Even more comics celebrating Mickey's 90th Anniversary

Back in 2018 I wrote a few posts about comics celebrating Mickey's 90th Anniversary. I ended the last one saying IDW was late to the party as they had two planned comics not published yet. Well, they both got published during 2019, and here is my late post talking about them.

The first one titled Mickey Mouse: The 90th Anniversary Collection is a nice collection of classic stories by various creators, with a few "new to the USA" as well. You can check out the complete contents on inducks.

WDC&S #698 to the left, The 90th Anniversary Collection to the right

The first story in the book is Boxing Champion, and has the same layout and coloring as seen in Gemstone's last issue of Walt Disney Comics and Stories (#698). But there we only got half of the story with the conclusion planned for next issue.
 

Note inside WDC&S #698 at the end of "Boxing Champion" part one.

But that issue never got on sale! And when we got a #699 a year later it was from a new publisher with a completely new plan for the series. I guess IDW's anniversary book was a good opportunity to get the entire story published in this version, and I'm glad we finally got to see all of it.

A couple of other stories are also the same as versions previously printed by Gemstone, including The Return of the Phantom Blot. And here I was really disappointed to see that this great blog has no influence on the publishers, hehe.

Cororing in "The 90th Anniversary Collection" (same as in Mickey Mouse #284)

I already pointed out the weird coloring in Mickey Mouse #284 on this blog! But that didn't get anyone to fix it for the new print... 😋

But for this print they restored the old ad for New Adventures of The Pantom Blot (check my old post talking about this)

Overall I liked this collection from IDW a lot, even if I had read most stories before. But it did end with a Casty story I hadn't seen before – and that is always appreciated!

***

 

The next anniversary book is The Quest for the Missing Memories, with a new serial created for the event. The story has eight 20-page chapters, all drawn by different artists. But I'm glad they decide to publish all together in one book rather than doing a mini-series of single issues to be collected in a trade later.

As the title suggest, the story revolves around Mickey loosing and trying to regain his memory.
 

I enjoyed reading the story; it's a fun little adventure worth checking out. And it's interesting to compare the different art styles for these modern Italian artists. But there are a couple of things to note – first the way Doctor Einmug talked in the story. And he does not sound like his usual self here! In the original newspaper comics from the 30's and all other American prints with the character he has always had his German accent.

Panles from the Jan 22, 1937 and Jan 27, 1937 newspaer strips ("Island in the Sky")

Panels from "Mickey Mouse in the Delta Dimension"

This way of talking is completely gone in this comic, which I think is sad.

His usual way of talking is gone in "The Quest for the Missing Memories"

We also get to see Eega Beeva later in the story. He does have his usual way of talking, but here the editorial team hasn't done their research. Originally and in English Pflip is a Thnuckle-Booh, not a Gangarone. That's the Italian translation of the species.

From the Jan 19, 1948 newspaper strpip ("Mickey Makes a Killing")

Same panel translated to Italian

They are called gangarones in "The Quest for the Missing Memories"

And the illness that makes people tell the truth is a reference to the newspaper story "Pflip's Strange Power", and should be called zizosis. Or pzizosis as Eega would have said.

 

Panels from the Dec 29, 1948 and Dec 30, 1948 newspaper strips ("Pflip's Strange Power")

 

The illness is called gangaronic flu in "The Quest for the Missing Memories"

***

Doing some searching on Amazon and such, there are lots of different kind of publications to celebrate Mickey's anniversary. Most does not look very interesting, but I saw one book titled Mickey Mouse Museum: The Story of an Icon back in 2018. It got me curious, but I decided against getting it for full price back then as I didn't find any previews showing anything interesting in it. But not long ago I found a really cheap used copy and bought it to check out.

 

It's quite large in size and what I'd define a coffee table book. It has a lot of large prints of posters and various stuff inside, accompanied with a short text.
 

It's a nice book to flip through, but didn't have much I hadn't seen elsewhere. But we did get a couple of pages about comics inside this one too.