So, I was just lookin' for some MIGHTY MOUSE comics on eBay, ya know... an' I get this e-mail from eBay, and was almost as surprised as this cat...
[Click to Enlarge]
...Sent to me (as the e-mail says) "Because [I] searched mighty mouse"!
I shudder to think what I'd get if I searched for Yakky Doodle's regular nemesis, FIBBER FOX!
Um... THIS, maybe?
Sorry, the pun-potential was too irresistible!
Let's just get back to Mighty Mouse and Apples, okay?
Yeah, that's better! ...Much better!
Unless you're that poor apple tree that now has a broken back!
I'll bet it's wishing that it was one of those squash and stretch animation bendable trees about now!
At this point, I've come to the conclusion that, try as I might, there's really no good way to artfully get out of this post, so let's just close on a picture of my favorite brand of turkey cold cuts and call it a day, eh?
Mmmm... turkey cold cuts... Ahhhh.
10 comments:
Funny... at first I thought this was just some eBay seller having too much fun peddling his wares. But, being the curious cat I am, I couldn't help but google "Apple Mighty Mouse." I discovered, to my utter amazement, that for a few years Apple actually manufactured a mouse called the Mighty Mouse. What's more, Apple actually obtained permission from Viacom and later CBS to use the name. Too bad Apple's mouse didn't feature an image of Mighty Mouse, like the Plymouth Road Runner had an image of the Road Runner. Still, it's an interesting link between Apple and a classic cartoon character. But it's not the only such link. The very first image ever displayed on a Macintosh computer was a picture of Scrooge McDuck. You can read about this bit of computer and comics history trivia here: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Scrooge_McDuck.txt
Sergio:
Esther and I were both wondering how Apple was able to get away with calling a product "Apple Mighty Mouse". Thanks for clearing that up!
But, why would they license the name and not (at the very least) have an image of the character on the product itself? You know, like… "Mouse meets Mouse", or something? …I’m also guessing that, as mice go, "Mighty" was "mighty" less expensive to license than "Mickey".
And, wouldn’t Warner’s Goofy Gophers (known as "Mac and Tosh") be more of a slam-dunk for Apple's wares? …I guess that’s why I’d have never succeeded in marketing – my ideas tend to make sense.
Sergio’s "Scrooge Mac (intosh) Duck" link
(HERE) is very interesting, especially as someone who used to write code for a living, though mine was for prestigious IBM-type systems rather than that upstart Mac-stuff… Harumph!
I started that endeavor in 1982, so I was more-or-less contemporary with this story – which would have occurred when Gold Key Comics ceased as a brand, and completely transitioned over to Whitman and their “bag-oriented” system of distribution… not exactly a high point for Scrooge McDuck!
Also, can anyone identify the Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge image described by the author as “…an image of Scrooge McDuck sitting on top of a huge pile of money bags, blithely playing his fiddle, with a big grin on his beak.”
I have a feeling that it was not a Barks Scrooge image at all that made that pioneering display! Maybe a Tony Strobl panel from something like “The Fabulous Fiddlesticks”? I can’t think of a Barks story with such an image.
I'm with you, Joe. A classic cartoon character is a classic cartoon character, and anything else using the same name, especially without the image, makes no sense.
Same with the Slate company that partners with Chase Bank--the name is all-pervasive but with no image of their beloved Stone Age founder! What is up with that?
But even of more concern is the fact that Mighty Mouse appears to be two-timing Mitzi! Is nothing sacred?
BTW, happy belated Fourth of July!
Scarecrow:
I suppose there could be a “Slate company” that’s into banking, and that has nothing to do with cave construction. And assuming we accept “The Long, Long, Long Weekend” (1966) as canon, the original Stone Age “Slate company” still exists today (in one form or another) and will continue to exist well into the future – so the two “Slate companies” would actually co-exist right now, but in two separate lines of business.
I don’t think Mighty Mouse is actually “two-timing” Mitzi. After all, Pearl Pureheart was there first, and was with him through all of those operatic cartoons. Mitzi was the “comic-book-girlfriend” (…and a very enduring one she was - from the late Timely/Marvel issues thru St. John, Pines, Dell, Gold Key, and Whitman), and was most likely created to be his “Lois Lane” given her overall look. …But without that “discovering your secret identity thing” to put a crimp in their romance – because Mighty Mouse *didn’t have* a secret identity! At least not until Ralph Bakshi created one for him in the '80s!
Though there was some “overlap” (…Don’t we ALL have that in our relationship-life at some point?!) in the early St. John period when what I call the “St. John Continuity” (Mitzi, Professor Edam, The Claw, Professor Ohm, The Sphinx, lots of sci-fi plots, etc.) was ramping up. Some of these were reprinted by Gold Key in 1964-1965. You can see them HERE!
The "overlap" of Pearl and Mitzi occurred with the “St. John Continuity” stories and a concurrent and wonderfully absurd series in those same St. John comics called “The Perils of Pearl Pureheart”! These things were wild and insane, well beyond anything a modern fan would associate with Mighty Mouse! They surprised even me, when I discovered them some years ago!
HERE is one of several of them that I indexed for GCD – from PAUL TERRY’S MIGHTY MOUSE COMICS #24 (St. John, Cover Date: March 1951).
If you've never read one of these, you ARE in for a treat!
So, I asked people in a Disney comics fan group on Facebook if they could identify the Uncle Scrooge image Andy Hertzfeld is referring to. One member was able to confirm that the image does not, in fact, appear in "The Fabulous Fiddlesticks." He searched INDUCKS for "fiddles" and, based on that, identified the following stories as possibly containing the image in question: https://inducks.org/comp2.php?code=&keyw=violin&keywt=i&exactpg=&pg1=&pg2=&bro2=&bro3=&exactparts=&parts1=&parts2=&kind=0&rowsperpage=0&columnsperpage=0&hero=scrooge&xapp=&univ=&xa2=&creat=&creat2=&plot=&plot2=&writ=&writ2=&art=&art2=&ink=&ink2=&excludeCZ=on&excludeUseDifferentCode=on&pub1=&pub2=&ser=&xref=&mref=&xrefd=&repabb=&repabbc=al&reppub1=&reppub2=&imgmode=0&vdesc2=on&vdesc=en&vus=on&vuk=on&sort1=auto&fbclid=IwAR1LfA0WDylpbEnh4uqU4pGxQB1EovZPLzVe1-S7crknDfsI0c-yrQaEKxE
Another commentator speculated that Hertzfeld is misremembering the image he uploaded to the first Macintosh. Which is very possible. But maybe in the stories indicated in the INDUCKS link, there is an image similar enough to the one he describes, such that it might just be the one. Or maybe this is just one of those things that we'll likely never know.
Wow! More about Mighty Mouse than I ever imagined! I was a huge fan of Mighty Mouse as a kid, but I never knew any of that. Certainly either didn't know about or didn't remember Pearl Pureheart. Thought Mitzi had been his one & only. It's not like I wouldn't have been interested, but most of this stuff never even crossed my path.
However to my credit, although I only had about 4 or 5 Mighty Mouse comic books--I still have all of them! The Krakatoa story impressed me the most of any of his adventures. Seemed quite harrowing when I read it as a child.
Something about the design of Terrytoon characters always appealed to me. They had a unique look that made them stand out from all others.
Thanks for sharing the covers and indexes, and for sharing of your fount of knowledge. Once again, I am in awe!
So, following our discussion: This very morning on Cartoon Research was posted a Mighty Mouse cartoon featuring Pearl Pureheart and Oil Can Harry. And an operetta to boot. I can't tell you how long it has been since I've seen one of these cartoons.
How's that for a happy co-inky dink?
Nice work, Sergio!
HERE is Sergio’s link to the various “Fiddlings-Around” of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge! ...Um, let’s hope that such a lengthy and complex thing actually displays the intended results in Blogger’s HTML. …I guess you’ll know by clicking on it!
I agree that “Hertzfeld is misremembering the image he uploaded”. That’s why I called it into question in the first place! I recalled no such specific image by Barks.
But, where we should give him a break is that the time was 1980! And, in 1980, scant little was known in this area – especially in the United States, where Barks fandom was still in its infancy!
No such thing as reference books (save a precious few), collected editions, INDUCKS, or Grand Comics Database (GCD) to consult – and the only source of actual (though not always reliable) information on what stories and art Carl Barks did – or didn’t – do came from the “fanzine” community, which I coincidently joined in… 1980!
It was a lot easier – and more forgivable – to be wrong then! ...Hey, even *I* was - once in a while! :-)
Scarecrow:
I’m betting you read the “Krakatoa” story in Gold Key’s MIGHTY MOUSE #165 (Cover Date: September, 1965), the last of those five St. John reprint issues. It was reprinted from St. John’s MIGHTY MOUSE #7 (1948)
Of course, back in 1965, I had NO IDEA of the existence of St. John Comics, and assumed, just like in Gold Key’s Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, and Woody Woodpecker, etc. comics of the time, that these stories were just Western reprints from their Dell Comics days.
In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of ANY other stories that were reprinted by Gold Key that did not originate with Dell, or were newspaper comic strip reprints. These five issues may have been the ONLY such case!
There was also a theatrical Mighty Mouse cartoon titled “Krakatoa” (1945) but with a different story than the comic book version.
It was serendipity indeed that you happened upon the animated version of “The Perils of Pearl Pureheart” (1949, and courtesy of the great Steve Stanchfield and Jerry Beck) while still contributing to our lively discussion! That was a good one with Pearl “singing in her trance” while all the action was going on around her – and even while underwater! That was right out of Michael Maltese’s playbook for Quick Draw McGraw.
Now, picture that cartoon with the absurdity factor dialed-up to 100, and you have the ongoing “The Perils of Pearl Pureheart” comic book series from St. John! Too bad Gold Key didn’t reprint even one of those over that fabled five-issue run.
HERE is the post containing the cartoon, from cartoonresearch.com – and thanks to Steve and Jerry for offering it.
The St. John Terry comics were the best incarnation of those properties, having spanned many different publishers (including Marvel twice, first bringing the characters to comics back when they were known as “Timely”), well before it was commonplace for a licensed property to move from publisher to publisher as is the case today… Star Trek, Disney, etc.
They were drawn by ACTUAL Terry animators (Connie Rasinski, Art Bartsch, Jim Tyer, Carlo Vinci) so, if you like the design of Terry characters, they never looked more authentic than in this particular comics line… though Jim Tyer’s stuff was decidedly “out-there” even for the early 1950s!
You can find more posts of mine on these comics by clicking on the “St. John Comics” label at the bottom of the Blog, if you’re curious.
St. John Mighty Mouse stories ranged from straight cartoon adaptions (early on), to the hysterically absurd (like “The Perils of Pearl Pureheart”), to a continuity wholly set up by St. John with lots of sci-fi adventures, crime stories, and recurring villains. You saw some of THAT in the Gold Key reprints as well! These are REALLY worth seeking out, though they can get a little pricy. But you can find them reasonably priced if you look.
Finally, you write: “Thanks for sharing the covers and indexes, and for sharing of your fount of knowledge. Once again, I am in awe!”
“Awe”, ‘tweren’t nuthin any good Blogger wouldn’t do… Not that there are that many of us left! Thanks for the kind words!
SORRY! That link doesn’t work!
Let’s try THIS ONE!
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