Donald Duck cartoons are always preferable to Mickey Mouse cartoons. This is because Donald Duck has a personality—he’s greedy, arrogant, and easy to anger. Disney tried so hard to make Mickey Mouse into an everyman that he doesn’t stand for anything.
Only one time in his entire fictional life has Mickey Mouse ever been a character, and that’s in Floyd Gottfredson’s newspaper comic strip. The first collection of that strip, Race to Death Valley, was recently collected by Fantagraphics Books as the first volume in a complete collection of Gottfredson’s run. This Mickey Mouse still isn’t vivacious, but he’s more of a good-natured foil to the other characters, a kind of Tintin figure. These are the kinds of adventure strips that don’t get made anymore, with horse-thieves and treasure and double-crossing and exotic locales. Somewhere early in the book, the unthinkable happens, and you begin rooting for Mickey Mouse. (Unfortunately, later in the book, Gottfredson’s style becomes much cleaner and Mickey begins to revert to the friendly, suburban fellow we know and don’t care about.)
Another Fantagraphics reprint collection released recently, Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, is much more satisfying. This collection of full-color comics, the first volume in a projected Carl Barks library, is immediately recognizable: Donald Duck is the same hot-tempered maniac we know from the cartoons, and the supporting cast exists, basically, to drive him insane. Barks is one of the greatest comics artists ever—in every panel, he displays excellent draftsmanship, energetic characterization, and an uncanny eye toward pushing the reader into the next panel. The strips veer from adventure comics to the kind of light suburban comedy that Gottfredson attempts at the end of the Mickey Mouse volume, but because Barks’s grasp on his character is so strong, they serve as a fun, comedic foil to the adventure stories. Kids will love both of these books, but their heart—and yours—will always belong to Donald Duck.
Oh good! Barks is just brilliant. I am so going to get this!!!
But they do still get made, don’t they? They’re kind of hard to find, appearing only in the smoking ruin of the indie print world or the noisome swamp of webcomics, but things like Jeff Smith’s Bone or Der-shing Helmer’s The Meek fit the bill.
There are a couple of old Donald Duck comics I remember from way back – “Frozen Gold” and “Secret of the Everglades” (or something like that). Boy’s adventure tales…
“Donald Duck cartoons are always preferable to Mickey Mouse cartoons. This is because Donald Duck has a personality—he’s greedy, arrogant, and easy to anger.”
Is this why we keep voting Republicans into office?
Donald Duck: almost 80 and never worn pants.
Can’t wait for the kid to start reading so I can feed him a steady diet of Barks.
Donald continues to be my favorite character because of his personality. And I also like Chip and Dale. Especially when all three are in the same cartoon.
Early Mickey Mouse animated cartoons go against this idea: Mickey was a rogue, up against the man (or cat) and chasing the girl. Get the dvd with the first eight or ten MM cartoons, and you’ll be amazed. In one, Minnie is a “hoochie coochie dancer” at a carnival, where Mickey is a hot dog vendor (paging Dr. Freud). In another, Mickey takes her up for a plane ride and basically forces his . . . attentions on her (she escapes with perhaps the first iteration of the panty-parachute). Mickey was more picaresque early on, but now he’s sadly corporate/castrated. these early cartoons were also landmarks in sound synchronization. Hence the attention to music and dialogue,
http://www.amazon.com/Walt-Disney-Treasu…
Carl Barks forever.
As co-editor of the Fantagraphics Mickey series (and a die-hard Scrapper Mickey fan), I really ought to add a word of encouragement: Mickey becomes friendly and domestic toward the end of Vol 1 only because you were seeing a couple of gag stories.
Just pages into Vol 2 (on sale this week; obligatory plug), Mickey’s back on adventure again; with exotic locales and battles that easily improve on Vol 1. Mickey tries out a new catchphrase—”Now I’m gonna break you with my naked hands!” (…no, really). And Horace Horsecollar gets hypnotized and turns into a psycho. Be there.