Disney/Pixar In General

I always liked Mickey. I think his character is a little bit less distinctive than Donald's or Goofy's, but that's because he changed so much over the years. But I like the prone to missteps version of the early years just as much as the more matured version of the later years.

I guess putting him together with Donald and Goofy is what mostly caused him to become the "responsible" one...because Goofy is very stupid, and Donald is prone to bad temper and taking short cuts, he is the only one left to be the resonable one. But I always prefered characters which are smart and try to do the right thing, so for me, Mickey is my favourite.

I don't read comics of any kind, but it's fun to learn these kinds of things from someone who does. Apart from movies and comics, we see Mickey in TV shows. I guess he appears on television and in comics more than the movies in the Canon (except for his cameo in the Classics fanfare).

If you ever get interested in reading the Disney comics, you should definitely check out the Duck Universe - especially if you were a fan of Ducktales.

edited 31st Jan '15 11:32:07 AM by KnownUnknown

Haven't read any for a long time, but I always liked the Mickey detective stories.

The Disney comics are terrific.

You read them and you realize why Carl Barks is one of the four great men of comic books.

I particularly recommend "The Golden Helmet."

Honestly, I would totally be down for a DuckTales style adventure cartoon show starring Mickey. They could do a blend of Mickey's Nice Guy persona and his more mischievous thrill seeker side, return characters like Horace and Clarabelle to prominence, show the more sinister side of Pete as an antagonist, and perhaps adapt some of Gottfredson's old serial stories. It'd be cool.

Or the detective stories (yeah, I really like those). Plus, Micky has aquired his own little villain galery over time, with Pete, Phatom Blot, Sylvester Shyster, Doctor Vulter aso..I can certainly see him starring in a series in which he travels around the world and uncovers evil schemes.

I feel like a show that kind of fuses the Mouse and Duck universes together and keeps the adventure/slice-of-life feel would work very well.

I think I'd prefer to keep the two separate for the theoretical show, since otherwise I think it'd suffer from an overload of characters. The Duck comics alone have a pretty expansive cast of characters, and I think making Mickey and Donald co-protagonists would disrupt the dynamics they have with them. I'd also be interested in the prospect of reintroducing Horace and Clarabelle as Mickey's close friends, and I think they'd get drowned out if it were a shared thing. I think the way I'd do it I'd make the main regular cast just Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, Horace and Clarabelle, and relegate Donald and characters from Duckburg to occasional guest appearances.

Though, as an aside, I think it would be cool if DuckTales had a reboot. Though if I were handling such a thing, I might not go about it in a way that would necessarily appease people nostalgic for the old show — I'd probably make Donald and Scrooge the main co-protagonists, and I'd throw out Webby, Mrs. Beakley, Bubba and Gizmoduck. Not Launchpad, though — he was really the only one of the show's original characters that was both likeable and felt like he naturally belonged there (I don't dislike Gizmoduck as a character for the record, but I'm not a huge fan of having a superhero character as a mainstay in the Duck adventures).

I kinda thought of The Great Mouse Detective, except that it has a limited setting, but still has crime. Or maybe both The Rescuers movies, with the huge travelling. A lot of movies have travelling for specific purposes.

Not if they know how and when to use characters. The comics have the benefit of decades of time to use, put away and reuse characters at their leisure: a show would have to have a more solid idea of who their core characters would be and how often the supporting cast would become important.

So, you figure if the show is a Mickey, Donald and Goofy show, then usually the show would be focused on them. Characters like Scrooge, the Triplets, Max, etc would be major supporting characters. People like Gladstone, Horace Horsecollar or pretty much the entirety of the Duck universe that isn't Donald, Scrooge or the Nephews would be minor supporting characters.

House Of Mouse, despite being a totally different kind of show than what we're talking about, is a good start: every character had their place in the cast, and so some would be more important than others, and some would have focus episodes while others never did. Likewise, the show made liberal use of guest characters as well as characters being present but only contributing in small ways (or for certain gags), ensuring that they could use a wide cast of characters without having to muddle things up.

edited 31st Jan '15 4:58:13 PM by KnownUnknown

I'm sure a show with that cast could be done well. The way you're proposing it, it sound a bit like a more grounded mix between the "Mickey, Donald, Goofy" trio shorts and the adventure comics.

I guess what I had in mind, though, was sort of a Tintin or Rupert Bear-esque show where Mickey is front and center as the main hero, giving him more opportunity to team up with less used characters like Horace, or maybe even Oswald.

edited 31st Jan '15 5:16:49 PM by DrDougsh

That's basically how I'm seeing it, yeah.

BTW, before I forget, nice Glomgold avatar!

Would it involve the Phantom Blot?

Then I might watch a show like that...

edited 31st Jan '15 5:29:45 PM by Aldo930

Thanks!

I think in my hypothetical version of the show, there'd be a Villain of the Week format, with Pete as the most frequently appearing and the most personal nemesis, while the Phantom Blot would be a Knight of Cerebus who's used a bit more sparingly.

My dream Disney show would be a rotating anthology, actually— think of Animaniacs, but not opposed to doing more serious and adventuring full segments intermixed with the comedic shorts sharing a whole episode. And one week you can get a Scrooge Barks-style adventure, another week an Animated Actors megacrossover gag, another week an animated adaptation of some (of the relatively better ones anyway) live action Disney enterprise like The Love Bug, another week an Aladdin story Mickey is telling his nephews or whatever, anything goes.

Speaking of dream Disney shows, I don't why we don't have Disneyland/Bugs Bunny show-esque shows anymore. They seemed pretty popular back in the 50s-60s.

You know, with a host (or voice host), bunch of cartoons, cute ads, sketches, etc. Then again, maybe that's not "cool" enough for kids.

I guess House of Mouse was close enough..

edited 31st Jan '15 6:47:15 PM by Teddy

I'm a big Phantom Blot fan too. He just comes across as awesome... Until Epic Mickey came around and turned him into a unthinking eldritch abomination. Dammit.

Personally, I love Mickey Mouse when he's actually a nuetral figure and not a epitome of goodness. Same for Donald when he used to be a hilariously awful lech.

My father wants to see Mickey and the Beanstock be completed. Finishing the deleted scenes and ending of where Willie became the Queen's footman.

The Blot hasn't had the most awesome track record for adaptations, I suppose. I like his depiction in Mouseworks and House of Mouse in general (the one where Mickey, Donald and Goofy are a delivery company is one of my favorite Mouseworks episodes), but the writers didn't really seem to know what to do with him after the first time or so.

And his appearance in Ducktales is... eh...

edited 1st Feb '15 12:11:48 AM by KnownUnknown

You know, rewatching Tarzan I got struck by how useful Disney comic relief ends up being, as compared to most other Western animation and anime, where those characters end up being useless background filler at best and The Load at worst. But Tantor, Olaf, Ray, Scuttle, the Dwarfs, the enchanted servants, those are the ones who either actually turn the tide at best or at least help cleaning up the slate at worst when the Darkest Hour nadir hits the story.

Also, I know we aren't supposed to take this seriously or give it much thought, but in Mouse World stories where the small animals living under us have their own clothes and tech, how comes no human ever wonders "Why are these rodents wearing miniature clothes, and why I just found a miniature bar under my floor?" anyway. You can't even assume they quickly strip down every time a human sees them, which would be nearly impossible anyway, since often, mostly in Rescue Rangers, humans would get in close eye contact with those clothes-wearing little beings and their Bamboo Tech. Are humans just supposed to magically see the clothes as part of their fur somehow? Are these humans aware they are killing little creatures with their own mini-civilization and culture every time they set a mousetrap? The mind boggles.

edited 1st Feb '15 6:45:23 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

You think that's bad?

I often wonder why, in Funny Animal stories, the protagonists eat meat.

The ironic thing is that the so called sidekick is often the second most important character in a Disney movie (ignoring the villain/antagonist naturally). I mean, who is more important, the prince of the dwarves? Shang or Mushu? Charming or the Mice? Eric or Sebastian? Jasmine or the Genie?

Well, Aladdin's case has its roots in the original story, where the princess not only is much less important, but the only noteworthy thing she does is to give the villain the key to victory.

Oswald discussion:

Oswald was forgotten for a long time, until he was featured in Epic Mickey for the Wii.

Before that, tho', we had the news that Oswald had been bought back by Disney.

They released his cartoons on DVD - and Universal did the same with their Oswald cartoons.