I love spelunking in the deep caverns and catacombs of pop culture and much of what we know of modern pop culture has its beginnings in the Depression Era of the 1930's. None more than my subject today and for the next several Sundays, the might Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse was the creation they say of Walt Disney and that's true to a degree though we all know that Ub Iwerks designed the character and many other artists and animators helped define his personality in cartoons and ultimately in comic strips. The Disney behemoth pushes the myth relentlessly that it is largely the product of one man's imagination. Not all unlike the Star Wars franchise and the Marvel Comics franchise, both of which have been consumed by the Disney corporate leviathan. Star Wars always pushes that George Lucas was the brains and while he was the inspiration and guiding hand, he hardly did it alone nor could he have done. Likewise, people foolishly believe that Stan Lee manufactured the Marvel Universe which we know is not the case, at least on his own. Both of these stalwart brands thrive because of the work of thousands of other talents but the myth of singular creation lurks at their base, and that's true of the Walt Disney myth as well. Walt has been dead for over half a century and the Disney monster has shambled well past his wildest imaginings. But it did start with a Mouse, or that's what they'd like you to believe.
Actually, it started with a rabbit -- one Oswald Rabbit. But Disney was scammed out of his creation and so thunk up another critter named ultimately Mickey Mouse. Mickey became a sensation, timed perfectly to seize the day when sound motion pictures were ascendant.
Then it was success on success and the public wanted more and King Features demanded more when they said give us a comic strip. And it was made so. Now the strip in its beginnings was indeed written to some degree by Disney and drawn by Iwerks among others, but it found its footing and its ultimate success in the capable hands of Floyd Gottfredson who took the wheel and didn't let go for forty-five years, some of those years after Mr. Disney himself had shaken off this mortal coil.
In the early years of the strip there was a logical connection of the strip to the cartoons and so it's logical that the first strip by folks other than Gottfredson used
Plane Crazy as a template or at least a spur for the more developed comic story. Some of these earliest strips are included in this debut volume from Fantagraphics in the supplements section which is quite impressive. We get a good look at the art by Ub Iwerks for the story on which Walt Disney himself did contribute. But their involvement only lasted a few weeks.
The artist who begins our first big story arc is Win Smith, but Smith was not long for the series. He was nearly twice the age of most of the creators in Disney's outfit and the generational friction was too much for the experienced cartoonist who left when his work was questioned. Anther artist who worked on a few of the strips included in the first continuity was James Patton King. Other artists involved in those early strips as assistants were Roy Nelson and Hardy Gramatky. These early strips are decent but lack the verve that will come when Gottfredson makes his mark.
A number of diverse hands worked to make the strip happen and eventually Gottfredson was brought along out of his cartooning work to lend a hand and eventually take control, doing the layouts and so telling the story. The first few yarns feature a Mickey Mouse still in the formative stages. I've never been much of a Mickey fan because by the time I was first getting a glimpse of him, he was the venerable centerpiece of the Disney empire and so was largely forbidden to be anything but a stalwart upstanding element of society. In these early tales Mickey is much more the youthful instigator, at times even a downright miscreant. We are introduced to some important colleagues of Mickey's in these earliest strips such as Pluto, Horace Horsecollar, and Clarabelle Cow. The latter two are like Mickey himself, designed in an era where realism was less important. Pluto was part of the future with a more realistic presentation. It's remarkable that Gottfredson and his fellows were able to make these two different styles work together.
The stories deal with all sorts of things and have both Mickey and Minnie traveling far and wide. The opening tale has Minnie and Mickey trying to find a gold mine which Minnie has inherited. They helped by a mysterious figure called "The Fox" (a precursor of "The Blot") and are hindered by mainstay villains Mr. Shyster and Pegleg Pete. When that's cleared up Mickey finds himself in a struggle for Minnie's affections when a unscrupulous fellow named "Mr. Slicker" shows up. At one point Mickey is so forlorn about the matter that he attempts suicide. The stirp spends many days exploring the various ways Mickey might off himself -- a gun, jumping off a bridge, and others. It's startling stuff today, but much of these earlies Mickey's would make modern fans cringe. Mickey is often accused of crimes in these early tales suggesting his reputation is not very well established. All of this only makes him more interesting to me as he's an undefined character and not all unlike Tom Sawer in many ways. When he gets into a feud with a tough fellow named "Kat Nipp" I found that Mickey was more the bully than the reverse, not perhaps what the creators intended.
These Fantagraphic volumes have a wonderful number of supplementary features and expect my reports on these to focus attention there to no small degree. I gathered up the first several volumes of these some years back and it's nice to finally at last be getting around to savoring these vintage Disney classics.
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