Mickey's birthday in the daily newspaper strips

Today is Mickey’s birthday, isn’t it? Well, now days the birthday is considered to be November 18, 1928, the day of the "Steamboat Willie" premiere. But according to the daily newspaper strips in 1935, September 28 is the big day!

The event starts with an ad in the newspapers a few days before:

The ad is accompanied with a short article, telling us there will be a birthday party in the comic strip September 28th. And then the article goes on with a lot of bragging, so this is probably written by Disney’s publicity department. The scans below are from Sarasota Herald, September 26, 1935.

From Sarasota Herald, September 26, 1935

From Sarasota Herald, September 26, 1935

The birthday party is made as an epilog of the Gottfredson story "Race for Riches" (found in the Floyd Gottfredson Library vol.3). The story pretty much ends September 26., and the next strip takes place sometime later when Mickey & Co. is back home again. We can see Mickey hinting about his party at the end of the September 27 strip.

Mickey Mouse daily strip, September 27, 1935 - drawn by Floyd Gottfredson

And then on September 28, we finally get the big party.

Mickey Mouse daily strip, September 28, 1935 - drawn by Floyd Gottfredson

I’ve tried to do a little research into why they used this date. Is it a story behind, or did they just randomly choose one. Maybe it’s simply because "Race for Riches" ended at this point, and a comic strip celebration could be done in-between the next daily strip serial.

I got some clues in "A Mickey Mouse Reader", which I bought earlier this year. It’s a great collection of essays about Mickey Mouse, and highly recommended!

"A Mickey Mouse Reader" (2014), edited by Garry Apgar

On pg.4 we can read "Animation on Steamboat Willie was completed by late August 1928. The soundtrack was recorded on September 30^th. Which is why, throughout the 1930s, the studio fêted Mickey’s birthday on or about October 1st. In the 1970s, The Walt Disney Company began celebrating the event on November 18^th, since it was on that date in 1928 that Willie premiered […]"

On pg.128 in the same book, there’s a transcript from an article by Cholly Wood titled "Mickey Mouse is 7 Years Old Today". It was originally printed in Bridgeport Sunday Herald, September 29, 1935. I.e. the day after the birthday comic strip. 

About Mickey Mouse, the article say "The earth-spanning sprite was born—a few bold, humorous strokes on a sheet of clean paper—out of the imagination of Walt Disney, on Sept. 28, 1929"

I don’t know if 1929 is a typo in the transcript or in the original article, but it should probably be 1928. Or Mickey would be 6 years and not 7 as the title says. But still, we know that this is not true. Work on Plane Crazy (with Mickey) was done in the early 1928, and according to various Walt Disney biographies, he got the idea for Mickey during a train ride in 1927. And who actually did the character design for Mickey Mouse has been the subject for debate, some sources suggest it was mostly Ub Iwerks. But I’m not going to go more into that here. It would be interesting to know what source Cholly Wood had for the date "September 28" though. But I suspect it's just from a 1935 press release similar to the piece that was printed in Sarasota Herald.

Also, while doing some searching in online newspaper archives I found this article in The Ledger, September 10, 1978. Up to this date Nevada Library had been celebrating the birthday on September 19th.

From "The Ledger", September 10, 1978

If anyone know more about this, or can point me to sources for information about the celebration of Mickey’s birthday, please make a comment!

Update October 4, 2015

Mickey's 7th birthday was not only celebrated in the USA and in the newspaper strip. The British magazine Person's Weekly had a two page article about Mickey's birtdhay in the October 5, 1935 issue.

Person's Weekly No.2358, October 5, 1935

The most interesting part is the introduction:

The most famous mouse in the world celebrates his seventh birthday on September 28. In this country it is being held on October 1st. Mickey programmes will be shown in many cinemas; several firms selling Mickey Mouse products are conducting campaigns; and the B.B.C. is broadcasting a Mickey programme.

So it sounds like a big celebration was held in the U.K. October 1st, 1935. I wonder if a surviving recording of the BBC program exists, that would be fun to hear!

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

"The Golden Helmet", paperback from Fantagraphics

"The Golden Helmet", book 3 in Fantagraphics' series with Carl Barks paperbacks

A new book in Fantagraphics’ series of Carl Barks paperbacks is about to be released. Amazon list the publish date to be October 3, 2015, but I already received my copy a few days ago. It’s the third book of this kind they have published. From before we have "Ghost of the Grotto" and "Sheriff of Bullet Valley", all under the Donald Duck logo.

All books published so far in this series

These half-sized paperbacks contain stories previously published in The Carl Barks Library by Fantagraphics. So if you are already collecting that series there is nothing new to be found here. Like the names of books in the Carl Barks Library, the paperbacks also have names taken from one of the stories inside. But it looks like they tried to not use the same names on any books in both of the two series. Probably wise to avoid confusion. According to Fantagraphics’ own web pages the paperback series is an "affordable, kid-friendly Disney Duck adventure series". So it sounds like they are more targeted at kids. But I can also see the paperbacks as an easy pickup if you need to kill some time at the airport or need some light reading for your travel.

The Carl Barks Library and the paperbacks have the same color restoration, where they are digitally colored to be as close to the colors in the original print as possible. The difference is that in the paperback each page is broken down in two, so there are two tiers per page while originally they were printed with four. But that can be done without having to remount or rearrange the panels, and there’s no editing done to the art. Actually, if you are so lucky to come across original art by Carl Barks, you’d probably see that one page of comics is drawn on two sheets of paper that are taped together. So most (if not all, I’m not sure) can easily be printed as two halves.

Inside The Carl Barks Library vol.11 ("A Christmas For Shacktown") and "The Golden Helmet" paperback.

The image above is a comparison of the hardcovers and the paperbacks. What I think is a bit strange is what page they started the story on in the paperback. If you go to a random page in the book, you’d see the bottom half of one original page on the left, and the top half of the next page on the right. I think it would be better to be able to see both parts of the original page at the same time. So the story should have started on an even numbered page and not on an odd numbered page. Carl Barks said in interviews that he tried to end every page with a punch line or something exciting to keep up the pace of the story.  But it’s not that big of a deal. I tried reading "The Golden Helmet" with this in the mind, and it’s still a great story!

The story "The Golden Helmet" takes up the majority of the book with the same name, but we get three of Barks’ 10-pagers (here 20 pages) at the end too.

New series of graphic novels from Papercutz

The first book in the new series from Papercutz just came out. The series is simply called "Disney Graphic Novels" and doesn’t seem to be tied to any particular theme, character or series of comics other than being under the Disney logo. The first book is a comic adaptation of the movie Planes from DisneyToons Studios.

Book #1 in the new series of grapic novels from Papercutz, published September 2015

The movie is a spin-off from Cars and was originally intended as a direct-to-video movie like most DisneyToons movies. But as it got a theatrical release I guess some people had high expectations thinking it was a new Pixar masterpiece, and the result was a lot of negative reviews. I though the movie was okey though, I don’t really have any negative to say about it. Still, I can’t say I find this comic adaptation that interesting, but that goes for most new movie adaptations I guess. When I was a kid I used to love them, they used to come as an attachment to the weekly comics in Norway. And that’s where I got to know the story of the movies for the first time. Now days I watch the moves first and the comic adaptations seems a bit pointless. But at least they are a lot better than the line if "cinestories" that Joe Books are currently publishing. They consist of thousands of screengrabs from the movies with speech balloons inserted, and are completely useless in my opinion.

The Planes book from Papercutz is available in both hardcover for $12.99 and in a paperback edition for $7.99. But a digital version of the same story (in English) has been available for two years on comiXology. And the digital version is only $3.99. So the first volume in the new Papercutz series doesn’t really bring anything new on the table.

Cover of the comiXology comic with the same story

Personally I’d rather see this adaptation collected in a new 800 page monster book from Joe Books! In contrast to the cinestory books from the same publisher, I really liked those collections!

Disney-Pixar Comics Treasury and Disney Princess Comics Treasury, published February 2015 by Joe Books

But to get back on the Papercutz series… In the back of the Planes book they are announcing the next books in the series. #2 will be X Mickey, #3 will be Minne & Daisy BFF, #4 is a secret (they probably don’t know yet) and #5 will be a new Planes book.

#2 and #3 are already listed on Amazon with release dates March 29, 2016 and July 5, 2016. The dates can still change, but it doesn’t look like there’s going to be more than 3-4 books a year.

Pre-release covers of book 2 and 3 in the graphic novel series from Papercutz

***

If you are in need of more comic stories based on Planes, they do exist! In the USA one of the magazines in a series based on Cars was dedicated to Planes. And another original comic story was printed in the short-lived attempt to start up Comic Zone again. But even more are published in Europe.

Disney/Pixar Presents: Planes, issue #16 (Sep/Oct 2013) and Disney Comic Zone #2 (Oct 2013)

And if you want more Disney comics from Papercutz, they have been publishing Disney Fairies comics since 2010. 

Disney Fairies #3 and #4, published in 2010 by Papercutz

Quack Pack

Anyone remember Quack Pack, the animated series from the 90’s? What about the comics based on the series? Well, I think only one single story was ever published! But I wonder if more were made and published somewhere in the world. Please let me know if that is the case.

The only comic story I know of got published in the American Disney Adventures magazine, October 1997.

It’s called "Snooze Blues" and is only 4 pages long.

It’s not much of a story really. It’s like a one-page gag story that needs four pages to be told. Donald wants peace and quiet, Daisy wants to go to a museum with him, and the boys have a science project. And kaboom, Donald ends up in the hospital.

The story is not based directly off any episodes in the animated series, but the idea about the erupting volcano is from "The Germinator", episode 8 in the series.

We don’t get to know much about the Quack Pack version of the characters in this story, but the visual differences are easy to spot. Donald has exchanged his sailor suit with a hip Hawaiian shirt, and Daisy got rid of her hair bow and has a more modern look.

Huey, Dewey, and Louie have grown up to be teenagers and are visually distinct without their colored caps. But they still use red, blue and green clothes. In the animation they also have different personalities and they are often two against one (but all friends in the end).

Dewey is blue, Huey is red, Louie is green

Another thing that is different in Quack Pack compared to what we are used to in the Duck universe is the use of humans. There are no dog faced people in this series; they are all drawn like real humans. We can see this in the last panel of the comic story too.

As I said in the beginning, I think this is the only Quack Pack story ever published. But I spotted something that might be a hidden "Quack Pack #1" reference in the story. Donald’s coffee cup has the number 1 written on one side, and Q on the other side. If that means this is story #1, I wonder if they planned on making more.

Even if this is the only Quack Pack comic story, the boys appeared in their Quack Pack look in another story too. That happened in "Whatever Happened To Scrooge McDuck?" (Walt Disney Treasures: Uncle Scrooge (2008)) where we got a look into the future.

From D 2005-070, "Whatever Happened To Scrooge McDuck?"