The Mouse from Uncl^h^hcanny valley
June 7, 2013 2:16 PM Subscribe
In 1966, with America in the grip of spy fever, some bright spark at Dell/Gold Keythought it would be a good idea to have the long running Mickey Mouse comic join the bandwagon. This didn't mean just getting Mickey to dress up as James Bond. It was much more bizarre than that. For three issues Mickey was running around in a human world, thwarting the plans of assorted evil villains, rescuing beautiful female agents, do all the things any other self respecting super spy would do, just as a cartoon mouse. The way they went about it was to have regular Mickey Mouse cartoonist Paul Murry draw Mickey and Goofy in his normal funny animal style, while Dan Spiegle, a much more realistic artist, drew the rest of the strip. The results were striking.
It's not that strange. Bone mixes realistic human figures, unsettlingly detailed monsters and iconic characters (characters sketched out with a few simplelines, even simpler than Mickey here). It can be done quite well. The worst I could say about these Mickey Mouse cartoons is that the execution is iffy.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 2:36 PM on June 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 2:36 PM on June 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
Maybe it's not 'strange' but for me, this is just like Richard Scarry animals in clothes. I can't tell you why it creeps me the fuck out, but it really does.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:38 PM on June 7, 2013
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:38 PM on June 7, 2013
Why couldn't they have Dan Spiegle draw Mickey and Goofy too?
posted by grouse at 2:42 PM on June 7, 2013
posted by grouse at 2:42 PM on June 7, 2013
More Dan Spiegle (via Mike Lynch)
The Hopalong Cassidy newspaper comic.
And a new book about his career (with many sample pages). Much of it was at Dell/GoldKey where he worked on a wide variety of 'licensed' material including live-action movies ("Old Yeller" [sob]) and cartoons ("Scooby Doo").
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:01 PM on June 7, 2013
The Hopalong Cassidy newspaper comic.
And a new book about his career (with many sample pages). Much of it was at Dell/GoldKey where he worked on a wide variety of 'licensed' material including live-action movies ("Old Yeller" [sob]) and cartoons ("Scooby Doo").
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:01 PM on June 7, 2013
It's not that strange.
It's pretty strange that the family-friendly Mickey Mouse is going around being shot at.
But maybe that's me projecting today's values back 50 years. When kids went around shooting each other for fun.
posted by GuyZero at 3:11 PM on June 7, 2013
It's pretty strange that the family-friendly Mickey Mouse is going around being shot at.
But maybe that's me projecting today's values back 50 years. When kids went around shooting each other for fun.
posted by GuyZero at 3:11 PM on June 7, 2013
For me, at least, something similar seems to be going on here. The juxtaposition of the "realistic" people and the funny animals--particularly in a realistic environment--is causing my mind to do somersaults to process what's going on. Or maybe it's just me...
So, I was at a furry convention last weekend, my first. And I'd seen fursuiters for a couple of days wandering the meeting space hallways, in the elevators, generally around the convention. But then, Saturday night, I walked into that night's dance about 30 minutes after it started, and there was, right in front of me, this WHOLE ROOM OF ANTHROPOMORPHIC ANIMALS ALL DANCING and my reality underwent an unexpected, major shift.
I don't know why that particular moment struck me so hard, but it's something I will probably never forget, seeing that sight at exactly that time.
So yeah... realistic people and funny animals in a realistic environment DOES cause one's mind to do somersaults.
posted by hippybear at 3:29 PM on June 7, 2013 [3 favorites]
So, I was at a furry convention last weekend, my first. And I'd seen fursuiters for a couple of days wandering the meeting space hallways, in the elevators, generally around the convention. But then, Saturday night, I walked into that night's dance about 30 minutes after it started, and there was, right in front of me, this WHOLE ROOM OF ANTHROPOMORPHIC ANIMALS ALL DANCING and my reality underwent an unexpected, major shift.
I don't know why that particular moment struck me so hard, but it's something I will probably never forget, seeing that sight at exactly that time.
So yeah... realistic people and funny animals in a realistic environment DOES cause one's mind to do somersaults.
posted by hippybear at 3:29 PM on June 7, 2013 [3 favorites]
>It's pretty strange that the family-friendly Mickey Mouse is going around being shot at.
I recall a cartoon where Donald Duck fires a machine gun into the audience at a theater. Think it was the 1940s. Disney characters were not always as safe as they are today.
posted by EnterTheStory at 4:12 PM on June 7, 2013
I recall a cartoon where Donald Duck fires a machine gun into the audience at a theater. Think it was the 1940s. Disney characters were not always as safe as they are today.
posted by EnterTheStory at 4:12 PM on June 7, 2013
> It's not that strange. Bone mixes realistic human figures, unsettlingly detailed monsters and iconic characters...
Good point, but Bone also came as a whole package all at once; from the first panel, you're seeing the Bones in a complex, textured adventure comics-style space, and the characters are, at times, displaying more emotional complexity than many of the humans around them. It also all came from one artist's hand, so the the styles might seem jarring by description but the result is all of a piece.
Mickey mouse and Goofy, on the other hand, are characters with long histories and very well-established contexts that predate these particular comics for a couple generations of kids. These contexts do not include running around with firearms-wielding humans. Dropping Mickey into an international spy ring is a serious what the fucking what is that there?
Now, there's also the fan comic Air Pirates (previously, natch!) which dropped Mickey and the gang into surprisingly mature situations and it kind of worked better than these Dell comics. But it was also not sanctioned Disney product, so it doesn't really count I guess.
posted by ardgedee at 6:32 PM on June 7, 2013 [2 favorites]
Good point, but Bone also came as a whole package all at once; from the first panel, you're seeing the Bones in a complex, textured adventure comics-style space, and the characters are, at times, displaying more emotional complexity than many of the humans around them. It also all came from one artist's hand, so the the styles might seem jarring by description but the result is all of a piece.
Mickey mouse and Goofy, on the other hand, are characters with long histories and very well-established contexts that predate these particular comics for a couple generations of kids. These contexts do not include running around with firearms-wielding humans. Dropping Mickey into an international spy ring is a serious what the fucking what is that there?
Now, there's also the fan comic Air Pirates (previously, natch!) which dropped Mickey and the gang into surprisingly mature situations and it kind of worked better than these Dell comics. But it was also not sanctioned Disney product, so it doesn't really count I guess.
posted by ardgedee at 6:32 PM on June 7, 2013 [2 favorites]
I owned the first two (I'm sure I bought them myself at Jones-Belew Drug Store in Oklahoma City) but I don't remember ever seeing the cover art of the third one. Now I want to read it!
posted by Curious Artificer at 7:07 PM on June 7, 2013
posted by Curious Artificer at 7:07 PM on June 7, 2013
hippybear, the sight of a ballroom full of people in fursuits raving away can be a striking sight. I've been in that fandom for years and I'm still struck by how crazy a visual it is sometimes.
I am really disappointed that there is not a scan of an entire issue of one of these Mickey Mouse, Super Spy comics on that blog!
posted by egypturnash at 9:22 PM on June 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
I am really disappointed that there is not a scan of an entire issue of one of these Mickey Mouse, Super Spy comics on that blog!
posted by egypturnash at 9:22 PM on June 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
Mickey goes crime-solving in like half of his stories anyways and spying often enough. And there is a whole bunch of guns and getting shot at. The only difference here being that chief O'Hara (Or spy-equivalent) and the rest are realistically drawn instead of stylised dogs.
posted by Authorized User at 11:05 PM on June 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Authorized User at 11:05 PM on June 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
And it just doesn't seem that weird to me but that's probably just a whole childhood of reading Donald Duck magazine normalising the image of Mickey Mouse into something other than "cartoon mouse".
posted by Authorized User at 11:06 PM on June 7, 2013
posted by Authorized User at 11:06 PM on June 7, 2013
"I've often thought that the fictional characters Blofeld and Donald Trump were rip-offs of Scrooge McDuck."
Blofeld is named after this bloke's dad.
posted by marienbad at 5:42 AM on June 8, 2013
Blofeld is named after this bloke's dad.
posted by marienbad at 5:42 AM on June 8, 2013
As an '80s kid, I was always a little baffled when Mickey was given an actual personality and did things. To me, he was just . . . the logo, the smiling guy up front, whose job was to have the ears and say "H'lo folks!" If you wanted comedy from Disney cartoons, you wanted Goofy or preferably Donald Duck, but even then I knew that Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were better, because they were less careful about the characters somehow.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:37 AM on June 8, 2013
posted by Countess Elena at 7:37 AM on June 8, 2013
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posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:33 PM on June 7, 2013 [4 favorites]