YMMV / Mickey Mouse Comic Universe

• Awesome Art: Many artists truly put their all into these silly little comics. Like in the Disney Ducks Comic Universe, Artist Fabio Celoni and colorist Mirka Andolfo stand out as amazing examples, creating detailed, beautiful artwork with deep, dramatic shadows and downright frightening subject matters. Didn't expect a Mickey Mouse comic to give you a horrifically detailed depiction of Hell, did you?
• Base-Breaking Character: Mickey Mouse himself, as he's seen by many as a know-it-all detective without particular flaws, especially compared to the beloved Anti-Hero Donald Duck. (One factor for this being that Floyd Gottfredson's comic strips haven't been reprinted as much as Carl Barks's comic books, while later comics made in Europe just aren't available in English, another factor is that there haven't been a TV series based on the mouse comics like was the case with DuckTales, previous TV series with Mickey Mouse being based on the theatrical cartoons instead.) His fans tend to point out Mickey's epic adventures and exciting criminal stories as well as a fun supporting cast. There are also enough stories to show Mickey has flaws as well.
• Broken Base: The period (1940-1985) in which Western Publishing was responsible for Disney comics in the USA. Detractors of this era, most of whom come from America, will say that there are few to no memorable comics there. They will also say that many of Mickey's friends and villains were shelved and those that remained were reduced in personality, and that the characters created at this time were largely forgettable due to the overwhelming use of dogface designs and little time spent on them as characters, and that the exceptions (Emil Eagle, Scuttle, Dum-Dum, Idgit, and Dan) would mostly make a name from being used a lot and from non-American markets picking them up. Defenders of this era will say that the characters and the stories stand pretty well on their own if you don't compare them to what was done previously or later, the stories are fun and exciting and that the artwork is excellent, especially the comics drawn by Paul Murry. It should perhaps be noted that in the Disney Masters series, the volumes featuring comics drawn by Paul Murry tend to be the best-selling books.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: While she's a minor supporting character in the comics, Mickey's sister, Amelia Fieldmouse, would become popular in 2020, primarily due to her surprisingly more humanoid design compared to the rest of the mouse characters.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The Phantom Blot is an obscure villain in the American Disney fanbase, with most only being familiar with him thanks to his rare animated appearances in works like House of Mouse and DuckTales (2017). In Europe, however, the Phantom Blot is seen as the Disney equivalent of Doctor Doom and is widely regarded to be Mickey's most iconic arch-nemesis besides Pete.
  • While Mickey and his comics are typically overshadowed by the Donald Duck comics in America and most of Europe, due to many finding Mickey to be too bland and perfect compared to Donald, over in Italy, Mickey (known over there as Topolino) is just as much of a cultural staple to Italians as Donald is to the rest of Europe.
• I Am Not Shazam: Felicity Fieldmouse is commonly referred to by fans as Amelia Fieldmouse due to an earlier character that might have been the mother of Morty and Ferdie too. Scuttle is sometimes called Weasel after another henchman of Pete who starred in Disney's Mickey Mouse Adventures series.
• Magnificent Bastard: The Phantom Blot is a cunning criminal who aims to reclaim a valuable formula for a chemical compound, one that he wrote down and hid inside of a specific model of camera. Stealing the cameras from the city's residents and smashing them open in his efforts to find it, the Blot introduces himself by easily kidnapping Mickey Mouse and planting him in a complex death trap when he is assigned to bring the Blot to justice. Matching Mickey in their game of wits, the Blot constantly has him on the ropes, nearly managing to escape with the formula were it not for Mickey's persistence and good fortune. In the end, the Blot admits that the reason why he couldn't bring himself to simply off Mickey when he had the chance was because of his too-tender heart. The Phantom Blot's highly memorable original outing would cause him to become one of Mickey's greatest and most beloved adversaries, eventually making his return years later in all sorts of other media.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • In his first appearance, the Phantom Blot quickly establishes himself as a dangerous villain, silently appearing behind Mickey and stalking him until he enters the police station, and Mickey never notices that somebody's right behind him. Inside the station, Mickey talks to Chief O'Hara and Detective Casey in the chief's office about the Blot, when Mickey notices a warning note which the Blot managed to pin on O'Hara's coat, something which no one in the room had noticed before then. This understandebly unnerves Mickey, even though he tries to deny it. And all throughout the story the Blot keeps following Mickey and putting him in all sorts of frightening deathtraps, and Mickey only manages to escape them in the nick of time, and even then it's more out of luck than any particular skill. If the Blot didn't have a "soft heart" as he calls it, he could kill anyone anywhere!
  • The Grey Mouse's schemes. They are always a variation of "let's replace Mickey and make everyone believe he's the imposter, then kill him", and he's damn good at them-In the latest, one of the people he convinced he was the real deal and Mickey the imposter was Mickey Mouse himself.
  • A two-part retelling of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published, with Mickey as Jekyll and Donald as Hyde. The first time "Donald Hyde" appears on-page, he savagely destroys Huey, Dewey and Louie's market stall. And let's not talk about this◊ image...
  • Pete running unchecked invariably turns into this due what he achieves. It's a given that, without Mickey, he'd be rich and in control of at least Mouseton:
    • In "Mickey Mouse and the Chirikawa Necklace" he had assumed complete control of Mouseton's criminals... While in jail. Trudy (at her debut) was a frighteningly effective lieutenant...
    • In "The Delta Dimension" he had got his hands on the plans for one of Einmug's inventions, the one that could turn atoms into invulnerable people. He planned to use the atoms of a shot of whiskey to Take Over the World.
    • In "All of This Will Happen Yesterday", set in the Thirties, he had got his hands on the Glove of Amnesja and its hypnotic powers. When he was stopped by two Mickey Mouse (one of which arrived from the future specifically to stop him), he had already got a TV in every house of Mouseton and was about to use the sets to hypnotize everyone into making him Mouseton's ruler.
    • In "All of This Happened Tomorrow" Pete managed to recover the Glove of Amnesja three years before the story. By the time he's stopped by Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and their counterparts from the Thirties he had already taken over the whole of Calisota, stolen the Eiffel Tower, and set every single world leader on each other, the latter as part of making himself the ruler of the whole world: he wanted to have the world leaders make him the overlord of the entire planet, but realizing their populations may object he set everyone on each other as to present himself as the only one capable of keeping the peace.
    • In one occasion he stumbled on a device that allowed him to take control of any technology. He promptly styled himself the "Lord of All Machines" and terrorized Mouseton into paying him their entire treasure while ridiculing the police, and would have continued and taken over the city had he not chosen targets whose initials spelled Trudy's name, allowing the police to realize it was him at about the same time the device' inventor, recognizing what was happening, arrived in town to explain the authorities how the "Lord of All Machines" could do what he did.
    • In one story an accident had sent Mickey to the future, effectively leaving him running unchecked for years. In the future Mickey finds that Pete, with a nephew's help, was the governor of most of the United States and effectively about to take over the entire country through repeated election fraud. The only reason Mickey was able to foil him after going back to the past was that Pete had grown to find the entire situation disgusting and only continued because his nephew was blackmailing him, so he told him how to arrest him and recover the data that allowed the fraud to begin with.
    • In the "Young Mickey" miniseries, his "official" debut on Mouseton's criminal scene had him, Trudy, and two accomplices commit a series of heists and robberies so successful that when he demanded the entirety of Calisota's gold reserve to stop the governor almost gave in.
    • In one occasion, three criminals hired Pete to have him plan a heist for them, and then decided to not pay him. Pete immediately decided to beat the crap out of them, knowing that he's larger and stronger than all of them combined... And the poor criminals could barely get to their car because Pete is faster than he looks. After getting in the car they tought they had gotten away... Then they saw in the rear mirror that Pete had got in his own car and was giving chase, not caring what happened to other cars. In the end Pete crashes and they escape, so they think they got away and commit the heist... And then Pete shows up with a police tow truck and steals the truck they had put the loot in: due an initiative of Mouseton's mayor Pete had been forcibly enrolled in the police for a week, and he had figured out how to use their resources to get back at the double-crossers. In the end Mickey foils them and everyone is arrested... But Pete is okay with that, because the entire time his goal wasn't to commit the heist but to make the other three pay for shafting him, no matter if he had to go to jail for it.
    • The above is actually a semi-recurring occurrence: if you try to doublecross Pete, he will beat the tar out of you or otherwise do anything in his power to make sure you pay, no matter the cost to himself. It says a lot that even Phantom Blot is low key scared of Pete, and every time he needed his services he didn't try and manipulate him but made a proposal and kept his word.
    • One story identified Mouseton's four highest public enemies. Pete was number two, below Phantom Blot but above Doctor Vulter, who in the same story was openly identified as a terrorist.
  • One story involves a disturbingly realistic cult with a headquarter in Duckburg. While they appear mostly harmless, it is definitely disturbing to see a bunch of people with the same clothes and hairstyle mindlessly following their cult's creed. Creepy for children, terrifying once you learn more about real-life cults. And that's before they tried to shoot Horace into the sun.
• Quirky Work: Bill Walsh's work, especially the later stuff. While Gottfredson's stories leaned towards mystery and adventure, Walsh's preferences were for horror and scifi. There are comics in which he puts those themes to use for a story, like "The House of Mystery" and the early Eega Beeva plots. But there are also comics that are just one long ride of weirdness that eventually reaches an end but not a conclusion. "A Fatal Occupation" and "Mousepotamia", which co-stars Jaq and Gus from Cinderella, are good examples of that. Add to that Walsh's tendency to drop characters that are portrayed as important the moment he's got other ideas, and you get stories like "The Magic Shoe", which spends about a third on Mickey's journey to meet an Irish doctor to help him with his hiccups and then never actually has Mickey meet the doctor as his encounter with the king of The Fair Folk startles him out of it and forms the basis for the remaining two thirds.
  • In Italy, a similar example is found in Andrea Fanton's works. Most of them feature common themes such as spies, weird scientists, usage of nuclear/electromagnetic energy as some kind of Deus ex Machina and alcoholic beverages. Some of the finest examples are Goofy and the Bomb Effect, a story about Mickey unveiling Emil Eagle's espionage system where Goofy discovers out of nowhere that he gets Super-Strength and hypnotic powers while inside a radioisotopic field, Goofy and the Pollution-based Depression, where Goofy gets "depression" (which is actually more similar to delirium) after inhaling the fumes from a factory nearby his house and Mickey calls an equally weird professor to cure him, and A Monocle for Eega Beeva, a crime story about Mickey and Eega Beeva hunting for a burglar known as "Red Monocle" with a nonsensical subplot about Goofy meeting his elementary school teacher who forces him to redo all the homeworks he failed when he was a child.
• Seasonal Rot: The comics made from circa 1972 to 1985, both in USA and Italy. In USA they stopped doing serial adventures, and the artwork of Paul Murry was declining to the point that he would often not draw backgrounds in his panels and he would rely more on stock poses. Even fans of Paul Murry will tell others to avoid comics from this period. As for Italy, Romano Scarpa had stopped writing his comics and would just illustrate stories written by others, which were inferior to his own stories. Fortunately, comics made in other parts of the world were not too bad and their production would improve over time, and later in the 80s comics made in USA would also improve over time.
• So Bad, It's Good: The 2002 story "Invasion of the Killer Penguins". Mouseton gets attacked by giant fish, Mickey is turned into a penguin, grows ostrich legs, has to defend Mouseton against the titular giant penguins, grows giant ears and starts flying... it makes sense in context, sort of. Or not.
• Values Dissonance: While Floyd Gottfredson (and before him Walt Disney) wrote the strip, it had its share of ethnic stereotypes, in forms of exaggerated features (e.g. large lips) and accents and "savage cannibals" archetypes, the strip having an amount of direct or indirect racism. After Bill Walsh started writing the strip the ethnic stereotypes got toned down, but instead there was an amount of gender stereotypes with some strips feeling downright misogynic (like the strip for 8-7 1959 seen here feeling pretty dated). And the Italian comics aren't free from either category of stereotypes either.

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