Legendary American comic creator Don Rosa, best known for his hugely popular comics about Scrooge McDuck and other Disney animated characters, has announced he is returning to the convention circuit next year.
Don, now 74, announced the cancellation of his tour schedule for the foreseeable future in September, because of his wife Ann’s failing health. Sadly, his life partner of 45 years, her life already impacted by the cruelly of Alzheimer’s, fell victim to an inoperable cancer last month, passing at home on 15th October.
Don announced her death this weekend through a message posted to his official Facebook page by his admin and editor, Jano Rohleder, explaining the circumstances of his disappearance from the convention circuit to his thousands of fans, particularly France, Germany and Italy, including those disappointed he had unexpectedly had to cancel a much anticipated appearance his long-planned European signing tour.
In his post, Don, who created about 90 stories featuring Disney characters between 1987 and 2006, including his Eisner Award winning 12-chapter work, The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck in 1995, released in a deluxe edition by Fantagraphics in 2022, detailed the circumstances of his wife’s sad but swift passing, coming to terms with that – and in the knowledge he faces a few difficult months ahead, dealing with finance and legal issues coming at him right and left.
“Having no family to help me out it’s rather daunting,” he admits. “I’m making my way through it slowly. But I have procrastinated long enough in replying to all the well-wishes that have flooded in from literally around the world.
Don explained how, after being diagnosed with cancer, Ann’s decline was rapid, her Alzheimer’s seeming to increase exponentially such that “I lost any meaningful communication with her within the first weeks. Then she became catatonic, then comatose.
“Two weeks ago as I write this, on the 15th of October, while a Hospice care-giver was with Ann, I was on a run into town for stronger pain medicine that we thought she needed badly. Before I reached town, the c-g called me and simply said I should turn around and come back home. I knew what that meant.
“I think I’m glad that I wasn’t there to see Ann die. But I was still able to kiss her still-warm face at the end.”
Don Rosa is one of the world’s most popular cartoonists. First active in comics as the independent creator of Captain Kentucky and The Pertwillaby Papers, Don Rosa made his jump to official Scrooge sagas with the launch of Gladstone Publishing, the watershed 1980s publisher of fan-friendly Disney comics titles.
Rosa later switched to producing Duckburg comics for the pan-European publisher Egmont, leading to his capturing a remarkable international fandom. Many of his stories are built on characters and locations created by Carl Barks, Don continuing the duck universe of his idol with his stories about Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck and the Beagle Boys Inc.
Adored for his detailed duck adventures his biography, The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, earned him immortality and an Eisner Award, the world’s most prestigious comics prize.
He married Joyce Ann (nee Payne) Rosa on 21st June 1980, on the beach in Clearwater, Florida, “with bare feet and in shorts, I with no shirt, by a notary public. No one else present. And, by choice, no offspring. We were both independent souls and had only each other. But Ann enabled me to have a worldwide family.”
Paying a heartfelt tribute to his late wife, Don explains how, in addition to supporting his promotional tours, even though she rarely joined him, except in the 1990s, “there is something even more important that Ann did for me that I have frequently mentioned in interviews. In a way, I owe my entire Duck career to Ann.
“I had a very comfortable (but boring) life at the Keno Rosa Co. commercial construction company that my Grandfather Keno founded in 1905 shortly after he moved to America. But in 1987 I decided I’d rather create Barks’ Duck comics for the new Gladstone Comics company. At the time, I had no idea that those Barks Ducks were still the best-selling comic books on this planet. All I knew was that they disappeared from this continent [America] about ten years earlier.
“Gladstone could not pay much for new stories… they were intended to be an all-reprint publisher. So, I knew that if I closed the Keno Rosa Co. my income would drop from being in the top 10% of the national income levels to the bottom 10%, below poverty level for a two-person household.
“Why and how could I do that?! As to why… the chance to fulfill a childhood dream causes people to do reckless things. But as to how… because Ann was a schoolteacher. She had a modest income, but a rock-solid job, and said she would support us while I actually lived the dream of my lifetime. If not for my wife Ann, you would never have heard of me.
“That is the sort of unselfish and brave lady Ann was. And it’s what she was doing for me right up until the end when I had to ‘call her bluff’ as regards her health, cancel all remaining planned 2025 trips, and stay home to care for her as she had cared for me for over 45 years…
“… Ann knew from the first time we met how important comics were to me in my troubled childhood, and she also knew what a gloriously happy change it was in my life when, at middle age, I suddenly stumbled into being able to fulfill my childhood dream of creating stories of Barks’ Ducks. She was as grateful as I have always been for that impossibity coming true, and apparently she did not want even her current state of health to have a negative effect on so many other people’s lives. She also admitted that she had always been fearful of being left all alone in this remote and isolated house. But she had never even hinted that she wished I should stay at home and not travel to shows and signing tours.”
Thanking fans for their expressions of sorrow, it’s clear Don feels Ann’s swift passing was in some ways a mercy and her suffering was not drawn out. “You should save your condolences for individuals or couples, of whom there are surely many,” he urges, “who must go through that Hospice process for perhaps years rather than just seven weeks as Ann and I did.”
Our condolences to Don at this time, and we wish him well over the coming months, as he and Jano resolve family matters, and prepare for the creator’s return to the road in 2026.
Currently, it seems likely this will begin with Kansas City Planet ComiCon show (27th – 29th March), followed by a long-planned three to four country European tour in April and May.
“I look forward to seeing many of you old friends yet again, and making new friends as well,” says Don. “Or should I say family members?”
Joyce Ann (nee Payne) Rosa 25th July 1950 – 15th October 2025
• Follow Don Rosa on Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Appearance Schedule
• Don Rosa – I Still Get Chills!: The Amazing Life and Work of Don Rosa was published by Edition Lammerhuber in 2017 (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
• The Complete Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Deluxe Edition (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
From his shoe-shining boyhood in Glasgow, Scotland, to his gold-hoarding adulthood in Duckburg, Calisota, Uncle Scrooge McDuck has lived a life of legend… a legend founded by Scrooge’s creator Carl Barks and carried on in Don Rosa’s signature series, “The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck!” Now join Scrooge, Flintheart Glomgold, Goldie O’Gilt, and more for the most amazing edition ever of Scrooge McDuck’s biography. The original twelve chapters — and the many “in-between” chapters and related stories — and every last cover and pin-up are all in this money bin-sized book… the definitive Scrooge McDuck for longtime fans and collectors
With thanks to Dean Simmons
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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