Three Wartime Cartoons

So I've been mentioning periodically that during the war, Disney put out US propaganda for the government. A few people have asked just what I mean by propaganda. Is it just generally patriotic cartoons? Beating up Hitler? Subliminal messages? So I decided to take a look at three of these wartime toons and see if they fill me with patriotic fervor. Given my hatred of propaganda, jingoism, and unwarranted exceptionalist attitudes, probably not. Links to the shorts are provided.


THREE WARTIME CARTOONS

I miss crazy driving costumes. Let's get those back.

VICTORY VEHICLES - In this cartoon, Goofy shows us various ways people are trying out new vehicles to get around the gas and rubber shortages. The first half is just a lot of wacky machines, and the second half passionately advocates for the more common everyday use of the pogo stick. It’s funny enough, but the “here’s some crazy cars/here’s some jokes about pogo sticks” setup makes the short feel draggy at just 7 minutes. There’s also a weird thing where the characters aren’t Goofy per se, but a variety of different people, all of whom are portrayed by Goofy. He gets only one line, and all the others are voiced by the narrator. Though since this was produced when Disney and Pinto Colvig were feuding (as he had gone to work for the hated Fleischers), and the new voice actor gave him a ludicrous old cowboy voice, that’s just as well.

Ha ha! Those Nazis would actually ration coffee! Can you imagine?

DER FUEHRER’S FACE - Donald Duck dreams he lives in Nazi Germany, where he learns how horrible it is to live in a land of strict rationing and constant propaganda. This is not what you would call a very self-aware cartoon. At the end, Donald wakes up in his American flag pajamas and kisses the statue of Liberty while shouting “I sure am glad to be a citizen of the United States of America! So it’s not a subtle cartoon, either. The title comes from a Spike Jones song that is used in the opening of the short, but it’s hard to take the lyrics’ mockery of the Nazi’s “Master Race” policies seriously, as they are sing by a yellow-skinned, bucktoothed Japanese guy, a swarthy, thick-lipped Italian guy, and just for fun, a swishy gay guy. (Or as I call them, Steleotype, Stereotype-a, and Thtereotype.) The cartoon closes with just a lingering shot of Hitler‘s face, which feels uncomfortably like Two Minutes’ Hate. Except 1984 wouldn’t be written for another four years. Wait, that makes it even worse.

FUN FACT - When the “funny” Japanese guy shows up, recall that when this cartoon was made, the government had George Takei and Pat Morita in internment camps. And they grew up to be cultural icons at least on par with Donald Duck.

Man, Shining Time Station got weird since I stopped watching.

EDUCATION FOR DEATH - Well, here we get some real old-time propaganda. Rather than using an established character like the others, it follows a young German boy named Hans through his life in Nazi Germany. From his parents proving their ethnic background so they are allowed to conceive through his education with Nazi propaganda to his conscription into the German army. There’s some more blatant hypocrisy here. A large chunk of the short is given to how horrible it is that Nazis use old fairy tales as propaganda, e.g. taking Sleeping Beauty and calling the witch Democracy, the princess Germany, and the prince Hitler. Okay, got it? Using old fairy tales to manipulate people with governmental propaganda is bad. Kind of hard to make that point, though, when you portray Germany as a “hilarious” fat woman who’s always eating, and Hitler as a drooling lunatic who LITERALLY grows devil horns at one point.

Ohhhh, dammit, Disney! You’re putting me in the position of defending the Nazi party! I hate them, but you know what? I hate them for their ACTUAL eugenics policies, not your claim that they’ll kill the kleinen kinder Klaus just because he gets the flu. I hate them because of their genocidal campaigns, which are reduced in the film to the burning of philosophy books and the ransacking of a Christian church. (Shown using visuals based on Rosenberg’s weird pseudomystical Reich Church ideas, which when divorced from their context, seem to imply that the Nazis meant to destroy Christianity. That’s some A+ fearmongering.)

See folks? Barely even human!

But the ultimate achievement is the ending. Klaus is shown growing into an adult and joining the army. He is then shown with blinkers and a muzzle as the announcer tells us that he is completely devoted to the party, seeing and hearing nothing but what they permit. The cartoon literally turns him into a faceless being identical to every other, completely dehumanizing him and all the other soldiers. AND IT’S NOT EVEN POSSIBLE. The Nazis only held power for 11 years! There is not a single German soldier who was born under their rule; they were all old enough to remember a pre-Nazi time. And while the Nazi cultural takeover was legendarily effective, it did not turn their citizens into faceless marching robots. The entire point of this cartoon was to make them seem less human so we wouldn’t feel bad killing them. AND THAT IS JUST WHAT THE NAZIS DID. Ohhhhh dangit I am so angry right now.

NEXT WEEK: Cinderella! Won’t that be nice.

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1949 - The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

THE ADVENTURES OF ICHABOD AND MR TOAD

Well, here we are at the end of the anthology age, and if sure has been a - wait for it - wild ride! Ah, comedy. I’ve actually enjoyed these more than I thought I would, though if you’ve been reading, you’ll know that’s still not much. Like the others, this is one with a complex history of development. The Mr. Toad segment was originally meant to be a full-length feature, to follow Bambi, but after 33 minutes were animated, wartime budget problems forced them to scrap the project. When they hit on the anthology idea, they decided to repurpose it as a short, paired with Mickey and the Beanstalk under the horrible title “Two Fabulous Characters”. The second segment likewise started as a feature, this time intended to be their return to feature animation. But again, after animating about half of it, they realized the story was too thin, so they just linked what they had and called it a short. This was in the before scripts, you see. Anxious to get to the good movies? So am I. So fry up some bubble and squeak, and let’s talk about The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

Or The Adventures of Mr. Toad and Ichabod, apparently. In this story, insane fad addict (faddict?) Mr. Toad gets into the new craze of motorcars, and trades his home for one. When the person he traded to turns out to have scammed him and framed him for the theft of said car, he goes to prison, but breaks out and gets his home back. Despite the jail breaking, property damage, train hijacking, and assault on police officers, he’s let off scot free because he wasn’t guilty of the first thing. I can’t complain too much about that. In fact, it’s worse in the book, where he actually does steal the car, rather than attempting to buy it from the actual thief, a bartender and ethnic stereotype named Winky. In the book, Toad learns his lesson and becomes humble and contrite, but in the movie, he’s learned not a damn thing, which I like, because why should he? He just got away with everything.

No, I don't know what ethnicity, but this guy is definitely some kind of stereotype.

My sarcasm aside, I really liked this one. The decision to make it a short was the right one. After they took out the filler chapters (see ‘additional thoughts’) there’s not really a huge amount of story there. The length here gets the story out without padding it. They also beefed up the personalities of Toad and his friends, Rat, Badger, and Mole. My only regret about the length is that they didn’t get more development, because they’re all really likeable. Toad’s horse, Cyril, is a particular standout. No Goofy/Pluto nonsense here. He may be pulling a cart, but he’s as intelligent as the rest of them. He’s just an employee, and on his day off, he even walks on hind legs like everyone else. But he’s an eccentric, sarcastic delight, and the only one of Toad’s friends who encourages his manias.

That does bring up one thing that’s a little weird. The animals I’ve mentioned, and the weasels who work for Winky, are the only animals. Everyone else is a human, and the world is made to their scale. Which does lead one to wonder why they have a little toad sized ball-and-chain. I don’t know. It doesn’t bear much thinking about. This is a fun little cartoon with some great character animation and solid gags. Oh, and it’s narrated by Basil Rathbone, who is awesome.

He does not, however, get any clothing other than the hat.

THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW

Well, after Basil Rathbone, it would be hard for an American actor to live up, and since they go with Bing Crosby, they aren’t even trying. But I’ll get to that. The story is okay. There’s not a lot of plot here, so it’s well-suited to the short form. I’ve seen three full-length movies purporting to be based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and they’ve all been some degree of lousy. Considering the first ¾ of the book is basically “A superstitious guy comes to be a teacher,” expanded by Washington Irving with a great deal of sesquipedalian and loquacious verbiage that still remained flowtastical and entertainimatudinous. In long form, this requires either obscene padding, or, as in the Tim Burton version, just making up a whole new plot. Here, they are able to do it with some good sight gags and constant narration by Mumbles McGee.

Um... Mint?

I guess I’m in the minority on this, but I really hate Bing Crosby, smarmy crooner that he is. And he’s exactly the wrong choice to narrate this piece. This is a highly literary piece of classic Americana and it needs someone a little more professorial. Maybe Sterling Holloway again or something. And in addition to the narration, Bing plays both main characters, with absolutely no alteration in his voice, which doesn’t really suit either of them. Which is too bad, because the characters are quite well-done. Ichabod’s bizarre lanky body makes for very humorous animation, and they get a lot of humor from portraying him as a vain, cowardly, greedy opportunist. His romantic opponent, Brom, is a brawny, good-natured type, but also a blustering bully when he doesn‘t get his way. So the fact that they both sound like the same marble-mouthed Northwesterner tends to take away from it.

But once again, the issues I had with it are nothing in the grand scheme of things. The animation is again excellent, especially in the final sequence, where Ichabod is chased by the Headless Horseman. The short length works great for the pacing and plot, and unlike the Mr. Toad segment, the characters are fleshed out marvelously. And none of them are at all likeable, which was kind of a bold move. This is a cartoon about two jerks vying for the attention of a third jerk, and the jerkiest of them gets chased away by a ghost. A cliché? Perhaps.

Get your head out of there. You don't know where that head's been.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* The official Disney terminology for the anthology films is “package films”, but I don’t say that, because I’m a contrarian jerk, I guess.

* Each of the anthology films begins with a song over the opening that works the title into its lyrics. This time, it consists entirely of singers going “Ichabod and Mr. Toad!” over and over and over and over again. Erggggh.

* An object lesson in why Bing Crosby was wrong for this short: Follow this link to hear Bing nap his way through the feature song. Now follow this link to hear it performed by Thurl Ravenscroft, who is actually awesome. There, you see?

* In his opening narration, Rathbone lists some of the other fabulous characters of British literature, mentioning Oliver Twist, Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, and King Arthur, all of whom were eventually the subjects of their own Disney features. COICIDENCE? Probably, since most of those were made after Walt died, and Basil also mentions Becky Sharp. I don’t see Disney making a Vanity Fair movie any time soon. But it would probably be awesome.

Why is this the image chosen for the first edition cover?  Read on and learn the deeply weird truth.

* It’s not often remembered that the Mr. Toad stuff comprises only about half of The Wind in the Willows, with a series of short stories about Ratty and Mole making up the rest. One such story is called “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” and is about the god Pan kidnapping and terrorizing Mole’s son, then erasing everyone’s memory. There’s a Pink Floyd album named after it.

* Badger has hands down the worst Scottish accent imaginable. I have to mention it, even though no mere text can do it injustice. Those of you that know me, just ask me to do it for you sometime. Everyone else… I don’t know, watch the movie. I already recommended it, didn’t I?

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So....

I seem to have trodden on my netbook, on which I do my writing. It's actually not a big deal, since it was an old hunk of slowness, and I've been meaning to move things over anyway. Buuuut I haven't had a chance yet, so the "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" review will be up next Wednesday evening, followed by a special blog on Friday, then "Cinderella" the following Wednesday(ish) and "Alice in Wonderland" the Saturday after. So don't look on this as a delay, look on it as a way to get the good stuff closer together.

EDIT: I meant, of course, Friday and Sunday. Give me a break, it's inventory week at the store.

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1948 - Melody Time

Look, it’s basically Make Mine Music 2: Lame 40s Songs Boogaloo. I truly do wish I had some new bit of trivia to lead you in with, but I don’t. It’s just another anthology of shorts set to music more to the tastes of people who didn’t think Fantasia was fun enough. Or fancy-free enough, I suppose. So heat up some leftovers, and I guess we have to talk about Melody Time.

ONCE UPON A WINTERTIME - This one was actually pretty good. Two couples, human and rabbit, go ice skating in various adorable ways. There is a spat, and the girls storm off, accidentally wandering onto thin ice. I was initially annoyed as they seemed to be going in the direction of “Heroic males save distressed damsels,” but to my delight, the men’s attempt at heroism leaves them unconscious, and the women are saved by the carriage horses, squirrels, and birds that were hanging around the background for the entire film. Very clever. But I doubt they can keep it up.

All right, bee. It's MELODY TIME. #RejectedActionMovieCatchphrases

BUMBLE BOOGIE - This one was actually fantastic. A bee flies around a garden to “Flight of the Bumblebee” as the landscape grows increasingly hostile, with first the flowers then the music itself trying to kill it. Great visuals and an awesome song. I’m starting to feel better about this.

THE LEGEND OF JOHNNY APPLESEED - Holy heck, this one was also good! The story of Johnny Appleseed, as fold by the kind of folksy narrator who says things like “Well, sir,” and “a’tall”. The story was, of course, condensed and somewhat sanitized, but I liked that they kept in his religious fervor without becoming preachy, and that they showed him actually planting  nurseries for settlers instead of throwing seeds all willy-nilly like most Johnny Appleseed cartoons. And for once the ‘friends with all the animals’ isn’t just a Disney thing. Johnny once put out his campfire because he felt bad that it was killing mosquitos. Okay, maybe that’s folklore, but at least it’s genuine folklore. But we’ll get to that.

This here, despite appearances, is technically the first ever onscreen death of a Disney character.

LITTLE TOOT - This was about a tugboat who fools around and knocks over some buildings. But not, oddly enough, in a comedy way. He’s chained up between two police gunboats and cast out to the middle of the ocean as his father is attached to a trash barge as punishment. Then he’s struck by lightning. I was hoping it would end there, a chilling portrait of the dystopian world of sentient small watercraft. But of course, he saves a Navy ship and straightens up and gets a job and everyone’s happy. There is no dissent on Waterstrip One. We have always been at war with Sea-stasia. This one wasn’t good, but at least it’s weird.

TREES - Ehhhhhhh. The animation is nice, with the animators playing with a lot of fun techniques, but it’s set to an incredibly dull musical version of “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer, the most boring person ever to have a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop named after them.

This is the weirdest production of Phantom of the Opera I've ever seen.

BLAME IT ON THE SAMBA - My spirits perked up when I saw Donald and Joe Carioca, but the short does not live up to either of their previous outings. It pretty much feels like deleted footage from the crazy dream sequence from the end of The Three Caballeros, with a live-action lady playing the organ, and a white, white chorus singing fake samba music. And the wacky instigator of the whole thing is that annoying Aracuan bird. Would it have killed them to throw Panchito in there?

PECOS BILL - I try to avoid cursing on this blog, since children might read it. But sometimes the spirit really moves me, so when I say that this segment is bullroar, I trust you know what I mean. It’s the story of Pecos Bill, the classic tall tales from Texas. Oh, did I say classic? I meant MADE UP. Pecos Bill is not authentic American folklore, but rather something called fakelore. As the name implies, it’s stories fabricated in order to seem like authentic folktales. Some Texan got jealous of all the actual folklore and made some up for his state. It’s typical Texan bombast, braggadocio, and insecurity, and I‘m tired of seeing it presented as legend. But apart from my issues with the source, this short is still horrible.

Oh, please do put me out of my misery.

For one thing, it’s less of a short than a long. These have been moving briskly along at 5-12 minutes each, but this one’s over 20. There’s a completely unneeded framing device where once again, middle aged men are hanging out with Luana Patten and telling her stories. This time, it’s Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers, all dressed in hilarious versions of what 1940s film producers thought cowboys wore, Luana is accompanied by Disney contract player and future cautionary tale about the dangers of beatnikism Bobby Driscoll, who plays an annoying little snot, as was his tendency.

The cartoon is just plain obnoxious. It’s just a string of one or two sentence summaries of the various fake legends. There’s no flow to it at all. It’s just one thing after another, sung by annoying people. It’s also blatantly racist, like when Pecos sees some “Injuns” and just starts shooting at them for no reason. Sexist, too. Pecos’s girlfriend, who was actually kind of cool in the stories, is reduced to a primping female stereotype, and unlike in the older telling, he doesn’t save her from her bouncing, but basically leaves her to die in the vacuum of space. Oh, it makes sense in context.

Maybe it seems like I'm being to picky or too harsh, but frankly, I was uncomfortable watching this. I've noted several instances in these films where 40s culture contrasts unfavorably with the modern world, but this one was different. The whole thing seems designed to confront me with how casually racist, sexist, and egotistical this country used to be. And how full of bad, cheap animation and crappy cowboy singers it was, too. And how much Texas annoys me.

Dangit, Texas. You really do have serious issues.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* I’m pretty inoculated by this point against things being called “gay”. As I said, they use it so often that even my immature 2012 brain doesn’t really register it anymore. But I did giggle when the narrator called Johnny Appleseed “mighty queersome”.

* Pecos’s cigarettes have not been deleted on the DVD release. Which is good, because I want him to get lun[EXCESSIVELY DARK JOKE REDACTED. SORRY. I’M JUST CRABBY. IT’S MY PROBLEM, I’LL DEAL WITH IT]

* Rather than the quite amusing title cards and categories of Make Mine Music, this one had each segment hosted by a freaky disembodied theatre mask with a bland voice. I wasn't a fan.

You know what I want to see.

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1947 - Fun and Fancy Free

Before I begin, a few corrections from last time: First of all, ‘Blue Lagoon’ was by the Ken Darby Chorus, not the Kim Darby Chorus. Kim Darby was the terrible actress from the old version of True Grit. Second, I neglected to include my usual meal choice, so in honor of the Martins and the Coys, have some ‘possum stew and a jug of white lightning. 

Say, here’s a quick clue for you, Walt. If your latest anthology film is made of two shorts that were supposed to be full-length films until you couldn’t figure out how to develop them, the audience may have some reservations going in. They may expect the shorts to be tight and well-plotted in their brief length. After all, you chose the short format to tell the story best, so surely they won‘t be draggy at all - right? Do you think I’m foreshadowing? So do I, and I should know. So make two small portions of anything you don’t know how to cook, and let’s talk about Fun and Fancy-Free.

INTRO

I really don’t think I made it clear in the Pinocchio review how much Jiminy Cricket annoys me. He’s just so pointlessly chipper to the point where it’s detrimental, and he’s a total failure as a conscience. And the “talking to dolls like they’re alive” bit is annoying. And he’s a bad influence! He shows up here singing a song about how if you ignore your problems and never plan for the future, everything will work out fine. Between that and “wishing on a star will make your dreams come true”, I’m starting to suspect he’s deliberately trying to give bad morals to kids. Anyway, he wanders around a house that isn‘t his, finds a record of Dinah Shore telling a story about a bear, and listens to it. Here we go.

This is the news Jiminy Cricket wants you to ignore

BONGO

This first of the two feature stories, conceived as a spiritual sequel to Dumbo, is about a circus bear that pulls a daring train escape and flees to the woods. There, he is initially ill-prepared for life in the wilderness, but goes at it with renewed vigor when he meets a pretty lady-bear. He is initially put off by an aggressive rival, but uses his circus skills to show the guy up, and gets the girl. And… That’s pretty much it.

Yeah, it's pretty cutesy.

There’s a problem my compatriots at the Post Atomic Horror podcast run into on occasion, where an episode summary runs short because said episode is mostly padding, and nothing really happens in it. That’s what’s going on here, and what makes that so weird is that it would make such a good full-length movie. The animation’s really good, and the idea is a winner. Just give the characters actual dialogue instead of Dinah Shore narration, throw in a lovable chipmunk sidekick for Bongo. Sterling Holloway could play the inevitable owl. But as it is, there’s just nothing there. I had this on VHS as a solo release when I was a kid, and even then I found it incredibly draggy. Plus, the narration was by Jiminy Cricket instead of Dinah Shore, which didn’t help. I enjoyed it more as an adult, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t turn it up to double speed once or twice.

TRANSITION

We go back to the dang cricket, who finds an invitation to a birthday party, and decides to go. Yeah, reading an invitation in the bedroom of the stranger whose house you’ve broken into is just like being invited. I hate you, Cricket. When he gets there, it turns out the guests, apart from the little girl whose invitation it was, are three middle-aged men. And that’s it. No parents or anything. To be fair, the men are Edgar Bergen and his puppets, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. It’s still weird. The girl is Disney star Luana Patten, and she’s a good enough actor in that creepily mature child star way, though I can’t help but wondering why someone had to invite her to her own birthday. Well, if Bergen’s the kind of guy who hangs out with puppets, he can’t have that many friends. And if she’s the kind of guy who hangs out with Edgar Bergen, neither can she.

Ventriloquy! For when you want your kid's party to be creepy and off-putting.

Bergen and the puppets banter, demonstrating as usual that Bergen is a clever and talented comedian and a flat-out terrible ventriloquist. What’s weird is that when he’s using one dummy, or neither, the other is done as a regular puppet, with Bergen’s voice dubbed in. I have no idea why they didn’t just keep this up. It could only make him look better. I mean, he’s a funny guy, but there’s a reason he found fame as a radio ventriloquist. Anyway, he decides to tell Luana a story, because hey, it’s a party, and we get our second feature…

MICKEY AND THE BEANSTALK

Okay, first let’s go into the reasons this was made in the first place. I mentioned in the Fantasia review that Mickey hasn’t been funny since 1930, and that’s actually by design.  In his first handful of shorts, Mickey was sort of a weird little sociopath. As the shorts increased in popularity, his personality got blander and blander, until he was nothing but a generic “everyman”, and that’s how Walt wanted it. By the mid-30s, newcomers Donald, Goofy, and Pluto had vastly outstripped Mickey in popularity, and more importantly, so had Fleischer Studios’ Popeye cartoons. This confounded Walt, whose hatred for the Fleischers burned with the heat of a thousand suns, and he started a ceaseless string of comeback attempts for Mickey. Teamups with Donald and Goofy were most common, as were his featured roles in Fantasia and here. But what Walt failed to realize is that the problem was that MICKEY IS BORING.

See?

People didn’t flock to Mickey films because they loved his character, they did because the films had sound, and then color. When the novelty wore off, and better cartoons came along, they went to them. But Walt steadfastly refused to allow Mickey to have a personality. Walt was to Mickey what Gene Roddenberry was to Star Trek. Got it started and then heaped it with insane demands that it remain free of conflict or anything resembling interesting writing, while better writers did their best to make it work. But unlike Trek, which booted Gene upstairs and got on with its own business, it continues to this day with Mickey.

Mickey and the Beanstalk is more of the same. It takes the same old story, which was thin to begin with, puts Mickey in it, and lets Donald and Goofy do all the heavy lifting. There’s some funny gags here and there, especially with the giant food, but it’s just so bland. The only real zest is the narration, which is frequently interrupted by Charlie McCarthy making fun of Bergen and doing oblique references to the New Deal. The giant is the worst villain ever. Bergen keeps telling us how cruel and vicious he is, but all we see is a lovable goof who wants to turn into a pink bunny and bounce his ball. His only villainous act was the offscreen theft of a harp. Both shorts were underdeveloped and draggy, but well-animated enough. Still, Bongo’s definitely the one that makes this worth the price of admission.

GET HIM!

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* Mickey and the Beanstalk was directed by T. Hee. AWESOME.

* It’s also the last time the classic trio would have their original voices, Walt as Mickey, Pinto Colvig as Goofy, and Clarence Nash as Donald. Walt retired from acting just after.

This also happened.

* The script for Bongo was completed the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. Later that same day, the Army literally marched in and took over Disney’s production studios to make propaganda films. Good times.

* As mentioned, the video release of Bongo was narrated by the stupid cricket. The home release of M.a.t.B was narrated by Paul Frees as Ludvig Von Drake. I’m not sure what a German mad scientist would be doing narrating a fairy tale, and I feel like losing Bergen might be a bad thing, but I’m a fan of Paul Frees, so I’ll check it out. Who knows, maybe it’ll help.

* There were two storyboarded and deleted scenes showing how Mickey got the beans. In the first, he was swindled by Foulfellow and Gideon from Pinocchio. This was allegedly cut because Pinocchio flopped at the box office, but if that’s true, why do I have to put up with Jiminy Cricket, that’s what I want to know. The second had Minnie as the queen, giving Mickey the beans from the royal treasure room. I actually like that, because it gives him an actual sensible reason to give up a cow for them. Treasure beans, yo!

* Mickey remains boring to this day. While Trek got people like Nick Myer, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and Ron Moore saving it from Gene’s vision of a drama-free future, Mickey did not. The closest was Floyd Gottfredson, who was responsible for the Mickey Mouse comics, and was, in quite an unusual move by the company, left more or less to his own devices. For 50 years, he wrote a scrappy, adventurous Mickey quite at odds with the animated portrayal.

*As for more recent comeback attempts, a mid-90s effort called “Runaway Brain” was the first Mickey cartoon in like 40 years, and tried to use the more adventurous Mickey of the Gottfredson comics. The Disney Company barely admits that cartoon exists today. There was also the recent video game Epic Mickey, which would allow you to act more like the 1920s Mickey. That idea was sadly watered down to almost nothingness by the time the game was released. And here we all hoped Warren Spector would be Mickey’s JJ Abrams.

* I really like Star Trek, you guys.

And in related news, people on the internet are still insane.

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