Cover Cavalcade

A fun cover from 1959. Art by Paul Murry.

Mickey Mouse vs. Dinosaurs

During Floyd Gottfredson's run as artist and story-man for the Mickey Mouse comic strip, the young rodent achieved some pretty epic levels of heroism. Presented as brave, resourceful and always eager for another adventure, Mickey took on thieves, pirates, spies and outlaws of all sorts, always coming out on top. As I've said before, if I needed someone to combat evil, I wouldn't hesitate to bypass Batman, the Green Hornet, the Lone Ranger and Superman in order to take Mickey Mouse.

One of Mickey's most epic adventures ran from December 1940 to April 1941. Mickey hired by Professor Dustibones to fly to a remote island and help bring back "The most ASTOUNDING wonder science has ever known!"

With no more information available than this, Mickey recruits Goofy as an assistant and the two are off. The plane provided for them is on automatic pilot for most of the trip, so the two pals have no idea where the island is located when they arrive.

They meet Professor Dustibones and soon learn several very surprising things. First, the professor has a caveman butler working for him!

But that's only the second most surprising thing about this island. The MOST surprising thing is that there are dinosaurs living there. Yes, Mickey and Goofy are thrust head-first into a Lost World adventure. Soon, they are involved in an extended chase scene (lasting through a week-and-a-half worth of strips) in which they dodge a saber-tooth tiger, a pterodactyl, and several plesiosaurs.

One minor complaint about the story is that Professor Dustibones makes a point of warning Mickey about how dangerous the Tyrannosaurus Rex is, but then we never get to see one. But that is indeed a minor complaint. Both the chase scene involving prehistoric creatures and a later chase scene in which Mickey is desperately trying to escape some ill-tempered cave men are brilliantly done. They are models of how to do this sort of thing correctly, exciting while still full of truly funny gags and perfectly paced to allow them to run for days' worth of strips without getting tiresome. Throughout both chase scenes, Mickey repeatedly demonstrates his resourcefulness and his ability to think on his feet.

Back to the story: Dustibones wants to bring a live brontosaurus back to civilization and is building a zeppelin to carry it. But an earthquake and subsequent dinosaur stampede destroys the zeppelin and damages both available airplanes.

The nearby tribe of cavemen decide the outsiders are responsible for the disaster. They capture Goofy and Dustibones, intending to sacrifice them in a volcano to appease the angry gods. Mickey manages to stay free and has to learn to live off the land while figuring out how to rescue his friends.

Surprisingly, Goofy manages to escape on his own. He and Mickey fix one of the planes and Mickey finds the ingredients needed to mix up a bag of gunpowder. This gives them an opportunity to rescue Dustibones and flee the island. (By the way, it's specifically pointed out that Mickey's bombing run on the village doesn't hurt anyone, but simply scatters them in panic. For all the violence, murderous villains and gun play that filled Mickey's comic strip adventures, I don't think we ever actually see anyone get killed.)

This is a wonderful story from start to finish. It's full of often laugh-out-loud gags, but this never interferes with the sense of adventure and honest excitement that fills the tale right from the start. And it's all done "realistically" in a sense--Mickey's efforts to survive alone on the island include figuring out how to get food; fixing the plan includes how to work on it without making too much noise (thus alerting the cavemen) and worrying about having enough gas to fill the tanks. The protagonists are anthropomorphic animals and there are visual gags galore, but the story itself is a model of solid, logical plot development.

Cover Cavalcade

This needs to be a ride at Disney World.

Best Zeppelin Story Ever

Zeppelins are pretty cool looking vehicles, rating an 8.7 on the Bogart/Karloff scale. But, though lighter-than-air ships do get used by heroes every now and then (Doc Savage often traveled into adventure aboard the airship Amberjack), adventure fiction seems to most often lean towards using zeppelins as vehicles/weapons for the bad guys.

I suppose this is because the Germans used them during World War I to bomb England. Since then, villains have often used them as a part of their nefarious schemes—during both wartime and peacetime.

For instance, in the 1971 film Zeppelin, the Germans of World War I used a zeppelin to sneak a commando force into England, with the intent of stealing the original copy of the Magna Carta. (The idea here was that this would be a severe blow to English morale.) Sadly for the Germans, there’s a double agent on board.

Zeppelin isn’t a great movie, but it is fun and—well—it has a zeppelin in it. So it’s worth watching. Michael York plays the protagonist; he’s a British soldier of mixed Scottish and German descent. He fakes a defection to the Germans to spy on them. But he ends up on the zeppelin raid before he can send a warning to the Allies, forcing him to improvise a way to stop the Germans before it’s too late. The movie’s climax alone—featuring an air battle between the zeppelin and a squadron of British fighters—is really, really cool despite a few anachronisms that WWI aviation buffs will probably notice.

But Michael York isn’t the only hero who has had to take on a zeppelin single-handedly.  In fact, though York handles himself quite well in Zeppelin, he doesn’t hold a candle to that ace combat pilot named Mickey Mouse.

 In a 1932 sequence from Flody Gottfredson’s superb comic strip, Mickey has gotten a job as a mail pilot. But it’s a bad time to take the job—mail planes have been mysteriously disappearing and no one can figure out how or why.

Mickey manages to find out—though only after he himself has been captured by air pirates using a zeppelin as a base. But after a fortuitous escape, Mickey launches a single-handed attack against the pirate vessel.

I’ve talked about Gottfredson’s work once before. His Mickey strip, which seamlessly combined slapstick humor and talking animals with a real sense of adventure and danger, was brilliant. Mickey’s battle against the zeppelin is just one example of this—it’s funny and exciting at the same time, leading us to accept a world of sentient animals as “real.” It’s the culmination of a story arc that ran nearly four months, slowing building up suspense before skillfully explaining everything and ending with a magnificent battle sequence.

I like Zeppelin and recommend it. But it you want a truly magnificent adventure story featuring a zeppelin, look no father than Mickey Mouse. Best zeppelin story ever.

Mickey, Horace and a really good gut punch.

If I ever need help rescuing a kidnapped girl from gypsies, who should I call? Batman and Robin? No, not tough enough. The Green Hornet and Kato? No, not skilled enough in hand-to-hand combat.

No, I’d call two guys who make those heroes look like wimpy losers. I’d call Mickey Mouse and Horace Horsecollar.

For proof, I refer you to a 1931 sequence from the Mickey Mouse comic strip. Minnie has been kidnapped, having learned that she has a rich uncle. But the uncle is off traveling and can’t be contacted for the ransom money.

Fortunately, Mickey learns she’s being held in a abandoned mill. So he’s off to the rescue.

Though outnumbered, Mickey (with an assist from Minnie) acquits himself quite well and gets his gal out of the mill. But there’s more villains waiting outside.

That’s when Mickey’s pal Horace shows up. He starts laying out gypsies right and left. Look at the gut punch he’s throwing in the first panel of the strip just below. That’s a good punch. It kinda hurts just looking at it.

Then Horace’s girlfriend Clarabelle Cow gets involved and the bad guys are soon in full retreat.

The Mickey strip was primarily done by Floyd Gottfredson, who did both the story and pencils on the kidnapping sequence. Gottfredson accomplishes something very similar to what Carl Barks would do with Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck in the 1940s and 1950s—he balanced a funny animal strip full of gags with solid adventure storytelling. The end result was a unique and always enjoyable comic strip.

Batman? The Green Hornet? Spider Man? Nightwing? Bah—amateurs and pikers.  When facing off against villainy, I’ll take Mickey and Horace every time.