Mickey Mouse Shorts: Season One

Regular cover variants of all 4 IDW issues

IDW just finished their 4-issue run of Mickey Mouse Shorts: Season One. When I first heard the news about this series saying it was going to be a new adaptation of the animated series I got a bit excited. I had already read some earlier comic stories made from screencaps, but got the impression the new IDW series was going to be something completely new. And I assumed it was actually going to be drawn, but in the same style as the animated series. This sounded like a really interesting project! So I have to admit I got a bit disappointed when I realized the IDW series was going to use the exact same screencap comics already available, but with a new dialogue adaptation.

Under are a couple of examples showing the difference between the original adaptation and the IDW adaptation.

Original adaptation (top) and the IDW adaptation (bottom)

Original adaptation (left) and the IDW adaptation (right)

In four issues IDW published a comic adaptation of all 18 episodes from season 1 of the animation and one episode (ep. 22) from season 2. I don’t think any other publishers have printed all of them, at least not in English – so it’s great to have all collected. But most of the original dialogue adaptations are available in English too. The first 9 episodes were published digitally in two issues on comiXology, a 2013 Comic Zone issue got a few, and a Japanese book published 12 episodes with both the English dialogue and a Japanese translation.

Cover for the two comiXology digital issues

Comic Zone and a Japanese book

I made this table to get an overview of all known English prints (at least known to me). All have the same art, but IDW got different dialogue than the rest.

Episode	Title	comiXology	IDW	Comic Zone	Japanese
1	No Service	1	4
2	Yodelberg	1	4
3	Croissant de Triomphe	1	4
4	New York Weenie	2	4
5	Tokyo Go	2	1
6	Stayin',Cool	1	4
7	Gasp!	2	2
8	Panda-monium	2	2
9	Bad Ear Day	2	3
10	Ghoul Friend		3
11	Dog Show		1
12	'O Sole Minnie		3
13	Potatoland		2
14	Sleepwalkin'		3
15	Flipperboobootosis		1
16	Tapped Out		3
17	Third Wheel		1
18	The Adorable Couple		2
22	O Futebol Clássico		1

As I said, the Japanese book has the original English dialogue and the same art as the other prints, but the layout of the panels is changed and some are cut out too. Also, the Japanese translation is inserted in-between. When reading a manga, the reading direction is usually backwards from what we are used to in America and Europe – but in this book the reading direction is actually the "right" way!  Another thing I noticed in the Japanese book is that one of the missing stories is Tokyo Go. I’d think that would be the first to be included...

"Croissant de Triomphe" in Comic Zone

"Croissant de Triomphe" in the Japanese book

I did a couple of comparisons with the comic adaptation to the left and the frame from the animation that was used to the right.

From "Ghoul Friend" - comic adaptation and frame from the animation

In the first example most of the frame was used as a comic panel without much editing. While in the second example we can see that the background has been changed compared to how it looks in the animation.

From "Third Wheel" - comic adaptation and frame from the animation