The time Don Rosa explored publishing

I sometimes wonder where Don Rosa would rank worldwide in popularity as a cartoonist. Particularly if you took the United States out of the equation lol

Don Rosa is justifiably considered to be one of the best creators of Disney Duck comic books. And it is hard to discuss his work without also discussing Carl Barks (who _defined_ Disney Duck comic books) or without discussing Duck Tales or without describing his magnum opus, the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.  

But earlier drafts ended up being bloated and, even by my standards, rambling and incoherent. And I probably got lots of details wrong. So I am just going to touch on his Uncle Scrooge story Guardians of the Lost Library.

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The Guardians of the Lost Library features Uncle Scrooge and grandnephews Huey, Dewey and Louie going on a globe trotting adventure to rediscover the Library of Alexandria. In regular history, it was destroyed but there are hints that it survived in the Duck version of the universe.

What unfolds is actually a history of the development of written information. Uncle Scrooge and his nephews discover that each version of the library was condensed and added to by developments in publishing. We go from papyrus scrolls to published books. Each set they find has been destroyed by time but hints are left to guide them further.

The ultimate reveal is that the most recent version of the Library of Alexandria is the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, the closest thing Disney has to the Necronomicon. It had already been well established as a repository of all knowledge and a Deus ex Mechina that let the nephews get the ducks out of any crisis.

Before I read the story, I already knew about that and I thought that was the point of Guardians of the Lost Library. Instead, Don Rosa explores both how we wrote stuff down and how that affected history. The bit about the guide is just the cherry on top.

Despite being a globe-spanning adventure, Guardians of the Lost Library is a thoughtful work without a lot of blatant conflict. No villains like the Beagle Boys or Magica De Spell. Instead Scrooge and the boys have to deal with forces of time that decayed the various forms of the library and ignorance, embodied by Donald spending the entire story watching TV.

Wikipedia states that the Comic Buyer’s Guide allegedly mentions it as ‘possibly the greatest comic book story of all time’ but with a note stating citation needed. Yeah, that’s a bit much. I wouldn’t describe it as even Don Rosa’s best work. (The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck easily hold that title but it’s also twelve stories, not counting later companion stories, so you can accuse it of cheating lol)

With that said, the Guardians of the Lost Library is fun and charming. It’s a lesson both in history and why people love Don Rosa.