On Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse Strips -- Mickey's suicide attemtps

Olivier mouse-ducks at wanadoo.fr
Tue Aug 26 15:02:57 CEST 2003


I forgot to reply to this--

Alecto:
>>> I must say that to me it seems a rather unusual MM story, with adult
concepts
>>> not usually touched upon in later Disney's I've read (e.g. suicide)

They're quite unique indeed. Some beautiful panels- the first strip of  this
episode (Oct 11), for instance, with Mickey walking in the street, looking
worried, then seeing Minnie & Slicker's shadows; and the wordless last panel
of  the next day, where Mickey picks his rifle.

A quote from-- you've guessed it-- the truly excellent interview by David R
Smith (Nov 5, 1975), reprinted in "Mickey Mouse in Color"...

(pp107-8)
(DS) Did Walt take much of  an interest in the comic strip as it was going
along? Did you get criticism or story suggestions from him?
(FG) At the start I did. He would make suggestions every once in a while,
for some short continuities and so on, and I would do them. One that I'll
enver forget, and which I still don't understand-- around early 1931 I
believe it was, he said, "Why don't ou do a continuity of  Mickey trying to
commit suicide?" So I said, "Walt: You're kidding!" He replied, "No, I'm not
kidding. I think you could get a lot of  funny stuff  out of  that." I said,
"Gee whiz, Walt, I don't know. What do you think the syndicate will thing?
And the readers?" He said, "I think it will be funy. Go ahead and do it". So
I did, oh maybe ten days of  Mickey trying to commit suicie-- jumping off
bridges and landing in garbage scows, trying to hang himself  and the limb
breaks, rigging up a gun and something happens to it. I don't remember all
the details. But, strangely enough, the Syndicate didn't object. We didn't
hear anything from the editors, and Walt said, "See, it was funny; I told
you it would be". So, there were a few things like that.



Olivier




More information about the DCML mailing list