Post by djnyr on Nov 26, 2020 17:13:45 GMT
I should probably qualify the "kid-unfriendly" remark; Rosa himself is always adamant, to an almost comic extent, that he does not write for children. Unlike Barks, he is also not very good at portraying children, either; Barks' nephews are heroic and wise, but always retain recognizably childlike flaws and quirks. Rosa's are such mature little paragons, particularly in his later stories, that his occasional attempts to have them act like "real kids" (their reaction to the Cleopatra revelation in "Guardians of the Lost Library", for example) feel oddly out-of-character.
However, although Rosa is always at pains to disavow kid readers and doesn't like to write about kids, I agree that his work has great appeal to some kids; I myself was Rosa-obsessed during my childhood. I think he appeals to the strong urge in many kids to enter a coherent, fully constructed world with every character's personality, history, and family connections carefully catalogued and documented. I was also obsessed with the chronology of the English kings, the Sherlock Holmes "canon," and with Tolkien's works during my childhood, and I think Rosa had a similar appeal to me.
I will agree that Rosa is much more sincere than Angones, although I think Rosa also suffers from a less accentuated version of the same problem that damages New Ducktales--i.e., his humor is so abrasive and his character interactions so frequently reductive that his big sentimental scenes can seem a little jarring and unconvincing by contrast. A good example is the Donald versus Scrooge dynamic you mention; Rosa makes some emotional attempts to push the idea that Donald is morally superior to Scrooge, but this is undercut by Scrooge's witheringly sarcastic and contemptuous attitude towards Donald, the Nephews' almost invariably pitying but somewhat superior treatment of Donald (as opposed to Barks' nephews, who could be either skeptical or hero-worshipping about their uncle), and the brutal, unpleasant slapstick Rosa frequently subjects Donald to ("The Last Lord of Eldorado" and the "Escape from Forbidden Valley" are two of the worst examples).
However, although Rosa is always at pains to disavow kid readers and doesn't like to write about kids, I agree that his work has great appeal to some kids; I myself was Rosa-obsessed during my childhood. I think he appeals to the strong urge in many kids to enter a coherent, fully constructed world with every character's personality, history, and family connections carefully catalogued and documented. I was also obsessed with the chronology of the English kings, the Sherlock Holmes "canon," and with Tolkien's works during my childhood, and I think Rosa had a similar appeal to me.
I will agree that Rosa is much more sincere than Angones, although I think Rosa also suffers from a less accentuated version of the same problem that damages New Ducktales--i.e., his humor is so abrasive and his character interactions so frequently reductive that his big sentimental scenes can seem a little jarring and unconvincing by contrast. A good example is the Donald versus Scrooge dynamic you mention; Rosa makes some emotional attempts to push the idea that Donald is morally superior to Scrooge, but this is undercut by Scrooge's witheringly sarcastic and contemptuous attitude towards Donald, the Nephews' almost invariably pitying but somewhat superior treatment of Donald (as opposed to Barks' nephews, who could be either skeptical or hero-worshipping about their uncle), and the brutal, unpleasant slapstick Rosa frequently subjects Donald to ("The Last Lord of Eldorado" and the "Escape from Forbidden Valley" are two of the worst examples).