Trivia / Mickey Mouse Comic Universe

• Anonymous Author: More like Uncredited Creator. For decades the norm with Disney comics was to not credit the people who'd made them (give or take the big names because that made for good marketing). In the USA, it wasn't until the 80s that this got amended. Italy gave its first tries in the 70s, while the rest of Europe didn't get around to changing the norm until the 90s. To this day, there are comics whose creators still are unknown. Reasonable guesses can be made as to the identity of the artists by comparing art styles, but writers are near-impossible to estimate.
• He Also Did:
  • Before being placed onto the Mickey newspaper strip, Floyd Gottfredson was originally an assistant animator on the earliest Silly Symphonies, his only work as a full-fledged animator being Cannibal Capers. Besides Mickey, he worked on a few other Disney comic stories, including adaptations of Lambert the Sheepish Lion and Sleeping Beauty.
  • Bill Walsh was originally a gag writer for Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy before being hired to write for the Mickey strip. He would go on to write Walt Disney's first television program, One Hour in Wonderland, and produce some of the studio's most popular films, including The Absent-Minded Professor, Mary Poppins, The Love Bug and Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
  • Floyd Norman started at Disney as an assistant animator on films like 101 Dalmatians and The Sword in the Stone before becoming a story artist on The Jungle Book (1967). He left Disney afterward to start his own studio, which would produce the first appearance of Fat Albert, then serve an artist for studios like Filmation and Hanna-Barbera. He eventually returned to Disney and served as a story artist on films like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: There are many comics that have only been published once or twice, only in one country, and/or only decades ago. The options to get a hold on them are limited. Then there's a number of comics from the Gottfredson era that Disney does not allow to be reprinted anymore or only in modified form unless the reprint occurs as part of an (expensive) collectors album. These comics contain unfavorable depictions of "other" people (Africans, African-Americans, Romani, Native Americans, Middle Easterners, East Asians, and Italians) or deal heavily with World War II.
• No Export for You: There are hundreds to thousands of comics created internationally that haven't been officially translated to English.
  • To give some rudimentary insight by means of the cast, courtesy of Inducks: 7 out of 490 stories featuring Trudy Van Tubb, 4 out of 303 stories featuring Arizona Goof (0 of 9 of which star Martina Ubersetzen), 3 out of 80 stories featuring Portis, 3 out of 67 stories featuring Kranz, 3 out of 36 stories featuring Ellroy, 5 out of 21 stories featuring Atomo Bleep-Bleep, 0 out of 10 stories featuring Zenobia, 4 out of 10 stories featuring Muscles McGurk, 0 out of 8 stories featuring Chirpy Bird, 0 out of 4 stories featuring Lois Lamb, 3 out of 6 stories featuring Sam Simian, 3 out of 5 stories featuring the Imp, 1 out of 4 stories featuring Weegie, and 2 out of 4 stories featuring Lotus Blossom are available in the USA.
  • There are a number of characters originating in the USA with significantly more presence in other countries. The stats of their non-American comics translated to English are such: 19 out of 279 stories featuring Eega Beeva, 2 out of 17 stories featuring Joe Piper and co., 0 out of 11 stories featuring Doc Finkelstein and Shrimp, 2 out of 11 stories featuring Doctor Vulter, 0 out of 9 stories featuring Mr. X, 0 out of 6 stories featuring Goofy's uncle Wombat, 1 out of 4 stories featuring the Rhyming Man, 0 out of 2 stories featuring the Medioka cast, and 0 out of 1 stories featuring Lucius Lamb are available in the USA.
  • Despite most Mickey Mouse and the Sleuth comics being written in the USA, only 7 out of 92 stories have been published in said country.
  • Almost none of the Floyd Norman, Colette Bezio, and Michael Fry newspaper comics, which were published from 1990 to 1995 during the Disney Renaissance (and affected by the Disney Implosion), have been collected for republication in the USA. Neither have those of Gary Whitney, but he wrote remakes of well-liked Gottfredson's comics so the loss is limited as long as the originals remain available.
• Science Marches On: In line with the uranium rush in the USA during the 40s and the 50s, there are several comics in which Mickey and Goofy go in search of the material. "Hoosat from Another Planet" is the main example, but there are several gag comics too. And just like in real-life happened, Mickey and Goofy do not take any precautions to protect themselves even when their Geiger counter goes on full blast. For a modern audience, it's a bit of a "don't do that!" to read.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Carl Barks, when working as a scriptwriter and storyboarder at the Disney studio, worked on a Mickey Mouse cartoon which was to feature Tanglefoot. It would have had Mickey as a riding policeman chasing Pete on horseback through the wilderness, with Mickey as the hero and Tanglefoot as the comedy relief. However, the cartoon never went beyond the storyboarding stage, and Tanglefoot remains a comics-only character to this day.
  • If Runaway Brain would have gone through with starring Professor Ecks as the villain, he would've been the second Gottfredson villain to hit the screen after the Phantom Blot did in DuckTales eight years prior. As it is, Nr. #2 still has to happen.

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