One of the most fascinating aspects of the creatively fertile period of the mid-1960s for American Disney comics was - and continues to be - the three "subset" issues of Gold Key's MICKEY MOUSE title (issues 107-109) dubbed "Mickey Mouse Super Secret Agent"!
Covers and first page scans below...
Written by Don R. Christensen, drawn by Dan Spiegle and Paul Murry, and lettered by Rome Siemon, this alas-short-lived experiment continues to resonate with fans (like me) and draw the curious (like some of you?) to this day.
My original "comics mentor" (decades before I thought I could ever break into comics and text-article writing), Mark Evanier has posted a comprehensive look at "Mickey Mouse Super Secret Agent" at his Blog - and, with full credit and appreciation to Mark, I link to it HERE!
Enjoy!
9 comments:
Interesting to learn from Evanier how the art for these stories was actually produced. I see that the INDUCKS scores of the three stories are quite good, hovering around 2000. So while they looked bizarre, they weren't an artistic failure by any means. In fact, the three stories are the third, fourth and fifth highest-rated original stories (not adaptations) by Don Christensen, after "The Ghost of Man-Eater Mountain" and "The Ruby Eye of Homar-Guy-Am"!
Elaine:
Their reputation at INDUCKS is well-deserved!
And, unlike the more modern (mis)casting Donald in a secret agent role, as “Double Duck”, these stories actually worked “in character” (…if “out-of-universe”) for the comics versions of Mickey and Goofy! In fact, the most jarring thing about these issues was the transition from “Mickey and Goofy in Dan Spiegle World” to the conventional 4-page Junior Woodchucks backup stories by Lockman and Strobl – and the also-requisite single-illustration Chip ‘n’ Dale text stories.
I know that the postal regs would not allow for it, but these stories (like those in THE PHANTOM BLOT) should have been 32-page book-length adventures.
I wonder what those ratings would look like if they weren’t limited to just Disney comics, which were a relatively small percentage of Christensen’s story output from 1950 to 1981.
I’m sure I’ve said this before, but my Number One would be “Bugs Bunny and the Rocketing Radish” - which I’m happy to have told him was one of my most favorite comic stories of all.
It originally appeared in BUGS BUNNY #31 (Dell Comics, Cover Date: June-July, 1953) and was reprinted in BUGS BUNNY #101 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: September, 1965), where I first read it.
Anyone who so wishes may find more detail in the GCD Index I did for BUGS BUNNY #101.
But, since INDUCKS, by its nature as a Disney comics indexing site, has banned Bugs, he’ll just have to SNEAK IN, as he did for “ANOTHER DISNEY THING”
When I first became aware of these issues (via the short-lived Mickey Mouse Digest from Gladstone Publishing), I could not get enough! These comics take the concept of blending live action with animation and extend it to print. In fact, I would have loved it if this had gone on for much more than three issues. It juxtaposes the sophisticated with the cartoony, and who doesn't love that?
Apparently, a lot of people didn't love it. Most reviews I have read of these (even in the Digest that introduced me to them) are somewhat condescending, and they agree it was an interesting but misguided idea. Personally, I think it was a fantastic idea that should have led to more! Conventional wisdom seems to dictate that funny animals belong in their own universe and shouldn't mingle with "real" people. (However, I should point out that Disney's Roger Rabbit comic book used a similar technique to these "Super Spy" stories.) Somehow, "out of the box" concepts don't often get too far, which is a shame, because there definitely are "out of the box" people like me who really can enjoy them!
But I guess I belong to a rare breed. I enjoy movies like "Hollywood Party", "The Daydreamer", "The Phantom Tollbooth", and "Pinocchio in Outer Space" to name only a few on the list of movies that generally get criticized as too adult for kids, and too juvenile for adults. Quirky? Yes! Oddball? Yes! Misfires? No way!
But then this is the guy who always thought Lewis Carroll's long fantasy work "Sylvie and Bruno" would make a great stage musical. So what do I know?
Shoving Donald into a realistic secret-agent world, a "mis-casting"? Perhaps what I'm about to say is so trivial as to have occurred to all of you, but the Mickey Mouse Secret Agent comics always seemed to me like the direct relatives of Barks's Dangerous Disguise… Of course, that's a very different beast from DoubleDuck, it's just that I haven't seen the “Super Secret Agent” comics discussed in relation to “Dangerous Disguise” before, even though, between the "world of realistic humans" aspect and the spy theme, they feel like natural allies.
Regarding “DoubleDuck” itself… well, being the duly-appointed representative of the younger, European crop of Disney comics fans, “DoubleDuck” was always ‘a thing’ to me. I was never too big a fan of it, mind you, even if it had some nice artwork and character designs at times. But, as with all of the "genre" subseries and elseworlds of Italian comics, I remain of the opinion that they work much better as one feature in a monthly 250-pages-long digest than they did hogging up all the space for American audiences… A French Picsou could often-times have a “DoubleDuck”, a “Duck Avenger” story, and still space for two or three regular Duck story, four or five one-pagers, and a Mickey story for good measure!
Evanier's post mentions, of the “Super Secret Agent” stories:
“According to Chase Craig, he didn't think any of this was a good idea. He said no one at Western did…and even before there were any sales figures received on those issues, the whole idea was dropped. Other folks at Disney saw the work in progress and said things like ‘Are you mad?’ and there was a strong outcry from the publishers of Disney comics in other countries.”
Whether one likes the results or not, I think it was a good thing for the Italian publishers to be at the opposite extreme of the spectrum in terms of greenlighting wild, long-running experiments. Sometimes you get a relative dud like “DoubleDuck”, but sometimes you strike gold… the only sure way to fail is not to try.
Scarecrow:
I'd like to think of that whole “negative reviews business” as a case of “That was THEN, this is NOW!”
I must admit that, back in 1966, even *I* was taken aback at this new approach. But, it WAS Mickey and he still looked like Paul Murry (…or, I referred to his anonymous-self back then, “The Mickey Guy”) drew him and Goofy – and so, to paraphrase an old TV ad, “I tried it. I liked it!”
Western tended to be a cautious and traditional publisher. Such an approach was well-justified, considering their long “tradition” of high-quality product. So, it makes some sense that a concept as “out-of-the-box” as “Mickey Mouse Super Secret Agent” would be looked at askance by its publisher in 1966.
1966 Disney (aside from the rugged individualist who pushed for the project) would have been (unknowingly, of course) in the final year of Walt’s life and just as cautious and traditional, explaining the resistance from that corner.
And a 1966 “fandom” (if there WAS such a thing back then) raised on Murry and Fallberg – and possibly some senior members harkening back to Gottfredson, at least the Gottfredson remounted-reprints that ran in 1940s WDC&S – would most likely have concurred with both publisher and studio… me being the “rugged individualist” exception to the rule.
This is not unprecedented – and certainly not relegated to Disney comics – as the radically new concept of Jack Kirby’s “Fourth World / New Gods” (Darkseid, Highfather, Mister Miracle, Orion, Big Barda, Oberon, etc.) was initially dismissed as a failure by DC and quickly canceled in the early-mid 1970s.
In hindsight, I’d say it was obvious that DC’s decision was… premature, considering the great popularity of those characters and concepts today, and for the last four decades or more. And, I’d like to think that “Mickey Mouse Super Secret Agent” would have also received greater acceptance in later times as well.
Indications are, per Elaine’s INDUCKS report and the views of you and I, that this is so.
Another parallel to the “premature burial” (with apologies to Roger Corman and Ray Milland) of “Mickey Mouse Super Secret Agent” would be GREEN LANTERN – GREEN ARROW by Denny O’ Neil and Neal Adams – begun with Issue #76, Cover Date: April, 1970.
The parallel might even be CLOSER as O’ Neil and Adams also moved their heroes into more of a “real word”, shifting away from the sci-fi exploits of “The Guardians of the Universe” of Planet Oa and “The Green Lantern Corps” – for which Earth exists in their “Sector 2814”, and into the more turbulent world of the early 1970s.
While DC ended that series in 1972, after publishing only 13 issues (with one reprint issue of earlier stories sandwiched-in toward the end), these stories were already revered by the early-mid 1980s and collected in (what was then) a high-end format with new covers by Adams, when I came back to DC about 1982-83 after being gone from the Silver Age.
BTW, I literally devoured those collected issues, which later lead to such other collected formats as trade paperbacks and hardcover slipcased editions - even a digest for folks with small budgets and good eyes!
So, another case with an even shorter (MUCH SHORTER, actually) turnaround time for public and publisher acceptance.
Achille:
I’d venture to guess that, one reason you “haven't seen the “Super Secret Agent” comics discussed in relation to “Dangerous Disguise” before” is their great separation on the timeline, as least here in the USA.
While I read two of the three “Mickey Mouse Super Secret Agent” issues hot off the newsstand (I somehow missed the first, finally getting it as a back issue in the mid-1980s), “Dangerous Disguise” was published before I was born!
At the time of “Mickey Mouse Super Secret Agent”, those long, early Carl Barks Donald Duck stories were not being reprinted. And, if they occasionally were, it was in special one-shots or giants – and “Dangerous Disguise” was not one selected for that treatment. Also, given the lack of any coordinated fandom in those days, it was unlikely (…not impossible, mind you, but unlikely) that many Americans had read them both in 1966. …I certainly didn’t! In Europe, printings and reprintings may have been more randomly close together, but I only speak from my own experience as a Silver Age reader.
Also, know that I am NOT saying that portraying Donald as a secret agent is a “miscasting”. It worked well in 1967’s then-contemporary DONALD DUCK #116 - and I personally helped it work well in the more recent US versions of the “Moldfinger” and “From Zantaf with Lumps” stories.
More specifically, it is DOUBLE DUCK that did not work for me – AT ALL! Perhaps it was the “bad translations” these stories had that largely negated any enjoyment these tales might have produced – before Boom! finally came to its senses and asked our team to come back… just in time for about FOUR GREAT MONTHS, before the plug was pulled.
But I must also admit that they take the character too far away from “Our Donald”! That, too, may be a result of the “bad translations” and, maybe if Double Duck SOUNDED more like “Our Donald”, perhaps the “alien-ness” of the whole thing may have been diminished or largely eliminated. …And don’t get me started on “Ultraheroes”! BLEAH!
For me, at least, it’s the same situation with the modern “Duck Avenger” stuff vs. the Romano Scarpa-era “Duck Avenger”. I didn’t really care for that either (Super Goof is “super hero enough” for that universe), but at least I still felt it was “Our Donald”! And, in this case, Jonathan Gray did a fine job with the translation and dialogue for the US version of modern “Duck Avenger” - but it was still WAY TOO FAR FROM ITS SOURCE for my tastes.
I think the modern Italian stories go a bit too far in stretching the Perfect-As-They-Were characterizations of Barks and Gottfedson but, as you say “sometimes [they] strike gold”. But, do not forget that, in the creatively fertile period of (1964-1968), Western also struck its fair share of that same “gold”…
…The Phantom Blot (the first ongoing series to feature a villain); Super Goof, Madam Mim, The Walt Disney Theatre, reviving Shamrock Bones and Neighbor Jones (rhyme uncharacteristically unintentional), Moby Duck, Emil Eagle, Dangerous Dan McBoo and Idjit the Midget, spinoff titles for the Junior Woodchucks and the Beagle Boys (which regularly featured the Beagle Brats)… and “Mickey Mouse Super Secret Agent”! Okay, so it ended with Dimwitty, but still… So, I’d say they certainly did well in that regard.
Ah, well, I did realise you didn't mean to be sweeping regarding Donald as a secret agent, in all honesty… I just needed a segue! Apologies.
Though I will say that the “M.I.A.”tales feel less like spy stories than the “Super Secret Agent” stories or Barks's “Dangerous Disguise”, much as I love them. They're essentially James Bond pastiches, a genre which infamously involves missions, gadgets and eccentric supervillains, but not that much in terms of actual secrecy and spycraft. Fleming vs. Le Carré, as ever…
Your explanation of why “Super Secret Agent”/“Dangerous Disguise” comparisons haven't, in practice, been as prevalent as one might otherwise expect, dies make sense, but I feel like it still has merit.
I do love the 1960s American innovations you mention, of course! I mean, you know me. But they feel like a different type of innovation. They're more the equivalent of the Italians' introduction of new characters like Eurasia Toft, or their rescue from oblivion and retoolings of ones America forgot about, like Eega Beeva, Rockerduck, or indeed Fethry. Their willingness to launch series in different genres, and with strikingly different art-styles from the norm, is something of another beast, which I think “Super Secret Agent” is more alone in matching!
(Speaking of Eurasia Toft: say, there's a new Disney Masters out, isn't there! Are you planning a blog post about it?)
Achille:
I think “James Bond pastiches” is the perfect way to describe the “M.I.A.” series – the “Moldfinger” and “From Zantaf with Lumps” stories I mentioned earlier. My greatest regret was that, when doing the translation and dialogue for “Moldfinger”, I was not informed that this was a ‘60s-era story – thus, the reference to a “Tweedy Teentwirp CD”,rather than a “Tweedy Teentwirp ALBUM”! Oh, well, there were James Bond, Batman ’66, and even Lost in Space references in it, to keep that ‘60s vibe alive.
Oh, I truly believe (now that you’ve brought it up) that “Super Secret Agent” well merits comparisons with Carl Barks’ “Dangerous Disguise”, but my reasoning explains why even *I* never thought of it.
Super Goof was an example of Western’s “ willingness to launch series in different genres”, though sans “ strikingly different art-styles from the norm”, as Paul Murry and Tony Strobl – and later lesser talents - carried that series.
Yes, actually, I should have had a post on the Casty Disney Masters by now. Gotta get on that…
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