the Will Elder stories of MAD comics and magazines.While Barks himself discouraged the use of extreme grimacing and gesturing in any other panel for comical or dramatic effect, Rosa's stories are rich with colorful and bizarre facial renditions and physical slapstick. Barks had over 600 Duck stories to his name while Rosa only created 85 until his eye trouble set in, but whereas Barks made many short one and two-pagers centered around a subtle, compact gag, Rosa's oeuvre consists almost exclusively of long adventure stories.

D.U.C.K.

Most Rosa stories have the letters D.U.C.K. hidden in the first panel. Rosa's covers also usually have D.U.C.K. in them. This is an acronym for Dedicated to Unca Carl from Keno. Because Disney would not allow for personal signatures in the comics, and thought that D.U.C.K. looked too much like one, Don Rosa has made a habit of hiding the letters in various unlikely places. Many of his readers have made a sport out of finding them. D.U.C.K.' is in most cases hidden in the very first image, on the first page of the story. D.U.C.K. is also often hidden in Rosa's cover-art, which he makes for his own stories and reprints of old Carl Barks stories.Almost every time Rosa gets an article about him in the weekly Disney comics (at least in European editions), the D.U.C.K. - dedication is mentioned.

Mickeys

Another curiosity is his Hidden Mickeys. Rosa is only interested in creating stories featuring the Duck family, but he often hides small Mickey Mouse heads or figures in the pictures, sometimes in a humiliating or unwanted situation. An example of this is in the story The Terror of the Transvaal where a flat Mickey can be seen under an elephant's foot. This is mostly a gag done for the fun of it. Rosa has admitted to neither liking nor disliking Mickey Mouse, but being indifferent to him.

In the story Attack of the Hideous Space-Varmints, the asteroid with Uncle Scrooge's money bin on it crashes into the Moon along with two missiles, creating a large Mickey Mouse head on the surface. When Huey, Dewey and Louie tell Donald that the missiles hit the "dark" (far) side of the Moon, Donald is thankful no one is going to see it - "For a minute there, I thought we were going to have some legal problems."

In the second Rosa story featuring The Three Caballeros, Donald Duck is shocked by the sight of a capybara standing on its hind legs, with shrubs, leaves and fruit in front of its body, coincidentally making it look like Mickey Mouse. José Carioca and Panchito Pistoles, never having seen Mickey Mouse, ask Donald what is wrong, but Donald replies he is just tired. Later in the same story the Caballeros free several animals from a poacher and one panel shows the animals flee. Mickey can be seen among them.

In The Quest for Kalevala this running gag can be seen on the original, Akseli Gallen-Kallela -inspired cover art. In the original work, Louhi is depicted as bare-chested, but the Disneyfied version has been drawn a top, of fabric patterned with Mickey Mouse heads.

His work has won Rosa a good deal of recognition in the industry, including nominations for the Comics' Buyer's Guide Award for Favorite Writer in 1997, 1998, and 1999. Heidi MacDonald of Comics Buyer's Guide also mentioned Rosa's 1994 story Guardians of the Lost Library as "possibly the greatest comic book story of all time".

In 1995 he was awarded the Eisner Award for "Best Serialized Story" for The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.In 1997 he won an Eisner for "Best Artist/Writer - Humor Category".

His story The Black Knight GLORPS Again! has recently been nominated for the Eisner Award 2007 in the category Best Short Story. The D.U.C.K.man - A site dedicated to the greatest living Duck-artist: Don Rosa While The Prisoner of White Agony Creek, Rosa's latest Duck story to-date, was published in 2006, he has also been nominated for the 2007 Harvey Awards in five categories (more than any other creator for this year) for Uncle Scrooge comics: "Best Writer", "Best Artist", "Best Cartoonist", "Best Cover Artist", and "Special Award for Humor in Comics." The Harvey Awards

International "Best Cartoonist of the Year" awards include:

• Germany: International Grand Prize 2005 (Frankfurt Book Fair).
• Denmark: ORLA Award (DR Television Network).
• Sweden:
• Svenska Serieakadamins (Swedish Comics Academy)
• Seriefrämjandets Unghunden (the Swedish Literary Society).
• Norway: Sproing Award (Norsk Tegneserieforum / Norwegian Comics Forum).
• Italy:
• Yambo Award (Lucca Comics Festival)
• Premio U Giancu Award (U Giancu & Rapallo Comics Festival).
• Spain: Haxtur Award (Gijon Comics Festival).

In 1997 the Italian publishing house Editrice ComicArt published a lavish volume about Don Rosa's biography and work related to the Disney characters. It was titled Don Rosa e il Rinascimento Disneyano ("Don Rosa and the Disneyean Renaissance") and written by famous Disney and Rosa scholars, Alberto Becattini, Leonardo Gori and Francesco Stajano. This work not only discusses all of Rosa's creative life up to 1997, but it also gives a comprehensive biography, lists up to that date his Disney work (for updated list, refer to List of Disney comics by Don Rosa) and presents an extensive interview with Rosa.

Danish director Sebastian S. Cordes is currently raising funds for the post-production of a documentary called The Life and Times of Don Rosa which finished shooting in 2009. The documentary consists of exclusive interviews with Rosa himself.