Disney-comics digest #678.

[DAVID.A.GERSTEIN]

      When I was at Disney Comics, Inc., in 1991, I noticed a very 
polished one-panel gag up on Bob Foster's wall.  It read "Dumbo Meets 
Bucky Bug" and showed Bucky getting smooshed by a huge elephant foot. 
I wish I had asked for a copy of it.
      I also once heard an (unsubstantiated) rumor that Disney 
animators, after-hours, produced a brief film in which MM fights with 
Pegleg Pete but loses... he gets killed.  I have a hunch my friend 
was just putting me on, but you never know.
      One coverless Dutch comic I have (it's those Dutch again!) has 
a Playboy-style centerfold of Clarabelle Cow.  She isn't naked or 
anything, and is (as usual) skinny as a rail, but is holding two 
enormous watermelons to her chest to look like breasts.
      There's always the famous MM suicide sequence from 1930 ("Mr. 
Slicker and the Egg Robbers"), but it's done in as tastefully a way 
as you can imagine.  The subject is treated lightly and humorously, 
as if Disney and Gottfredson had no idea it was going to be 
controversial.  The (one-week) sequence wouldn't really be so famous 
except that Disney NOW is so protective of Mickey, and that suicide 
NOW is a major problem among kids.  In 1930, neither of these things 
were the case as far as I know, and Disney himself was the one who 
came up with the idea that Mickey should try suicide.  (Floyd 
Gottfredson himself was shocked!)
      The sequence runs this way:
      A)  MM is about to shoot himself when a cuckoo pops out of a 
cuckoo clock and screams, "Cuckoo!  Cuckoo!"  Deciding that the 
clock's saying he's crazy to shoot himself, Mickey tosses the gun 
away.
      B)  MM tries to jump off a bridge, but lands on a ship where 
he's accosted as a stowaway.  The captain prepares to throw him off, 
but Mickey's changed his mind about suicide again and is afraid he'll 
drown!
      C)  MM tries to gas himself, but a neighbor kid uses the gas 
pipe to fill his balloons;  one explodes, ruining the gas pipe too.
      D)  MM ties a weight to himself and is about to jump in a pond, 
but when a fish tells him the water's cold today, he throws the 
weight in the water by itself.
      E)  MM throws a rope over a tree branch to hang himself, but a 
bunch of squirrels see what he's going to do and rub up against him 
to console him, and in the end, he makes the rope into a swing and 
gives up suicide for good.  "It took a squirrel to prove what a nut I 
was!"  (The lead squirrel hangs around with Mickey afterwards and 
plays a key role in the climax.)  The squirrels can't talk, although 
the fish was able to...

      David Gerstein
      <9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>