''Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse'' (also ''The Floyd Gottfredson Library'') is a 2011–2018 series of books collecting the span of work by

Floyd Gottfredson Arthur Floyd Gottfredson (May 5, 1905July 22, 1986) was an American cartoonist best known for his defining work on the Mickey Mouse (comic strip), ''Mickey Mouse'' comic strip, which he worked on from 1930 until his retirement in 1975. His contri ...

on the daily ''Mickey Mouse'' comic strip in twelve volumes, as well as Gottfredson's

Sunday strips The Sunday comics or Sunday strip is the comic strip section carried in some Western newspapers. Compared to weekday comics, Sunday comics tend to be full pages and are in color. Many newspaper readers called this section the Sunday funnies, t ...

of the same title over two separate volumes. The strips are reproduced from Disney proof sheets and artwork from private collections.

Background

The strip debuted on January 13, 1930, and was initially written by

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney ( ; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the Golden age of American animation, American animation industry, he introduced several develop ...

and drawn first by

Ub Iwerks Ubbe Ert "Ub" Iwerks ( ; March 24, 1901 – July 7, 1971), was an American animator, cartoonist, character designer, Invention, inventor, and special effects technician, known for his work with Walt Disney Animation Studios in general, and f ...

, then by Win Smith. Gottfredson took over the strip when Disney and Smith found themselves too busy, and he continued with it until 1975. These volumes start with Gottfredson's work from April 1, 1930, while including the earlier non-Gottfredson strips in an appendix to the first volume. The series is uncensored, and as the strips were done in the 1930s, some of the strips may come across as offensive to modern readers, especially due to

racial stereotypes An ethnic stereotype or racial stereotype involves part of a system of beliefs about typical characteristics of members of a given ethnic group, their status, societal and cultural norms. A national stereotype does the same for a given nation ...

that were common at the time. As presented in the books, however, the more dated material is accompanied by explanatory text, putting it in the context of its historical time. Gottfredson's run on Mickey Mouse lasted until 1975. In the earlier years, which are the focus of this series, it was a humorous adventure strip—as was common at the time—but in the later years became gag-focused. These books are the first time Gottfredson's work has been collected in North America, although they've previously been collected in the 1980s in Germany as ''The Complete Daily Strip Adventures of Mickey Mouse 1930–1955'' and in 2010 in Italy as ''Gli anni d'oro di Topolino''.

Format

The hardcover volumes have been edited by

David Gerstein David Gerstein (born February 6, 1974) is an American comics author and editor as well as an animation historian. Gerstein has five books and countless comic book credits to his name. He has written many Disney comics stories, usually featuring ...

and

Gary Groth Gary Groth (born September 18, 1954) is an American comic book editor, publisher and critic. He is editor-in-chief of ''The Comics Journal'', a co-founder of Fantagraphics Books, and founder of the Harvey Awards. Early life Groth is the son ...

while designed by Jacob Covey, and are in a 10.5 inches × 8.75" inches (267 mm × 222 mm) landscape format. They are mostly in

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, ...

, with some color pages, and each collects two years worth of strips. The strips are printed three to a page, with dozens of pages of supplementary material. The two ''Color Sundays'' volumes are in full color. The comic strips in the volumes have been reproduced from

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...

's own master proof sheets of the strip. The books of the series were available separately as well as in two-volume box sets.

Volumes and box sets

Box sets

List of storylines featured in the series

Daily strips

Sunday strips

Reception

The series was given much praise for its production quality, the quality of the reproduction of the strips, and the extensiveness of the extra material.

Awards

* 2012 ** Volume one and two of the series won the

Eisner award The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, are awards for creative achievement in American comic books. They are regarded as the most prestigious and significant awards in the comic industry and often referred ...

for Best Archival Collection/Project—Strips. ** The series was nominated for the

Harvey Award The Harvey Awards are given for achievement in comic books. Named for writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman, the Harvey Awards were founded by Gary Groth in 1988, president of the publisher Fantagraphics, to be a successor to the Kirby Awards, which were ...

in the category "Best Domestic Reprint Project". * 2015 **Volume five and six of the series were nominated for the Eisner award in the category Best Archival Collection/Project—Strips.

Free Comic Book Day 2011 In 2010 it was announced that Fantagraphics would participate in the promotional campaign

Free Comic Book Day Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) is an annual promotional effort by the North American comic book industry to attract new readers to independent comic book stores. It usually takes place on the first Saturday of May and has historically been cross ...

in May, 2011. They would release a

comic book A comic book, comic-magazine, or simply comic is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panel (comics), panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and wri ...

issue title
''Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse''
featuring a

Mickey Mouse Mickey Mouse is an American cartoon character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime icon and mascot of the Walt Disney Company, Mickey is an anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red shorts, large shoes, and white ...

story by

. The one storyline included in the issue was ''Pluto the Racer''.

References

External links

Fantagraphics Books = Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse - The Floyd Gottfredson Library
*
Video preview of the first volume
at Fantagraphics' website *Previews of the books at Fantagraphics' website
19-page preview of the first volume
(

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

)
19-page preview of the second volume
(

) *Previews of the books at

Issuu Issuu, Inc. (pronounced "issue") is a Danish-founded American electronic publishing platform based in Palo Alto, California, United States. The company's software converts PDFs into customizable digital publications that can be shared via links ...

Preview - ''Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: Vol. 5''

** ttps://e.issuu.com/anonymous-embed.html?u=fantagraphics&d=wdmm07-preview Preview - ''Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 7''
Preview - ''Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 8''

** ttps://e.issuu.com/anonymous-embed.html?u=fantagraphics&d=wdmms2-preview Preview - ''Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse - Color Sundays Vol. 2''
Interview with series' editor David Gerstein - ''ComicsAlliance.com'' - "Mickey Mouse Editor David Gerstein On Bringing Floyd Gottfredson's Strips To A Modern Audience"
{{Portal bar, Comics Mickey Mouse Mickey Mouse comics Comic strip collection books Fantagraphics titles Disney comics titles Disney comic strips Comics about anthropomorphic mice and rats Comics about talking animals Eisner Award winners