Ta b l e o f C o n T e n T s

Setting the Stage

Of Mouse and Man: The Mouse Grows Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Foreword by Thomas Andrae

Mickey Mouse and the Phantom Artist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 4Appreciation by Bill Blackbeard

The Adventures:Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse Stories

With Introductory Notes

Going Solo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 8

“THE CAPTIVE CASTAWAyS” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 9January 10 – april 17, 1934. plot and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson;Script by Merrill de Maris; inks by Ted Thwaites

“PLuTO’S RIVAL” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 7april 18 – 28, 1934. plot and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson; Script by Ted Osborne; inks by Ted Thwaites

In Our Last Chapter...? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2

“THE BAT BANDIT OF INFERNO GuLCH” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3april 30 – July 28, 1934. plot and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson;Script by Ted Osborne; inks by Ted Thwaites

More Equal Than Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 0

“BOBO THE ELEPHANT” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1July 30 – OcTOber 13, 1934. plot and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson; Script by Ted Osborne; inks by Ted Thwaites

How Them Stars Do Zwoosh! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

“THE SACRED JEWEL” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105OcTOber 15 – DeceMber 29, 1934. plot and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson; Script by Ted Osborne; inks by Ted Thwaites

A Hound For Trouble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

“PLuTO THE RACER” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129DeceMber 31, 1934 – March 2, 1935. plot and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson; Script by Ted Osborne; inks by Ted Thwaites

The War-Drum Beats On. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

“EDITOR-IN-GRIEF” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149March 4 – June 1, 1935. plot and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson; Script by Ted Osborne; inks by Ted Thwaites

Last Roundups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

“RACE FOR RICHES” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177June 3 – SepTeMber 28, 1935. plot and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson; Script by Ted Osborne; inks by Ted Thwaites

Future Shock (and Science) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

“THE PIRATE SuBMARINE” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .213SepTeMber 30, 1935 – January 4, 1936. plot and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson; Script by Ted Osborne; inks by Ted Thwaites

The Gottfredson Archives:Essays and Special Features

Gallery feature—Gottfredson’s World: The Captive Castaways . . . . . . 242

Sharing the Spotlight: Ted Thwaites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243by David Gerstein and Alberto Becattini

Ta b l e o f C o n T e n T s

“Mickey Mouse and the Bat Bandit”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244Painting by Floyd Gottfredson

Gallery feature—Gottfredson’s World: The Bat Bandit of Inferno Gulch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

The Cast: Bobo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246by David Gerstein

Behind the Scenes: Spring Cleaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247by David Gerstein, with storyboards by Ross Wetzel, Bill Berg,Xavier Atencio, and Frank Tashlin

Gallery feature—Gottfredson’s World: Bobo the Elephant . . . . . . . . . . 250

“Mickey Mouse and the Sacred Jewel”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251Painting by Floyd Gottfredson

Behind the Scenes: From Screen(s) to Strip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252by David Gerstein

Gallery feature—Gottfredson’s World: The Sacred Jewel . . . . . . . . . . . 254

“Mickey Mouse and Pluto the Racer”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255Painting by Floyd Gottfredson

Gallery feature—Gottfredson’s World: The 1935 Classics . . . . . . . . . . . 256

“Mickey Mouse Runs His Own Newspaper” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258Painting by Floyd Gottfredson

The Cast: Eli Squinch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

Behind the Scenes: Mickey Mouse’s Birthday Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260by David Gerstein

Gallery feature—Gottfredson’s World: Race for Riches . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

“Mickey Mouse in the Race for Riches” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263Painting by Floyd Gottfredson

“Mickey Mouse and the Pirate Submarine”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264Painting by Floyd Gottfredson

Gallery feature—Gottfredson’s World: The Pirate Submarine . . . . . . . 265

The Heirs of Gottfredson: The 1930s School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266by David Gerstein and Alberto Becattini

“THE SECRET OF MARS” (A MICKEy PREquEL STARRING DONALD DuCK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

italian Paperino 1-18 (DeceMber 30, 1937 – april 28, 1938). Story and art by Federico pedrocchi; Translation by Fabio Gadducci; american Dialogue by bruce hamilton and David Gerstein

“One reason that...” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279by Floyd Gottfredson

right: Publicity drawing commemorating Disney studio awards for Mickey’s seventh birthday, 1935. Image courtesy Walt Disney Archives.

January 10, 1934–

april 28, 1934

A s Thomas Andrae has noted in our introduction, the comic strips of 1934-35 cover a major change in Mickey Mouse’s character makeup. While remaining an adventurous, fallible youth, the Mouse begins

handling adult jobs with relative competence; battling sterner challenges; and—most critically—acquiring relative respect within his world. As goes the good guy, so goes the bad: in “The Captive Castaways,” Pegleg Pete also takes a step up the social ladder.

Not in terms of refinement, mind you. Mickey’s arch-enemy is still the same sloven as before. What he isn’t, however, is a sidekick. Before 1934, the comic strip Pete was always a henchman to the crooked lawyer Sylvester Shyster. This role would continue; but starting now, Pete could also go solo, plotting his own crooked plots.

Pete’s transformation, like Mickey’s, had much to do with film inspiration. In 1930, when Walt Disney—as the comics’ first writer—set Pete up as Shyster’s gunsel, he was actively contradicting the cartoons, in which Pete was always boss bad guy. But Pete wasn’t in very many movies at the time. He only had eight parts, two of them cameos, from 1928 to 1931. The comics could contradict this small trickle of cartoons without creat-ing any great incongruities.

Then came 1932. The Mickey films, largely comedies up to that point, became more adventure-oriented; and adventure called for Pete, who starred five times in 1932 alone. Gottfredson adapted serials from most of these films, trading the lone cat of the cartoons for his established Pete-and-Shyster pair. But the disparity became glaring. The strip duo,

while lovably wicked, had developed a folksy ambience that owed little to the vigilante villain on screen. Pete even looked different in the two medi-ums: Gottfredson drew comics-Pete barrel-chested and top-heavy, while movie-Pete was just heavy.

A continuity fix was needed, and “Captive Castaways” brought it. When Mickey discovers Pete captaining a pirate ship by himself, his past role as Shyster’s pal is never referred to; indeed, Pete’s new job gives him a sidekick of his own. As if to cement the connection between comics and cartoons, Gottfredson adopted not just Pete’s fat figure from animation—but his costume, too, from the pirate short Shanghaied (1934).

Why choose the pirate theme as dressing for Pete’s reboot? Per-haps because the nickname “Pegleg Pete,” originating with Dutch colonial overseer Peter Stuyvesant (1612-1672), was popularly identified with ships and piracy. Making Pete a pirate tied him into a colorful existing iconog-raphy and gave extra oomph to his first solo turn. Even Pete’s cargo of smuggled opium—a gritty plot point we likely wouldn’t see today—was a standard buccaneer cliché in 1934.

Character revisions in “The Captive Castaways” went beyond Pete. Readers will note that the story takes Minnie’s personality in an odd direction: she loses her usual intelligence and intuition, becoming an eccentric ditz similar to stage and radio comedian Gracie Allen. Signs of this departure would continue for awhile; but by 1937, Minnie’s original, smarter self would happily return. [DG]

going solo

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