Death In Disney Comics?

[Jonathan H. Gray]

Here's a curious question. The topic of death has often come up in the 
fandom for the Sonic The Hedgehog (for anyone familiar with the games and 
comics - Princess Sally, Emerl, Dr. Robotnik I, Maria Robotnik, Gerald 
Robotnik, Shadow The Hedgehog - just to name a few examples) and upon 
discussing the topic of the deaths of one of the comics and videogame 
characters, I remembered being really young and reading Gemstone's 
reprinting of Bill Walsh and Floyd Gottfredson's "The House Of Mystery" in 
which Drusilla is implied to have died in a fire at the end of the story.

There's also "The Pirate Ghostship" in which Blackbeard (I cant remember his 
name for the life of me) was engulfed in a flow of lava and the pink 
princess's Raven replied "he can't hear you anymore...." or something to 
that effect when he went back to check on him. In that same vein there's 
also "The World Of Tomorrow" in which the near anorexic Professor 
Numbspiegel is shown eating and slowly reaching for a ray gun with a beaten 
and battered Pete in the room. The latter two stories ended showing that the 
the adventure was, of course, a dream sequence in which Mickey wakes up 
from, but all three (Particularly the "deaths" of Drusilla and Blackbeard) 
are relatively strong images that have always stuck in my mind when thinking 
of Bill Walsh's Mickey Mouse.

His Gottfredson Mickey stories were always as dark as you got as far as 
Mickey was concerned but equally powerful (that era of Gottfredson is rarely 
seen and is my personal favorite in a way ^_^).

Anyways enough rambling and onto the question. Its rather morbid for the 
list but were there ever any other occurrences of death in the Disney comics 
as far as the mouse and duck universe is concerned? I think Don Rosa did a 
very tasteful death scene of one of the McDucks in Life And Times but its 
been ages and I dont have my comics on me so I dont remember. I'm just 
curious as to how often the theme came up during Walsh's run or perhaps even 
in others stories by the "Duck and Mouse Masters": Barks, Scarpa, Rota, 
Murry or perhaps even today among current artists. I'd be curious to hear 
what some of the creatives stances are on death considering (unlike Sonic 
which has an ongoing continuity) most all Duck/Mouse stories are 
self-contained.

Just curious.

Jonathan H. Gray
Undergrad & Artist Of "Sonic The Hedgehog"
Sonic #138-#141 (Next month's issue)