The Pertwillaby Papers

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Don Rosa's Comics and Stories #1, featuring The Pertwillaby Papers.

The Pertwillaby Papers is an adventure comic drawn by the famous Donald Duck artist Don Rosa in the 1970s. The comic is about the adventures of Lancelot "Lance" Pertwillaby and his friends and colleagues around the world.

Rosa started drawing the comic in the Kentucky Kernal newspaper in 1971. At the time, it consisted of weekly, four- or five-panel episodes. At first, the comic was a political satire, according to the wishes of the newspaper editor, but when the newspaper changed editors, the comic became an adventure series. In 1973, the comic was paused.

In 1976, Rosa continued drawing the comic from episode #128 onwards, for the fanzine The Rocket's Blast Comicollector. He changed the comic so that it now consisted of about ten 8- to 12-panel pages per episode. A whole story consisted of five or six episodes. The Rocket's Blast Comicollector included episodes #128 through #140, which comprised two whole stories and one which was left unfinished.

Rosa stopped drawing the comic in 1979, because he was not paid for it and had begun to get bored of it. In the early 1980s he still drew one episode, number #141, to his unfinished story, but it was never published.

Except for one story, Rosa reused the basic storylines of his The Pertwillaby Papers stories in his Disney stories. The stories also include numerous scenes which can be found in his Duck comics.

1 Stories
2 Characters
3 The Don Rosa Archives 1 - The Pertwillaby Papers
4 External links
5 Sources

[edit] Stories

Episodes #1 through #127: Lost in (an Alternative Section of) the Andes - According to Rosa, this story consists of two separate stories, because it is divided so clearly between episodes #1-#65 and #65-#127, the political satire of Lance's admittance into college and his life there, and the treasure hunt to the Andes in the search of the Inca temple of Manco Capac, that it is more like a two-part story.
Rosa later remade this story into his first Duck story called The Son of the Sun.
Episodes #128 through #133: Sub-Zero - Lance, together with his friends and enemies, is searching for the sizeable art collection hidden in the North Pole by the Nazis.
Episodes #134 through #138: Vortex - Lance and the professor find and capture a black hole, and travel to the centre of the Earth.
Episodes #139 through #141: Knighttime - Lance is sent to King Arthur's time. This story was left unfinished.

[edit] Characters

Lancelot "Lance" Pertwillaby is the main character and Rosa's self portrait. He is a naïve young man who has managed to get into college for free, and doesn't have bad thoughts about anyone, not even Professor Smyte, who tried to kill him.
Feather Fluffnuthin is Lance's girlfriend, who was at first depicted as a dumb blonde, but later turned out to be a civilised personality who is smarter than Lance. Feather is present in many of Lance's adventures.
Viktor Domitrius Smyte is a professor in Lance's college, who is present in all of Lance's adventures as the main villain. He is a former Nazi German and has tried to kill Lance many times, because he fears he might uncover his past.
Schuyler Roatch III is Lance's roommate at the college. He doesn't like Lance, because his intellect and honesty deposed Schuyler as the most popular student. Schuyler works together with Professor Smyte, but doesn't want to kill Lance, instead he wants to embarass him and prove that he got into college fore free.

The Pertwillaby Papers also includes many supporting characters, such as Lance's best friend and ladies' man Freddie Kegg and Professor Artemis Phoebus. Every main character has a unique, personal speech bubble.

[edit] The Don Rosa Archives 1 - The Pertwillaby Papers

After the 1970s, The Pertwillaby Papers could no longer be read anywhere, until the Norwegian publishing company Gazette Bok published two books under the name The Don Rosa Archives, in both Norwegian and English, consisting of Rosa's older comics, one of which was The Adventures of Captain Kentucky, published after The Pertwillaby Papers. The Pertwillaby Papers book consisted of all episodes of the comic, including episode #141, which had never been published before. The book also has forewords by both Rosa and Professor Nils Lid Hjort.

A special edition was also made of the books, containing both books with Don Rosa's signature and a poster, where Pertwillaby and Captain Kentucky meet each other for the first time. The poster is also signed by Rosa and only 150 copies were made of it. Both books were also imported to Finland.