The Surreal Life

 

Two of my teenage obsessions were the Disney cartoons of the 1930s and the surrealist artwork of Salvador Dali.  Naturally, adult me got a kick out of the story "Persistance of Mickey" that ran in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #734.

The premise is, what if Walt Disney and Salvador Dali had actually made progress collaborating on the animated short Destino? 

And then what if, during the creative process, Mickey and the Gang got sucked into some of Dali's most famous paintings??

A whole lotta surrealist shenanigans, that's what!

This story is also notable for the return of long-bill Donald; I've been saying all along that the Paul Rudish Mickey Mouse Shorts ought to go with the vintage look.

Anyway it's a fun story from Roberto Gagnor and Giorgio Cavazzano, with a translation from Gagnor and the great Joe Torcivia.

It's been reprinted in trade paperback and hardcover from IDW, my local library has both (jealous?).  

Rorschach Test

 

Like all Real Americans, I have been working on a collection of Phantom Blot appearances over the years.   I have three different versions of the story that started it all, "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot":

The Fantagraphics Hardcover, Mickey Mouse Club Parade #1, and Disney Comics Album #4.

Floyd Gottfredson's newspaper serial famously had the violence dialed down for its comic book reprints, with several of the Blot's famous death traps redrawn by (ugh) Paul Murry.  Above is an example of a cool, violent death trap as it appeared in newspapers in 1939.

Here is the same sequence toned down and made lame for the Mickey Mouse Club comic.

And here is the newer, stupider death trap recolored by Sue Klinger and Kat Blaine.

Real fans prefer the ghastly pale death mask visage of comic book Mickey to the Crayola flesh tones of the Disney Comics reprint.

I know the Blot is the most overexposed villain since The Joker and has only appeared in like three and a half good comics but he's *my* supervillain, ya know?  You can keep your Doctor Dooms and Blofelds, I'm Team Blot all the way.

Snowman Is An Island

 

Now that's one cool customer.

X-Mickey by Bruno Enna and Alessandro Perina

Uchhh

 

Dimwitty is the friggin worst.