Customer Reviews

Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: "Race to Death Valley" (Vol. 1) (Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse)

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4 star:		(2)
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This is a must-have item for anyone interested in comic strip reprints, Disney history, or just plain good-times!

I am a collector of comic book reprint hardcover material - of which there has been a great number lately. They vary in quality and it really comes down to three things:

1) do you like the character/comic?

2) is the artwork complete, reproduced well, and authentic?

3) are there any value-added materials in the book - such as essays, photos, etc?

If you are reading this review - then I must assume you have some interest in Mickey Mouse and/or Gottfredson's artwork - so #1 is a given.

As for #2 and #3 - wow. Just wow.

This book does an excellent job of printing the material on a nice, heavy, white paper that makes the art look fantastic (and it is fantastic art to start with). The paper is matte, so there is no glare, but it is quality paper that is crisp and doesn't fade or "smudge" the work. It looks wonderful.

As for #3 - this is where this book may be the best comic strip reprint book I've ever seen.

The essays and photos are top-notch and enlightening. I am especially impressed with the short essays introducing each "chapter" or story that the volume holds. You really get context and interest as you embark on the next pages. There is some material that I haven't seen reprinted since "The Censored Mouse" - a very short-lived comic in the 80's (2 issues?). I am glad to see some of that material here - where it can be treated as part of a cultural heritage, in the context of the times it was created with appropriate information and essay explanation.

This book is just rich in material - both reprinted strips and supporting information. I cannot think of a better example of what a strip collection could be. It's fantastic and I look forward to every published volume finding its way into my collection.

Ah, Mickey Mouse; that vacuous smile, that soulless laugh. His silhouette is literally a corporate logo. When I was young I used to watch Popeye and Warner Brothers cartoons after school because Disney didn't syndicate. Even when Disney started producing new cartoons for syndication in the late 80's Mickey Mouse was always conspicuous by his absence. The Disney Corporations intention may have been to protect their most famous property but in my mind it made Mickey seem snobbish. However in the first three decades of his existence Mickey was extraordinarily accessible in cartoons and the newspaper dailies. The cartoons were fun if a bit repetitive and shallow but the newspaper comics were where Mickey was really given the opportunity to develop as a character and Floyd Gottfredson was the man who made it all happen.

The first storyline featuring Gottfredson's talents was `Mickey Mouse in Death Valley' upon which this book is named. Walt Disney himself wrote the first third of the story and let me just say that Disney may have been a brilliant businessman but as a writer he was lacking. Disney's Mickey seemed to only talk in puns and stale jokes and the story was all over the place. When Gottfredson took over writing he initially emulated Disney and it wasn't until the second story, `Mr. Slicker and the Egg Robbers', that Gottfredson began to find his own style and by the time `Mickey Mouse Boxing Champ' rolled out Gottfredson had made the character his own. He slowed the stories down to a pace more appropriate for a daily comic and his art style improved to the point where it was just off the charts magnificent. Whereas the first story felt hokey, frantic and dated Gottfredson changed the series to feel funny, well paced and edgy. Hard to believe that Mickey could once be described as edgy but for a pipsqueak he could dish out (and take) some punishment. The town bully actually snipped off the end of Mickey's tail and tied his nose in a knot. That's pretty hardcore.

I am a HUGE fan of Elzie Segar's Popeye but the character was never intended as a role model. Mickey on the other hand was a legitimate good guy who was resourceful, brave and big hearted but Gottfredson to his credit didn't make him perfect. When Mickey believes that Minnie is in love with another *ahem* rat he attempts to commit suicide... repeatedly. Mickey is not above using alcohol to get one over on an enemy and even pulls out a pair of pistols in order to motivate the "heavy light weight champ" to train harder. Like Popeye, the early Mickey Mouse was a product of the depression era and lived a simple small town life. From starting a war with the town bully to fighting a local boxing tough guy Mickey's adventures generally kept him close to home and I liked that. With every story I read I enjoyed this book more and more and Gottfredson's art style is some of the most aesthetically pleasing ever to grace a comic strip.

I have yet to purchase a collection from Fantagraphics that wasn't top notch quality and this one is no exception. From the cover to the binding and the additional material on Gottfredson this is a fantastic book and one that will look lovely on a bookshelf. My ONLY issue is that the comics themselves are shrunk a bit and I occasionally had some difficulty reading text. Most of the time it's not an issue and the images look terrific. I can unreservedly recommend this book to fans of comics in general and or fans of Disney. As long as Fantagraphics continues to produce these Mickey comics by Gottfredson I'll continue to purchase them.

I'm really just stunned at the quality of newspaper comic strip reprint collections coming along these days. It seems that all of the publishers have stepped up their game to make these collections the best they can possibly be. Fantagraphics has outdone themselves with "Race to Death Valley." The book itself is a beauty, just the right size without being too large or too small. Some might complain that the strips (3 to a page) are too small, but to my eye they appear just about right, emphasizing Floyd Gottfredson's art to the best advantage (and the reproduction quality is outstanding). The stories are just great, movie serial, pulp style adventures. In addition to the comics themselves, Fantagraphics has again gone one step beyond in providing a wealth of background material, including essays on the genesis of the Mickey Mouse newspaper strip, Floyd Gottfredson, analysis, appreciations and more, with lots of color illustrations from the Disney archives. Each story sequence has it's own introduction, and there's an additional section at the end of the book that reprints the very first sequence of the comic strip (by Disney himself and Ub Iwerks) from just before the arrival of Floyd Gottfredson and "Race to Death Valley." In fact, there's so much background material crammed into this book, I'm not sure Fantagraphics can maintain this level through future volumes (but I hope they can). If you've loved these strips before, this is a collection you'll absolutely want to have on your shelf. If you've never read Mickey Mouse's "Indiana Jones" style adventures before, this is a great opportunity to dive in and see what you've been missing. With Amazon's price, it's beyond a bargain and a worthy addition to the growing library of quality newspaper strip reprints.

Every once in a while, a book comes along that is simply spectacular. This collection of comic strips by Floyd Gottfredson is a perfect example of how to present, analyze and reconstruct subject matter that is viewed differently today. The series editors (David Gerstein and Gary Groth) pull no punches in discussing why Mickey was carrying a gun or the use of slang that is noticeably offensive by today's standards. This is a wonderful vehicle for presenting historically accurate art. Other companies should take notice.

Mickey Mouse is a global icon.

It is really hard to imagine a time when the Mouse didn't pervade every media outlet. When these comics were produced, it was Mickey's first foray into the lucrative comic pages of the day. The editors recount the story of how the strip came to life through research vignettes that are carefully peppered between the serials. The first three months worth of strips were written by Walt Disney and drawn by Ub Iwerks. Win Smith handled it for a few weeks before Gottfredson was brought in on a temporary basis. Gottfredson ended up at the helm of the strip for the next 45 years.

There are fourteen serials presented in the book covering January 13, 1930 to January 9, 1932. The editors went to extreme lengths to secure the strips. Often, they had to borrow panels from collectors when Disney's masters had been damaged. The strips have been reproduced in a brilliant fidelity; the artwork and lettering stands fresh. Some of the antics may seem silly or overtly simple, but you have to remember the restrictions that a four-panel comic presents. The first panel needed to "catch up" the reader while the last panel needed to offer a reason to read it the next day. Gottfredson quickly became the master of the medium.

The supplemental material provided by the editors would shine on its own. Historical context is provided that explains the quirks of the characters as seen through modern eyes. Yes, there are times when Mickey carries a weapon or when certain ethnicities might be overly generalized, but you have to appreciate the comics as they were presented.

The last 60 pages of the book are dedicated to essays and archival features. Included are the first three months of the strip before Gottfredson took over. The editors offer essays about the artists that assisted Gottfredson and how the characters existed inside the world of the comics.

This is a stunning work. The historical presentation is flawless, as is the artwork. We meet a Mickey Mouse that very few of us experienced. When Gottfredson was penning the stories, he wasn't bound to the same code that the animators found themselves having to adhere to. As Mickey evolved on screen to become the charming every-man, the comics offered a Mickey that was more aligned with the earliest shorts. He was more of a good-natured rascal who was always looking for the best in people and in situations.

This is a must-have for Mickey fans, comic fans and anyone else with an interest in the early years of the Disney Company. You will garner a greater appreciation for Mouse and how he developed across different media. You will also get to see Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow, Kat Nipp and Butch in more of a starring role. Pick up a copy; you won't be sorry.

Floyd drew the Mickey of my youth. Those of us who grew up back then consider this Mickey Mouse as THE Mickey Mouse. We watched as mickey grew along with us. Some of us gave up on Mickey when we hit highschool fearing we would be teased for reading little kid comics. There were a substantial number of us who simply grew along with the famous mouse. Gottfredson also grew with the mouse. Early Mickeys must look kinda crude by todays standards; but it was the Mickey of that period. The adventures were never dull and Gottfredson, like Barks, never talked down to his young readers. The stories are as good or better than most of todays comic adventures. Its a look at comic history. For some of us its a trip down time; a nostalgic trip into our past. Yet young readers today should become quickly absorbed into the adventure. I highly recommend this book and hope that others follow.

"race to death valley" is the first volume of a collection of comic strip serials originally created by floyd gottfredson in the 1930's. the collection is well put together, very informative and interesting. the comics themselves are a glimpse into disney and also american history. the stories are also exciting and lovable for all ages. gottfredson helped develop mickey mouse's character and personality (and also the characters of minnie mouse, kat nipp, clarabelle cow, and a host of other familiar faces) through these comics. i recommend this to anyone who loves the "tintin" stories by hergé or anyone who has a deep affection for mickey mouse. i can't wait until the next volume comes out in october, i have already pre-odered mine!

This book is a must have for Disney fans and vintage comic strip fans. I found the most surprising strip though was not the Mickey strips (which are awesome) but a strip Walt himself drew when he was about 19 years old shortly before discovering animation.

It's common to make excuses for the past, to assume that people who lived and died before we did are therefore lesser, limited beings, stunted by not having been born in the obvious high point of all civilization. This is, of course, bunk. Human ingenuity is pretty much what it always has been, and old stuff sometimes seems fusty mostly due to the fact that it's old, and was made by people who lived in a different world. So old art -- in almost any medium you can mention -- will have works just as good, or better, than the current peaks.

For example, the "graphic novel" -- if we quickly define that as a book-length work of comics created for original book publication, and brush aside the million objections -- is going through a strong period right now, but comics -- the art form of pictures and words in sequence, telling long stories or short gags or combinations of those things -- has had multiple, overlapping peaks in various areas for the hundred years that it's been a serious, moderately mature art. In particular, the newspaper strip, which was for six or seven decades the commercial pinnacle of that world, started throwing out masterpieces as early as the 1910s or '20s (depending on who you listen to), and had a great decade through the depths of the Great Depression. (I'm a particular fan of E.C. Segar's Popeye strip, which I've been babbling about for the last year or so, but there are a dozen other examples of the same era.)

And that's a long way around to Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse strip -- though I suppose I could have come around the other long way, starting with Carl Barks and damning Gottfredson with the faint praise of "second-best Disney cartoonist" -- but that strip, at least as seen in this book, is an odd artifact of its time, not quite sure of itself and bouncing around among premises, tones, and styles.

The cover credits it purely to Gottfredson, though the table of contents has much more intricate credits, detailing the story input of Disney himself, and the art contributions of Win Smith, Jack King, Roy Nelson, Hardie Gramatky, Earl Duvall, Ted Thwaites, Al Taliaferro, and even Ub Iwerks. It reprints the first two years of the strip, from January of 1930 through the first days of 1932, sliced up into continuities (not always in chronological order) and separated by what eventually felt like too many text features.

Once you wade through those bits of text -- some about Gottfredson, some about his collaborators, some about the characters, and all of them just a bit too Disney-chipper in tone for a book from Fantagraphics-- you get to the stories themselves. The first story Gottfredson had a hand in is the title piece, "Mickey Mouse in Death Valley," which zigs and zags the most, veering from farce to melodrama and following the over-cranked pace of a cliffhanger movie serial. Once that finally ends, Gottfredson & Co. are on more solid ground, keeping Mickey (and Minnie) mostly in the context of their community (unnamed here, though a scholarly footnote indicates it became "Silo Center" later in '32) and friends, with stories about boxing and fire-fighting, circuses and the new character Pluto, Mickey's taxicab business, a picnic, and others. There are two other long melodrama continuities here -- one about a sneaky suitor for Minnie's heiress hand, and another about a sneaky Gypsy tribe also out to get Minnie's money -- but they maintain their pace and tone much better than "Death Valley" (with its many hands) did.

The art is evocative and detailed, still in a very Ub Iwerks-ian rubber-hose style -- and the first continuity of the strip, reprinted in an appendix, is pencilled by Iwerks himself, with the most energy and verve in the book -- giving it the feel of an early Mickey cartoon extended and expanded. (Though that does highlight the lack of music!) The character of Mickey -- and the simple fact that he has a character, and isn't just the waving silent mascot of the last couple of decades of Disney -- will be surprising to most readers, but this mouse was a tough little guy, ready for both adventures and fun at any minute, and he's deeply enjoyable to read about.

Anyone who is considering purchasing this book but who is unfamiliar with Floyd Gottfredson and his work on the daily strip should first understand that there are essentially TWO Mickey Mouse incarnations: There is the Mickey that is the flagship for the Disney ship - cheery, harmlessly inoffensive and somewhat dull to my mind - and the character of the strip, who is full of zest and life, of impious fun and derring-do. If you are familiar with Gottfredson, not much more needs to be said, but if you are expecting the screen Mickey then you may be disappointed when the strip Mickey shows up instead.

Of all the Disney characters and creators, my far and away favorite will always be Carl Bark's work on Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge, but after that there is Gottfredson's Mickey. My first introduction to this different Mickey was in the back of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories comic book, where I distinctly remember being surprised at this energetic and entertaining adventure strip, so at odds with my impression of the character from such sources as 'The Mickey Mouse Club' and short films. This first Fantagraphic volume, which begins when Gottfredson started work on the strip in April of 1930, is removed even further from the sanitized mouse that I see now - I almost surprised that Disney let a collection of these early strips be published. That isn't to say that these strips will offend anyone - although there may be a few cringe-inducing moments - but that this picture of the mouse is so at odds with what Disney goes to great lengths to present today.

If asked, either at present or when I first discovered Gottredson's strip, I would have described the screen version of Mickey as especially suitable for toddlers and children up to about the age of eight or so. Conversely, the Mickey of the daily strips is for all ages. Collectors of classic newspaper strips from their golden age as well as collectors of Disneyana should be equally pleased with these stories. They are wordy though - this may or may not be a good gift for an early reader, depending on their interest level and ability. Otherwise, as pertaining to the stories alone, they are understandably not quite as polished as they would become later, though still fun and often humorous as well. Consisting of thirteen storylines, Mickey's adventures in this volume range from the title story concerning lost gold mines and haunted mansions to more mundane stories of circus jobs, picnics and Pluto's first appearance in the strip. In the end, while it may not have been as groundbreaking as others, it did have the distinct advantage of showcasing its iconic character, and with Gottfredson steering the strip, we get a mouse who's a pleasure to follow.

As far as the package Fantagraphic Books has put out, there is absolutely no doubt that this is a five star effort. I actually bought the collected set, with both vol. 1 and 2, though the only difference is the slipcase that holds the two volumes together. Aside from the reprint stories themselves, there are several short essays about the creation of the strip and short biographies of the creators. There are also cover reproductions of early collections of the strip from around the world, as well as a bonus of the strip's first few months before Gottfredson began to work on it. Each strip is 2 1/8 x 8 1/2 inches and there are three strips per page, so, since no Sundays are included, a week's worth of strips is presented on each page and its opposing number. As with all Fantagraphic collections that I've seen or own, it's obvious that the publishers are committed to putting out a quality product - from its thick, heavy pages, to its quality reproductions, to its in-depth presentation. If you are a fan of this strip, or of classic newspaper strips, then this is a gem of a collection.

While recent comic stories, movies, and games like Epic Mickey are reintroducing a more adventurous Mickey Mouse to audiences more familiar with him as a suburban homeowner, more straight man to the comic antics of his pets and friends than a leading man in his own right, this book proves that this is only a return to form. Mickey, under the pen of writer/artist Floyd Gottfredson, is a plucky, feisty adventurer, full of spirit and attitude. It's also a fantastic adventure strip.

Artist Carl Barks justifiably earns a lot of credit for his comic book stories about Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. As humorous adventure stories, they're the equivalent of widescreen technicolor masterpieces, perfectly fusing character, story, and setting. On the comics page, Gottfredson was doing the same thing with Mickey Mouse. Just as Barks used the comic book format to pace his adventures, Gottfredson grew to become a master of the daily strip format, telling fast-paced extended serials that managed to combine nail-biting suspense, edge-of-your-seat action and cliffhangers, and laugh-out-loud humor. His storytelling, within four small daily panels, is detailed and clear.

This book is not only impressive for collecting Gottfredson's strips from the very beginning, but also for the overall package. It includes a number of articles not only putting Gottfredson's strips into the context of the Mickey comic strip as a whole, as well as in the overall creation of Mickey Mouse and Disney history, but also within the context of American culture at the time. The book also features comic strip syndicate ads and premiums, as well as covers of books and magazines, both national and international, reprinting the strips. And while Gottfredson is deservedly the feature of this book, it doesn't overlook the earlier strips (written by Walt Disney himself). They are included as an appendix.

Is this the perfect comic? Not yet. No strip or artist, no matter how good, ever emerges fully formed. As great as these Gottfredson strips are, you can still see a cartoonist feeling things out and learning his craft. Among the rare missteps are a sequence involving the hilarious antics of Mickey Mouse trying to commit suicide using various methods. It's still great, seeing the growth of Gottfredson as an artist, but I know that the strip will only get better in future books.