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Mickey Mouse was an American newspaper comic strip by the Walt Disney Company, featuring the character Mickey Mouse. It is the first published example of Disney comics. The strip…
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Mickey Mouse was an American newspaper comic strip by the Walt Disney Company, featuring the character Mickey Mouse. It is the first published example of Disney comics.
Mickey Mouse was an American newspaper comic strip by the Walt Disney Company, featuring the character Mickey Mouse. It is the first published example of Disney comics. The strip debuted on January 13, 1930, and ran until July 29, 1995. It was syndicated by King Features Syndicate until 1990, when Disney switched to Creators Syndicate, which distributed the strip until 2014 (in reruns after 1995).
The early installments were written by Walt Disney, with art by Ub Iwerks and Win Smith. Beginning with the May 5, 1930, strip, the art chores were taken up by Floyd Gottfredson (often aided by various inkers), who also either wrote or supervised the story continuities until 1943 (relying on various writers to flesh out his plots). Starting in 1943, Bill Walsh became the comic's sole writer, with Gottfredson continuing to provide art. Gottfredson continued with the strip until 1975.
By 1931, the Mickey Mouse strip was published in 60 newspapers in the US, as well as papers in twenty other countries. Starting in 1940, strips were reprinted in the monthly comic book Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, and since then Gottfredson reprints have become a staple of Disney comics publishing around the world.
Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse, a definitive collection of Gottfredson's work, was published by Fantagraphics Books from 2011 to 2018. There are fourteen volumes in the set—twelve books of the daily strips from 1930 to 1955, and two volumes of Gottfredson's Sunday pages from 1932 to 1938.
A Mickey Mouse comic strip was suggested by Joseph Connolly, the president of King Features Syndicate, in a July 24, 1929 letter to Disney animator Ub Iwerks: "I think your mouse animation is one of the funniest features I have ever seen in the movies. Please consider producing one in comic strip form for newspapers. If you can find time to do one, I shall be very interested in seeing some specimens." The Disney team was busy producing new cartoons, but by November, samples of the new strip were approved by the syndicate. The comic strip launched on January 13, 1930, written by Disney himself, with art by Ub Iwerks.
The strip begins with young Mickey as an optimistic, imaginative young mouse living on a farm, and dreaming of becoming a great aviator like his hero, Charles Lindbergh. In a sequence based on the 1928 short Plane Crazy, Mickey puts together a homemade plane, and takes a flight with his girlfriend Minnie. She falls out of the plane, and Mickey travels through a storm to land on a deserted island, inhabited by fierce natives who want to cook him alive.
As these first strips were being released in January 1930, Iwerks left the Disney studio, signing a contract with Disney competitor Pat Powers to leave Disney and start an animation studio under his own name. Win Smith, who had been inking the strips, took over the pencilling as well with the February 10th strip. Smith left the studio in April after a fight with Disney, who wanted him to take over writing the strip. As a "temporary replacement", Disney asked a young inbetweener at the studio named Floyd Gottfredson to fill in. Gottfredson's first strip was published on May 5, and he took over the scripting two weeks later. He would continue as the creative force of the strip for more than 45 years.
While the early months of the strip did have a loose plot, the pace and style were still the standard gag-a-day approach to comic strips. With adventure and daily continuity strips like The Gumps and Wash Tubbs becoming increasingly popular, King Features Syndicate asked Disney to make Mickey Mouse a more serious adventure strip.
This led to the first adventure storyline, "Mickey Mouse in Death Valley", which ran from April 1 to September 20, 1930. The story—begun by Smith, and continued by Gottfredson—involves a crooked lawyer, Sylvester Shyster, and his thuggish associate Peg-Leg Pete, who kidnap Minnie in order to find a map to her Uncle Mortimer's hidden gold mine in Death Valley. Mickey and Minnie race Shyster and Pete to the desert, to lay claim to the mine. The story runs through a number of Western melodrama tropes—a desperate horse chase, gunplay, a crusty old sheriff, the heroine getting locked up in a jail cell, the hero unfairly branded an outlaw. Over six months, Gottfredson made it clear that Mickey Mouse could deliver action and thrills.
In a 1931 publicity stunt, Mickey—just crowned boxing champion in the strip—had his photograph taken, and then encouraged readers to send a stamped, addressed envelope to him care of the newspaper to get a copy. Gottfredson painted a "photo" that was printed on cards and sent out to the readers. According to a Disney press release, they received more than 20,000 requests for the picture, demonstrating the strength of the strip's appeal.
An early 1932 story, "The Great Orphanage Robbery", is seen as a milestone in Gottfredson's increasingly sophisticated storytelling. To raise money for an orphans' home, Mickey and friends stage a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin, but when the play is over, they discover that the money has been stolen. The thieves are Shyster and Pete, returning to the strip after a year and a half, but they manage to place the blame on Mickey's friend Horace Horsecollar, who's thrown in jail. Mickey chases after the villains, but his disappearance puts suspicion onto him as well. In the second volume of the 2011 reprint collection, comics historian Thomas Andrae describes the resulting storyline:
Gottfredson's newfound mastery of the serial format is evident in nearly every strip of "Orphanage Robbery". First we are enticed into the story by following Mickey's attempt each day to increase the running total
Source: Mickey Mouse (comic strip) (CC BY-SA)
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The next story, "Mr. Slicker and the Egg Robbers", included a sequence in which Mickey, convinced that Minnie has thrown him over for a rival, spends a week attempting suicide. He tries shooting, gassing, drowning and hanging himself, before he decides that he's overreacting and gives up on the idea.
