Mickey Mouse Color Sundays, Vol. 1: Call of the Wild

Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: Color Sundays #1

by Floyd Gottfredson, Gary Groth (Series Editor)

We’re jumping from black and white to classic color — as Mickey Mouse makes his Sunday strip debut! Bright hues highlight our hero as he races through action-packed epics... taking him from Uncle Mortimer’s Inferno Gulch ranch to the icy peak of frigid Mount Fishflake! Back home in Mouseton, Mickey welcomes a famous co-star — Donald Duck — and nearly lives to regret it!

Floyd Gottfredson, artist of the Sunday Mickey Mouse from 1932-38, created the most famous Mickey tales ever told in print. These long-form color strips, many never before reprinted in the USA, also feature the work of later Donald Duck master Al Taliaferro. Collectively, they form a group that fans have been seeking for a lifetime!

Highlights include "Mickey’s Nephews," introducing Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse, and "Dr. Oofgay’s Secret Serum," which turns Horace Horsecollar into a brainwashed wild mustang! Classic gag stories round out the book, offering manic Mouse mischief at a fever pitch.

Restored from Disney’s line art sources and enhanced with an eye-popping recreation of the strips' original color, Call of the Wild also brings you more than 40 pages of chromatic supplementary features! You'll enjoy rare Gottfredson drawings, vintage publicity material, and fascinating commentary by a prismatic pack of Disney scholars, including an appreciation of Gottfredson by celebrated alternative cartoonist Kevin Huizenga.


NOTE: Mickey Mouse Color Sundays: Call of the Wild contains cartoon violence and historically dated content presented in context.

Genres: Comics, Comic Strips, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics, Humor, Adventure, Collections

280 pages, Hardcover

First published May 20, 2013

About the author

Arthur Floyd Gottfredson (1905-1986) was an American cartoonist. He is known for his defining work on the Mickey Mouse newspaper strip, which he drew from 1929 to 1975, and mostly plotted himself from 1929 to 1945. His impact on the character of Mickey Mouse is often compared to the one that cartoonist Carl Barks had on Donald Duck. Because of the large international circulation of his strips, reprinted for decades in some European countries like Italy and France, Gottfredson can be seen as one of the most influential cartoonists of the 20th century. Many groundbreaking comic book artists, like Carl Barks and Osamu Tezuka, declared to have been inspired by his work.

Floyd Gottfredson grew up in a Mormon family from Utah. He started drawing as a kid on doctor's advice, as a form of rehabilitation after a sever injury, which left his dominant arm partially disabled for life. After taking some cartooning correspondence courses, teenage Floyd secured a job as cartoonist for the Salt Lake City Telegram.
At age 23, Floyd moved to California with his wife and family. He interviewed at the Disney Studios, hoping to land a position as a comic strip artist, but was hired as in-between animator instead. In that period writer Walt Disney and artist Ub Iwerks were starting a series of daily syndicated newspaper comic strips featuring Mickey Mouse, the character the two had created for animation the year before. A few months into the publication of the strips however, Iwerks left the Studios. Walt decided then to promote Gottfredson to the role of Mickey Mouse strip penciler, remembering his original request at the job interview. Not long after that, Disney left the entire process of creation of the strip to Gottfredson, who would eventually become head of a small 'comic strips department' within the Disney Studios.
Up to 1955, Mickey's strips were 'continuity adventures': the strips were not just self-contained gags, but they composed long stories that would stretch in the newspapers for months. In this context, Gottfredson had to developed Mickey's personality way beyond his animation counterpart. He made him an adventurer and multi-tasking hero, putting him in all kind of settings and genre-parodies: thriller, sci-fi, urban comedy, adventure in exotic lands, war stories, western, and so on.
Gottfredson scripted the stories on his own for a few years, only getting help for the inking part of the process. (Most notably by Al Taliaferro, who will become himself the main artist on the Silly Symphonies and Donald Duck syndicated strips.) Starting from around 1932, Gottfredson worked with various writers, mostly Ted Osbourne and Merril deMarris, who provided scripts for the strips, while Floyd retained the role of plotter and penciler. Starting from 1945, Gottfredson left all writing duties to writer Bill Wash.
In 1955, by request of the Syndicate, Mickey Mouse strips stopped being continuous stories, and became self-contained gag. Gottfredson would remain in his role of strip artist for twenty more years, up to his retirement in 1975.
Gottfredson died in 1986, with his achievements going mostly unknown to the larger American public (as his strips were technically all signed 'Walt Disney').
In 2006, twenty years after his death, Floyd Gottfredson was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards Hall of Fame.

Reviews

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was pretty good. Most of the comic strips were good and a lot of them were funny. It was an easy read and would be good for fans of the old Mickey Mouse. Some of the pages are a little hard to read because the print is so small though and some of the language used isn't the best or is confusing. Also a lot of the words are shortened so it's sometimes hard to figure out what it's supposed to say. Overall the book was ok though.

[Peter Wesolowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's start by saying I am more of a duck man than a mouse man, but I found the book really interesting. The comments on Gottfredson and his work made the book better than I thought it would be. I bought it to see the early appearances of Donald Duck and I wasn't disappointed. I would read other mouse books after finishing this one just to see where Gottfredson goes with his other Sunday stripos.

[Michael P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is difficult to find fault with the fine collection except to wish that the book, and therefore the strips, had a bigger trim size and to note that some stories and gags are better than others. I think very highly of Floyd Gottfredson's early work.

[Mark Stratton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not as much fun as the dailies, the lack of continuity and too many gah strips. Still watching Gottfredson develop the characters in the Sunday format is interesting to follow

[Gijs Grob · Rating 5 out of 5]

From 1932 to 1938 Floyd Gottfredson also drew the Mickey Mouse Sunday comics, apart from the daily comic strip. This volume contains the Sunday pages from 1932 to 1935. The comics show Gottfredson's comical side. They are very interesting for the evolution of Mickey, who start as a mischievous barnyard boy, but matures over the years. The comics also introduce Morty and Ferdie, Mickey's destructive nephews, Dippy Dawg (Goofy's first incarnation) and Donald Duck, who's egg yellow in his first appearances. There are five continuous stories, all lighter in tone than the daily comic strip adventures. Highlight is 'Dr. Oofgay's Serum' (1934), in which Mickey, Minnie, Horace & Clarabelle go camping. The artwork starts rather uncertain, but from May 1932 it becomes excellent, and the Sundays certainly show what a great comic artist Floyd Gottfredson was. Highly recommended for lovers of classic Mickey, classic Disney and classic comics in general.

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a typically handsome and carefully-produced Fantagraphics collection, and it's nice to get an integral run of these early Sunday strips. There are some good gag cartoons here, and some entertaining longer continuities, but Gottfredson's real strength (at least early on) is with the daily continuities, more than with these Sunday pages, which seem, by comparison, narratively underdeveloped. It is pretty cool to see the earliest versions of Donald Duck in the newspaper, though. (Who knew he started out literally yellow!) The ancillary material is, as usual, fascinating, especially some of the early Italian material (in which Mickey is far more anarchic, even on occasion disturbingly violent, than he is in the American strips). The Disney boosterism in a lot of the text does begin to wear a bit, though. Nevertheless, this is a must-have for mouse fans, and probably for most people seriously interested in the genesis of newspaper comics.

[Nathan Dehoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many other comic strips that normally run in black and white, the Sunday Mickey Mouse comics were printed in color, and didn't go along with the continuity of the others. Some were just one-page gags, while others were continuing serials of their own. There's a Western tale about cattle thieves, adventure stories with Mickey and his friends going camping and climbing a mountain, and a story the mouse tells to his nephews about conquering a giant. Fighting giants is something Mickey has done a few times, notably in Mickey and the Beanstalk, but also in earlier shorts. I guess it works because it's someone little overcoming someone enormous. Dippy Dawg, who would later become Goofy, makes a few appearances in which he's obsessed with playing the Jew's-harp. And before Donald Duck got his own nephews, he had to babysit Mickey's in these early comics. Oddly, Donald was colored in yellow in these strips.

[Kaoru · Rating 4 out of 5]

So first things first: Most of these Sunday strips are just one page gags, and even the longer storylines (in case one of them pops up) don't equal the epic breath or depth from the daily strips. And it must be said that the gag strips haven't aged all that well. However it's all still quite charming, and Gottfredson's artwork looks beautiful as ever, if not even more beautiful in colour. And one gets to see Horace and Clarabella again. Both characters have been phased out almost entirely in the daily strips that the current books are collecting, so it's a definite plus to have them back for at least a while.

It's certainly not an essential addition to the Gottfredson Library, but if you're collecting the series anyway you just might as well dip into the books completely.

[Stven · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very nice production, beautiful clean printing of these full-color Mickey Mouse comics for the Sunday newspapers of the early 1930s. Floyd Gottfredson's artwork is lovely to behold: a clean dark line, fine draftsmanship, excellent sense of action and good comedic timing. The gags are a bit limp and a few decades short of modern comedy, and I'm sure they played better when you were only looking at one strip a week. The best sequences are when we wander off into a small adventure instead of taking things one gag at a time. Mickey and Horace's valiant ascension of Mount Fishlake in a blinding snowstorm gives us the most impressive artwork and storyline in the book, but that's only a few Sundays among many.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

All color Mickey strips from the Sunday runs from the mid 1930's. This was an interesting time for old Mickey and Walt. There is the introduction of some oddball duck with a lot of pent up anger by the name of Donald. And the other odd character here is Goofy. He goes from some type of gag character to slowly replacing Clarence as Mickeys sidekick. Most of these Sunday funnies differ from the daily black and whites in that they were not run as serial stories. There were a few story runs but these usually only lasted through a few strips. Accompanied by some historical research and background into the comic this made for an interesting book that I enjoyed very much.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was too young to grow up with these. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed them thoroughly. I think a lot of the problems and jokes in here were timeless enough that the humor still came through 80 years later. I also loved the essays that talked about the development of the characters across the cartoons and comics.

[Naomi Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about Mickey Mouse the cute mouse that everyone loves and he goes camping with he's friends and Horace his friend gets a shot by accident and becomes wild and Mickey and the gang are trying to get him out.

[Ruz El · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fine volume in Fantagraphics reprint series of the Gottfredson strips. This one shifts gears from the daily to present the colour Sunday strips. This shift means more gag strips and less adventuring, but it's still a heck of a fun read. Onward to volume 2.

[Erik · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a very nice reproduction, but I've never really seen much appeal in Mickey Mouse.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic as you will learn more about the evolution of that most famous mouse ever! Fun times and the early Donald Duck doesn't hurt either. Plus the commentary is a great bonus!