Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 12: The Mysterious Dr. X: Volume 12

Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse #12

by Floyd Gottfredson, David Gerstein (Editor)

Dr. In this collection of the newspaper strip, Goofy goes missing…and turns up in a mysterious government lab! This climactic book of Gottfredson serials also finds Mickey plagued by Uncle Gudger, the one-man circus―and Gilhooley, the pitiless king of the leprechauns!

Genres: Humor, Adventure, Comics

305 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 3, 2017

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

[Kaoru · Rating 3 out of 5]

And thus the Mickey Mouse strip as we know it came to its conclusion. From here on out it's just daily gags, and Fantagraphics doesn't bother with collecting them into books, for better or worse. (And looking at the occasional period in which the strip dipped into them before, it's probably for the better. These latter volumes quite often descended into "For completionists only!" territory already, and the next ones in line wouldn't have been anything but that.)

What we're left with here with this final volume is more of the same of what we saw in the books leading up to it. It would be unfair to say that the Walsh era didn't have any highlights whatsoever, but it has to be said that it never shone as bright as the, say, first twelve years or so of the strip. One of this collection's editorial acknowledges the madcap make-it-up-as-we-go-along plotting, acknowledging that it rarely works in the story's favor, but stating it made the serials unpredictable and therefore exciting. Which is probably one way to look at them, but it doesn't make them any less unsatisfying. Plot threads are introduced only to be forgotten and abandoned halfway through, a story's conclusion often has very little to do with its beginning, and internal logic is severly lacking. As a result the serials are rather plodding and a bit of a slog to read. A far cry from page-turners like "The Monarch of Medioka" or "The Phantom Blot" of the earlier years.

That I give this volume three stars nevertheless mostly has to do with Gottfredson's art, which continues to be crisp as ever and is just beautiful to look at.

As a whole though, I can do nothing but recommend this series. Just bow out with book #6, unless you're a sad completionist like me.

[Gijs Grob · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the last volume in Fantagraphics' Mickey Mouse series. Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse strip continued until the 1970s, but only as a gag strip. The continuous stories that dominated the 1930s to 1950s stopped in 1955. This volume contains eight continuities, all penned by Bill Walsh. Walsh's stories often feel as if they were improvised, and none of the stories in this volume is very consistent. The most entertaining are 'Mickey takes Umbrage', featuring an educated gorilla and 'Dr X' in which Goofy suddenly turns into a smart scientist. Two outlandish stories, one in Ireland and one underground are too absurd and too meandering to become really exciting, and never approach the quality of Mickey's 1930s adventures. Mickey is mostly a non-adventurous, suburban, quiet-loving citizen, and in the last adventure he is hardly present himself. Gottfredson's artwork is top notch throughout, but it's difficult to regard these comic strips as real classics. As always in this series, the reprinting is outstanding, and the work of David Gerstein and his team flawless.

[LobsterQuadrille · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

Much of this volume felt like a chore to read. The Dr. X story leaves too many loose ends, and the Li'l Davy one is tedious. The best of the bunch are "The Magic Shoe", "A Fatal Occupation", and "Mickey Takes Umbrage". I enjoyed "The Magic Shoe" by far the most. I loved seeing a fantasy setting as a change from sci-fi, and it had just the right level of silliness while maintaining some plot momentum. There are three brief Christmas stories as a bonus at the end of this volume, starring Cinderella, Bambi, and the Three Little Pigs. Those were cute but nothing special.

Overall this set of comic adventures was underwhelming, but a couple of the stories made it worth my time.

[Daniel Q · Rating 3 out of 5]

And so the Mickey Mouse newspaper stories end! These final stories are subpar, with Walsh's crazy plots wandering from day to day without much of a plan in sight. But, taken as a whole, the whole 12 volume collection is extraordinary.

[Thor Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weak, final volume of Gottfredson Mickey adventures. There's a couple of highlights with the lovelorn ape and a smart version of Goofy.