In the first place it may sound a bit strange to use quantitative methods in order to analyse Don Rosa's style. There are however two aspects of his style that very well can be analysed by these methods. These are the changes of the average story length, and the changes of the average number of panels in each story-page. Whether stories are well drawn and/or have great plots is still up to each and every reader to decide for him self, no counting can ever decide that. In this part of this section both the mentioned aspects will be analysed - first separately, and finally in relation. Other countable aspects of Don Rosa's style that can be analysed quantitatively in the future are such as the frequency of hidden Mickey's, Barks references, various characters, etc.

When dealing with the average length of Don Rosa's stories I have excluded the one-pagers. These are: Leaky Luck (1988), Gyro Beagletrap (1995) and the extra gag done for the Finnish "The Quest for Kalevala" book (1999). This exclusion has been done because the length of these stories represents an extreme low value that would have an unproportionately huge impact on the final result if included in the calculation.

Analysis 2.a - Changes in the average story length

Years Average story length 1986 14,0 1987 13,3 1988 8,0 1989 16,8 1990 13,9 1991 18,3 1992 17,7 1993 16,8 1994 21,4 1995 25,3 1996 24,6 1997 18,0 1998 24,0 1999 22,5 2000 19,0 2001 21,8 2002 25,0

Graph 4: Changes in the average story length The numbers showing the changes in the average story length, seems to be close to what one could expect. During the pre-Egmont years (1986-1990) Don Rosa did many short stories partly because of the pay situation at Gladstone. When he joined Egmont, the economic situation improved. However Don Rosa still had to follow Egmont's, by then, pretty strict restrictions for maximum story length. Long stories was normally supposed to be 3 x 8 (later changed to 2 x 12) = 24 pages, and at lest the one-part chapters of Lo$ was supposed to be maximum 15 pages. This seems to explain that he average length of his stories stayed below 20 pages until Lo$ was finished in 1993. After then Don Rosa concentrated more about doing longer stories. All additional Lo$ chapters are thus long stories. Around 1999 Egmont's rules concerning the maximum story length was eventually liberalized, probably due to the increased number of pages in Egmont's weeklys in many countries by then. That, however, doesn't seem to have influenced much on Don Rosa's average story length. This is explained by a change in the story pattern, from a typical length of 24 pages for most of Don Rosa's stories during the last half of the 1990's, to a larger variety in the length of his stories from ca. 1999.

Analysis 2.b - Changes in the average story length II

Periods    Average story length 1986-1989 12,3 1987-1990 12,6 1988-1991 13,7 1989-1992 16,5 1990-1993 16,5 1991-1994 18,4 1992-1995 19,4 1993-1996 21,4 1994-1997 22,5 1995-1998 23,2 1996-1999 22,6 1997-2000 20,7 1998-2001 21,8 1999-2002 21,4

Graph 5: Changes in the average story length When using the moving average principle as presented here, on the story length data, we can see a long-time increasing trend from the beginning in 1986 until well into the mid 1990's. Afterwards the average story length seems to have stabilized just over 20 pages. This development can also help explain Don Rosa's reduced production the later years, since many of Don Rosa's longer stories have required a lot of research in order to get them historically and otherwise correct.

Analysis 2.c - Changes in the average number of panels per page

Years Panels per page 1986 7,8 1987 7,4 1988 7,3 1989 7,4 1990 7,3 1991 7,5 1992 7,9 1993 8,3 1994 8,3 1995 8,6 1996 8,8 1997 9,4 1998 8,8 1999 10,3 2000 8,9 2001 9,7 2002 9,6

Graph 6: Changes in the average number of panels per page If one looks at a page from Don Rosa's first story; "The Son of the Sun" (1986) and at one page from one of his recent stories like "The Crown of the Crusader Kings" (2001), there is at least on obvious difference in the style - the number of panels in each page. All Rosa's stories are drawn in the so-called 4-tier (=four rows of panels in each page) format, but during the years Don Rosa has almost developed his own style by often using more than the traditional two-panels-per-row standards). The only reason known for this is that he often got 60-page ideas which have to be compressed into the half or so number of pages. Increasing the number of panels in each page is an effective and obvious way to do that. The results of analysis 2.c show that the increment in the average number of panels in each page, seems to have started at about the same time as Don Rosa joined Egmont. As mentioned earlier Egmont used to have pretty strict limits for the length of the stories done for them. This may be an important reason for the change in Don Rosa's style during the 1990s. By increasing the number of panels in each page he could still make longer plots fit into Egmont's strict frames. The figure above also shows that the average number of panels seems to have stabilized after Egmont liberalized these rules around 1999. The same year the average number of panels in each page reached its peak, at least so far. Another momentum behind the development towards a higher average number of panels in each page since around 1990, is that Don Rosa in the same period has been doing fewer, but longer stories than in the early years of his artist-career. This means fewer half page splash-panels, which has a decreasing effect on the average number of panels in each page.

Analysis 2.d - Changes in the average number of panels per page II

Periods    Panels per page 1986-1989 7,5 1987-1990 7,4 1988-1991 7,4 1989-1992 7,6 1990-1993 7,8 1991-1994 8,0 1992-1995 8,2 1993-1996 8,5 1994-1997 8,7 1995-1998 8,8 1996-1999 9,1 1997-2000 9,3 1998-2001 9,4 1999-2002 9,6

Graph 7: Changes in the average number of panels per page When using the moving average principle as presented here, on the average number of panels in each page data, we can see a stabile situation with only minor changes until the early 1990's. Ever since then there seems to have been a gradually increment of the average number of panels in each page. But as we know from analysis 2.c; the top-point so far when it comes to average number of panels in each page of Don Rosa's stories, was reached in 1999, so we can expect that this curve has reached its peak so far.

Analysis 2.e - Story length vs number of panels per page

Periods    Average story length Panels per page 1986-1989 65,5 89,5 1987-1990 67,1 88,3 1988-1991 72,9 88,3 1989-1992 87,8 90,7 1990-1993 87,8 93,1 1991-1994 97,9 95,5 1992-1995 103,3 97,9 1993-1996 113,9 101,4 1994-1997 119,8 103,8 1995-1998 123,5 105,0 1996-1999 120,3 108,6 1997-2000 110,2 111,0 1998-2001 116,0 112,2 1999-2002 113,9 114,6 Graph 8: Story length vs number of panels per page When comparing the changes in the two aspects of Don Rosa's style that we have analysed here; the average story length, and the average number of panels in each story-page this is done using the moving average principle as presented here. The graphs above show that average story length increased faster than the average number of each story-page, but the direction of the changes seems to have gone same way most of the time. And as mentioned before; there is at least one factor indicating at least some correlation between the two aspects of Don Rosa's style - longer stories means less splash-panels. The methods The raw-material Don Rosa's productivity Art: Don Rosa. Text and graphics: Sigvald Grøsfjeld jr. Layout: Sigvald Grøsfjeld jr.. Note: The copyrights to all art in these pages are held by Walt Disney Co.