Table of Contents. Setting the Stage. The Adventures: Floyd Gottfredson s Mickey Mouse Stories With Introductory Notes

Transcription

1 Table of Contents Setting the Stage Of Mouse and Man: Adapting Mickey Foreword by Thomas Andrae The Adventures: Floyd Gottfredson s Mickey Mouse Stories With Introductory Notes Looking Forward, Looking Back Mickey Mouse and His Horse Tanglefoot June 12 October 7,1933. Plot and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson; Script by Ted Osborne; Inks by Ted Thwaites Mickey Mouse the Detective The Crazy Crime Wave October 9, 1933 January 9, Plot and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson; Script by Merrill de Maris; Inks by Ted Thwaites The Great Orphanage Robbery January 11 May 14, Story and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson; Inks by Al Taliaferro King of the Cannibal Island Stories Mickey Mouse Sails for Treasure Island May 16 November 12, Story and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson; Inks by Al Taliaferro and Ted Thwaites Growth of a Hero Blaggard Castle November 14, 1932 February 10, Plot and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson; Script by Webb Smith; Inks by Ted Thwaites Pluto and the Dogcatcher February 11 25, Plot and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson; Script by Ted Osborne; Inks by Ted Thwaites Gloom and Greatness The Mail Pilot February 27 June 10, Plot and pencils by Floyd Gottfredson; Script by Ted Osborne; Inks by Ted Thwaites Betting the Farm

2 Table of Contents The Gottfredson Archives: Essays and Special Features Gallery feature The Comics Department at Work: Mickey Mouse in Color (...And Black and White) Gallery feature Gottfredson s World: The Great Orphanage Robbery The Cast: Horace, Clarabelle... and Dippy by David Gerstein Mousterpieces: Floyd Gottfredson s Mickey Mouse Paintings Appreciation by Malcolm Willits Mickey Mouse in the Frozen North Painting by Floyd Gottfredson Gallery feature Gottfredson s World: Mickey Mouse Sails For Treasure Island The Cast: Pete and Shyster by David Gerstein Mickey Mouse Sails for Treasure Island Painting by Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse and Clarabelle Painting by Floyd Gottfredson Gallery feature Gottfredson s World: Blaggard Castle The Gottfredson Gang: In Their Own Words by David Gerstein, with texts by Eleanor Barnes The Cast: Ecks, Doublex, and Triplex by David Gerstein Mickey Mouse in Blaggard Castle Painting by Floyd Gottfredson Gallery feature Gottfredson s World: The Mail Pilot Sharing the Spotlight: Ted Osborne by Alberto Becattini and David Gerstein Mickey Mouse the Mail Pilot Painting by Floyd Gottfredson Gallery feature Gottfredson s World: Mickey Mouse and His Horse Tanglefoot Mickey Mouse and His Horse Tanglefoot Painting by Floyd Gottfredson Sharing the Spotlight: Merrill de Maris by Alberto Becattini and David Gerstein Gallery feature Gottfredson s World: The Crazy Crime Wave Mickey Mouse the Detective Painting by Floyd Gottfredson The Cast: Tanglefoot by J.B. Kaufman and David Gerstein Gallery feature Gottfredson s World: The Perils of Mickey Return to Blaggard Castle Disney Adventures, Vol 3, No 10 and 11 (August and September, 1993). Story by David Cody Weiss; Art by Stephen DeStefano; Lettering by Stephen DeStefano and Bill Spicer During the Continuities by Floyd Gottfredson Sharing the Spotlight: Webb Smith by Alberto Becattini and David Gerstein

3 JANUARY 11, 1932 MAY 14, 1932

4 LOOKING FORWARD, LOOKING BACK The one-time popularity of Uncle Tom s Cabin particularly as a story for all ages seems foreign from today s vantage point. Yet when one steps just a couple of decades into the past, there is Uncle Tom: as common a family classic, in the public mindset, as The Wizard of Oz. And like Oz, Uncle Tom was capable of being interpreted and re-interpreted in numerous ways. When Abraham Lincoln called Tom author Harriet Beecher Stowe the little woman who started [the Civil] War, he was only half-right: slavery was not the only reason for the conflict. Still, the original Uncle Tom s Cabin (1852) as a bestselling abolitionist novel surely fueled the fires of battle. Its African-American slave heroes were smart, rounded individuals; the original Uncle Tom fought back against thuggish white characters by refusing to betray his runaway compatriots, or to lower himself to his owners level of violence. Yet Stowe s characters are seldom remembered this way today. Less than a year after the book s publication, pro-south stage play versions of Uncle Tom were transforming the story radically. 1 Slave girl Topsy, once the tragic image of an uneducated child, became a simple comic foil. Evil slave owner Simon Legree became one bad apple in an otherwise acceptable institution. Finally, Tom s refusal to fight was transformed from moral superiority into timid cowardice, creating the cliché of the uncle tom : a minority member who behaves submissively toward oppressors. While Stowe disliked some of these depictions, 19 th century copyright law left her powerless to stop them. 2 Luckily for Stowe, the abolition-minded boosters of her original novel mounted Uncle Tom plays of their own. These pro-north Tom shows still naïvely included some elements that offend today, such as white actors performing in blackface. But pro-north Tom shows tried to be pro-equality, too. Simon Legree once again represented slavery as a whole; Tom, while a victim of villainy, defiantly refused to give in to it. The pro-north Uncle Tom was often the subject of early animation and comics. Battles with Simon Legree became a nearly constant activity for cartoon stars: from Felix the Cat in Uncle Tom s Crabbin (1927) to Red Hot Riding Hood in Uncle Tom s Cabana (1947). Mickey got his opportunity with Floyd Gottfredson s Great Orphanage Robbery (1932); then again with a screen version, Mickey s Mellerdrammer (1933), one year later. Mickey s versions of the Tom story reflect the state of progressivism in the early 1930s. Practicing for his role as Uncle Tom, Mickey commendably talks back to his master (January 29); Horace Horsecollar, playing Legree, is bombarded with vegetables or chased by his own hound. 3 By the same token, however, Mickey s retelling still includes severely dated elements like blackface gags and overexaggerated Southern dialect. The sheer ubiquity of some clichés in 1932 led even well-intentioned writers to overlook their negative impact. [DG] 1 John Frick, Uncle Tom s Cabin on the Antebellum Stage, Uncle Tom s Cabin & American Culture, exhibits/frick/frick.html (accessed April 9, 2011). 2 Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p The punishment differs from film to strip; see Mickey s Mellerdrammer (1933) on Walt Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in Black and White Vol. 2 (Disney DVD, 2004).

5 THE GREAT ORPHANAGE ROBBERY 17.

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