Disney-comics digest #123.

[David A Gerstein]

	Dear Folks,

	A few more comments on Marc Eliot's Mickey Mouse:

	"humble," -- In the first year of the MM strip, especially in
the strips written by Walt, Mickey brags constantly.  "Wait 'til Lindy
sees this airship... he'll be so jealous he'll *resign* from the
army!"  "The only way to get ahead of Mickey Mouse is to *run* in
*front* of him!"  "[Clarabelle] musta been vaccinated with a
phonograph needle!"  "All in one... I never miss a ring!"

	"chaste," -- Almost got me here, but in "Clarabelle's Boarding
House" (1932), MM hides under the bed of an old maid whom he hears
looks there every night for "a man" -- and gets kicked out of her
room... for obvious reasons.

	"cerebral" -- 1933:  "I'll keep Minnie's silk parachute in my
pocket, but I won't let anybody *see* I've got a second one!  They'd
think I was a *baby*!" [Or something like that, I don't have the story
here]

	"always in control" -- Gottfredson often described Mickey as a
"mouse against the world," just because Mickey in the strip was
*never* in control until the very end of a given story.  Many of the
stories are about the very unsettling feeling of *losing* control --
particularly "Monarch of Medioka".  Only in a few stories -- "Wolf
Barker" perhaps most notably -- from the golden period is Mickey
always in control.  By the end of his own long adventures, Donald has
at least achieved neutral ground, if not victory, with his problems,
too.  (For "neutral" -- see "Darkest Africa" and "Lost in the Andes"
most notably)

	
	Racism in WDC&S 57
	====== == ===== ==

	Dear Mark:  I'm interested to hear the examples of racism and
jingoism in WDC&S 57 -- I don't have that one.  Is it one of the ones
with the MM "Black Crow" mystery?  That does have a few lapses in
it...  for example, Mickey briefly suspecting the Chinese-American
hired man of being a crook (presumably mistaking him for being
Japanese, although that isn't stated outright).

	If that issue is the one with the DD icebox robber story...
that story is the only example I know of where anti-Japanese sentiment
appears in Barks.  Or is that story WDC&S 56?


	Character colors
	========= ======

	Interesting that Donald's car is yellow throughout WDC&S 57...
it seems to be an unchanging color throughout each issue that I have
from that era, but the color will change from issue to issue.
Gladstone didn't color it consistently either from 1986-1990.  Disney
began coloring it consistently red after the Barks painting "A 1934
Belchfire Runabout!" was made.  Actually, I think that all the stories
Gladstone did *new* color for made the car red, too.

	Here's one.  When and where did Uncle Scrooge ever appear
consistently with a red-and-gray coat?  The color changes wildly in
old Dell issues, and is most often purple or green!  When it's red, I
never see gray cuffs (and it continues that way to today in Egmont's
comics).  Did Gladstone originate this trend?  They did it in all the
stories that they colored newly from 1986-1990, and when the new color
system came in for good in 1990, this became the norm.  When did it
start?

	I actually note that it was done in the 1983 film "Mickey's
Christmas Carol."  Don't tell me *this* was where it started!

	(I don't mean to sound ignorant about this affair.  But to be
honest, I have very few Dell US issues... why bother, at their cost?
*Everything* in them has been reprinted *constantly* since then!
Aside from the Marco Polo story, we've slogged through reprints of the
Barks Scrooge canon until even the best stories have become wearying
-- well, okay, not the *best* but nearly everything else!  For example
"The Midas Touch" has been printed seven times in the U. S.:  US 36,
two other Western US issues, a WD Showcase issue, some Whitman digest
I believe, Gladstone's US Digest 1 and US Giant Album 6!

	What foreign stories are in US 283, and who's responsible for
them?  I'm dying to get this issue!