Mickey Mouse (comic strip)

Mickey Mouse
Mickey and Horace Horsecollar from the Mickey Mouse daily strip; created by Floyd Gottfredson and published December 1932
Author(s)
Illustrator(s)
  • Ub Iwerks (1930)
  • Win Smith (1930)
  • Floyd Gottfredson
  • (dailies: May 5, 1930 – November 15, 1975)
  • (Sundays: 1932–1938, 1950–1976)
  • Manuel Gonzales (Sundays: 1939–1981)
  • Bill Wright (Sundays only, 1942–1946, 1956, 1979–1983)
  • Carson Van Osten (1974–1975)
  • Roman Arambula (1975–1989)
  • Daan Jippes (Sundays only, 1981–1982)
  • Rick Hoover (Sundays only, 1989–1995)
Current status/scheduleConcluded daily and Sunday strips
Launch dateDaily: January 13, 1930
Sunday: January 10, 1932[1]
End dateJuly 29, 1995[1]
Syndicate(s)King Features Syndicate
Genre(s)Humor
Talking animals

Mickey Mouse is an American newspaper comic strip by the Walt Disney Company featuring Mickey Mouse and is the first published example of Disney comics. The strip debuted on January 13, 1930, and ran until July 29, 1995.[1] It was syndicated by King Features Syndicate until 1990, when Disney switched to Creators Syndicate, which distributed the strip until 2014 (in reruns after 1995).

The early installments were written by Walt Disney, with art by Ub Iwerks and Win Smith. Beginning with the May 5, 1930 strip, the art chores were taken up by Floyd Gottfredson (often aided by various inkers), who also either wrote or supervised the story continuities (relying on various writers to flesh out his plots). Gottfredson continued with the strip until 1975.

By 1931, the Mickey Mouse strip was published in 60 newspapers in the US, as well as papers in twenty other countries.[2] Starting in 1940, strips were reprinted in the monthly comic book Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, and since then Gottfredson reprints have become a staple of Disney comics publishing around the world.

Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse, a definitive collection of Gottfredson's work, was published by Fantagraphics Books from 2011 to 2018. There are fourteen volumes in the set—twelve books of the daily strips from 1930 to 1955, and two volumes of Gottfredson's Sunday pages from 1932 to 1938.

  1. ^ a b c Holtz, Allan (2012). American Newspaper Comics: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. pp. 260–264. ISBN 9780472117567.
  2. ^ "The Only Unpaid Movie Star," Harry Carr. American Magazine, March 1931. Reprinted in A Mickey Mouse Reader ed. by Gary Apgar, University Press of Mississippi, 2014.