More comics celebrating Mickey's 90th Anniversary

I've already made two previous posts showing things published to celebrate Mickey's 90th Anniversary. First the Norwegian weekly Donald Duck & Co had a special birthday story, and then I talked a bit about the amazing Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate History. But there are more, so here is a post with some other comics celebrating the anniversary.

Mickey Mouse: The Greatest Adventures (USA)

 

From Fantagraphics we got a book with a selection of daily strip serials from the 30's, 40's and one from the 50's too – all stories drawn (partly or fully) by Floyd Gottfredson. They are all previously collected in Fantagraphics' Gottfredson library, but here they are presented in color.
 

Great color work inside the book

The coloring and the different format makes it a different reading experience, and I'd say it's worth getting the book even if you have the library collection – especially for the first part where the panels are printed a lot larger. Also, I guess the book is aimed more towards casual readers not wanting a full library, and includes a couple of articles about Floyd Gottfredson and the Mickey strip as well.

The book starts with Mickey Mouse in Death Valley that got a new splash panel for this print, based on the Columbia title card used in early Mickey cartoons.

Columbia title card, printed over two pages in Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate History

The early daily strips are created so they can be printed in two identical sized rows, making them easy to be printed in 3-row pages like in this book – without having to do any panel remounts.

The Floyd Gottfredson Library (top) were I marked with red how the strips can be rearranged.

Later strips are not created this way and are printed in four rows in The Greatest Adventures book, but with a more asymmetrical layout. I have mixed feelings about this, some pages look a bit messy I think – but it's a whole lot better than remounting the panels to fit. And when you get used to it, it's not too much of a bother.
 

From "The Gleam", irregular layout

The stories inside have a mix of newly colored stories and coloring used by Gemstone in the past. We also have The Atombrella and the Rhyming Man, with panel layout and coloring done for Boom!'s Mickey Mouse Classic: Mouse Mayhem. This book got cancelled during printing and only a few copies got sent out to editors and probably never went into regular distribution. The same version of the story got printed (in French) in a Canadian book by Groupe Modus/Presse Adventure – but this is the first time most of us will see it on print. 

 

Mickey Mouse Classics: Mouse Mayhem from Boom! - canceled during printing (image source)

Mickey Mouse Sticker Story (United Kingdom)
 

From Panini we got a sticker album for the anniversary. Normally this is not something I'm interested in, but this sticker album has a new comic story by Casty inside (!). The album is published in several countries around the world including Italy, Brazil, Germany and Poland – but I got the British version as that one is printed in English.

The one I have was sold in a starter pack, which included a few pack of stickers as well. It doesn't look like any of the stickers have any text, so I guess you can use stickers sold in one country in an album sold in another. The stickers also have random Mickey-logos on the back suggesting it's not a special print for the British album.

Stickers

Stickers, back

Inside we have several less interesting gallery sections, but the most interesting part is the 16 page comic story What an Adventure, Mickey!.

 

"What an Adventure, Mickey!", 16-page comic story

Even if you don't collect all the stickers it's perfectly readable, and it's a fun little story with a lot of Casty madness and references to old Gottfredson stories.
 

The Ryhming Man, Eega Beeva and Dr. Vulter

But apparently they didn't know that Ellroy now have an English name (first seen in IDW's Mickey Mouse #12), as the Italian name is used here.
 

Musse Pigg 90 år (Sweden)

Swedish readers got a nice compilation book with everything from old newspaper stories, a couple of Murry stories, Scarpa and newer Egmont stories (check out a full listing in the inducks database). The daily strips are in black and white, while most of the book is in color. As we can see in the example from Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot, this book have remounted panels to make it fit the layout instead of doing it like Fantagraphics did in The Greatest Adventures.
 

Remounted version of Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot

We also get several interesting articles with background information inbetween the comic stories.
 

Article "Mickey in Scandinavia"

The book has the same kind of design as another anniversary book celebrating 70 years of the weekly comic book, making them great next to each other on the shelf.

 

Donald Pocket #472 (Norway)

The monthly Donald Pocket in Norway also had an issue to celebrate the anniversary. Inside we have two special anniversary stories. One is a new Egmont story written by the McGreal's and drawn by Fecchi.
 

New anniversary story from Egmont

The other one is an Italian production and by Casty:
 

Anniversary story by Casty

But we also got a Mickey Mouse parody of the Metropolis movie, from the new series of Italian parodies. Also a great read, but I don't like reading these stories in the pocket format… they need proper paper with better color printing and in a larger format!
 

Metropolis parody story

The Norwegian Donald Pocket is a coproduction with other countries, so we have the same book in ex. Sweden, Denmark and Germany too. But for some reason the Norwegian editors apparently doesn't think a Disney comic will be a hit unless they throw a Donald Duck logo, or just "something" Donald on the cover… We've seen this on lots of occasions – and in this case they replaced the great Casty cover with a generic birthday cake cover with Donald on it! The book would have looked sooo much better with the Casty cover!
 

Danish, Swedish and German edition of the same pocket book

The Norwegian cover was originally created for Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #550

Mikke Mus i Dødens dal (Norway)

 

Not really an anniversary book but got released in mid-November just in time for Mickey's birthday –  so I'll count it among the rest. This book is the first of six books collecting newspaper comics by Floyd Gottfredson. It uses the same restoration as the Fantagraphics books, but have both the daily strips and the Sunday pages in the same book. Also, the Norwegian edition is not going to be a complete collection, just a selection of the Gottfredson newspaper stories. This decision got some negative responses on forums and such, but personally I don't mind that the series is just going to be a selection. If the series was going to be 14 volumes like the Fantagraphics one I wouldn't have bought it – I already have the Fantagraphics set and that's going to superior in my opinion. But six volumes is just fine for me to support it. (but yeah, I can understand others wanting a full set)
 

Example from inside the book

Upcoming comics from IDW

IDW is a bit late to the party, but has two books planned to celebrate the anniversary. Mickey Mouse: The 90th Anniversary Collection is scheduled for an early January release, while Who Is Mickey Mouse? won't get on sale until June next year. The first one looks like will be a compilation of classic stories by Gottfredson, Murry, Scarpa and also Casty. But from the Amazon description of Who Is Mickey Mouse? it looks like that one has a completely new story.
 

Upcomming comics from IDW

Edit: The two IDW issues are covered in a March 2020 post.