Keno Don Rosa is the duck universe's greatest comic book Storyteller since Carl Barks. His reverence for Barks' work has taken him beyond 'just' making stories in Barks' spirit, but especially his long Scrooge adventure stories are loaded with more or less subtle references to The Good Artist. This page will present you to a single fraction of Rosa's work, where some of the artifacts from Barks' stories are on display in Scrooge's office just to make you aware of the underlying themes that are frequently seen in Rosa's opuses.
This website has no intention of making a more or less complete walkthrough of Rosa's multiple hidden Barks references (there are plenty of websites dealing with this topic), but dedicated fans are aware of his use of Barksian objects, revival of specific characters such as Glittering Goldie and Flintheart Glomgold, sequels to old Barks stories, and Rosa's special dedication to his idol, a dedication that had to be well hidden in order not to be discovered and consequently removed by the Disney company which does not approve of personal messages in their stories*. (Rosa is also known for his multiple references to subjects outside the duck universe such as historic events and persons, films, and hidden Mickey Mouse's.)
So, you are required to browse this page as only one single example of Rosa's use of Barks' stories, in this case a condensed display of some of Scrooge's many artifacts. If you are interested in further studies of these and other objects this website has several pages to offer; The Gold Stories, The Memorabilia, The Treasures, and The Valuables are examples.

* Rosa showed his dedication to Barks' stories in a great number of ways in his own duck stories. Fans of Rosa know all about his special D.U.C.K. dedications, which occurred in most of the stories' opening splash pages as an integrated - and extremely well hidden - part of an object or another graphic detail. The abbreviation is an acronym for Dedicated to Unca Carl from Keno, and proves Rosa's great veneration for Barks and his work.

 

 

 


D90314 Return to Xanadu
Rightmost part of the opening splash panel (page 1, panel 1)

The story is a sequel to U$06 'Tralla La', but already in the first panel we find one example of Rosa's inventive thinking. Scrooge proudly shows the Ducks a few shelves containing some of the artifacts he has brought home through time, but, according to Rosa himself, the shelves stretch much further to the right. This is indicated by the vase-like object on the top shelf which is nothing but a prop (or a filler) with no special connection to any Barks story.
It is very important not to necessarily take the colours used for the artifacts at face value. The colouring has always been done by artists who may have had little interest (or experience) in doing an exact job, which sometimes results in surprising colours. For instance, the stone to the right on shelf one was never golden, and the gems seen on shelf number three are obviously diamond-shaped and the natural colour to use would have been white instead of green.

 

TROPHY RUNDOWN


Goose Egg Nugget
from
FC0456 Back to the Klondike
Treasure Chest
from
FC0189 The Old Castle's Secret
Magic stone
from
U$10 Fab. Philosopher's Stone

Candy-striped Ruby
from
U$41 The Status Seeker
Jason's Golden Fleece
from
U$12 The Golden Fleecing
Earthquake Trophy
from
U$13 Land Beneath the Ground
Conquistador Helmet *
from
U$26 The Prize of Pizarro

Gold Bars **
from
U$25 The Flying Dutchman
Bejewelled Gold Crown
from
U$14 Crown of Genghis Khan
Jewels ***
from
U$37 Cave of Ali Baba

Chest of assorted Gold Coins ****
Desert Sand *****
from
U$19 The Mines of King Solomon
1916 Quarter
from
U$05 'Atlantis'

 

COMMENTS

* Barks never indicated that Scrooge returned with this artifact, but he could easily have sent for it upon his return.

** The stack of gold might also have originated from U$46 Lost Beneath the Sea.

*** Barks made several adventures with jewels involved, but the origin of these is Rosa's own suggestion.

**** Could have come from a great number of stories. Rosa: That’s just supposed to be some unknown coin treasure since there’s a nephew head in the way and it would have looked bad if the hidden object had been something more complex.

***** Rosa wanted to show something from that particular story, because it is one of his favourites. As Scrooge came out of the story empty-handed the contents of the pail is symbolic. The lumpy texture of the sand also seems to indicate that it might be the special variety used for glass production from a specific sand quarry.

 

 
http://www.cbarks.dk/THEHIDDENREFERENCES.htm   Date 2010-04-12