Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse Vol.3

If there is only one book you're gonna get this year, then make sure it's this one. Coming next week from Fantagraphics is the third volume in their collection of Floyd Gottfredson's classic Mickey Mouse comic newspaper strips. This new volume collects nine classic Mickey stories by Gottfredson, originally published between January 10, 1934 and January 4, 1936 with scripts by Ted Osborne (except for 'The Captive Catsaways, which was written by Merril de Maris) and inks by Ted Thwaites.

It also includes some of Gottfredson's full color paintings, a couple of behind-the-scenes looks and other extra features, including a Mickey short by Fredrico Pedrocchi from December 1937. Here's the full list of classics:

• The Captive Castaways (January 10, - April 17, 1934)
• Pluto's Rival (April 18 - April 28 1934)
• The Bat Bandit of Inferno Gulch (April 30 - July 28, 1934)
• Bobo the Elephant (July 30 - October 13, 1934)
• The Sacred Jewel (October 15 - December 29, 1934)
• Pluto the Racer (December 31, 1934 - March 2, 1935)
• Editor-in-Grief (March 4 - June 1, 1935)
• Race for Riches (June 3 - September 28, 1935)
• The Pirate submarine (September 30, 1935 - January 4, 1936)

Above: a beautifully rendered scene from 'The Captive Castaways' (click to enlarge). By the way, the release date for Volume 4 appears to have been set for October 24, so if you can hold your breath that long, you should definately get the collected set, which also appears by then, containing both volume three and four in a nice slipcase. Check out the pics below, but remember, these editions are not yet part of Fantagraphics official promotion for the series, so there's no link I can share with you at this time to provide more info. 

Logically, the next volume continues from 1936 on and will include classics such as 'The Seven Ghosts' (published between August 10 and November 28, 1936) and great stories such as 'Mickey Mouse joins the foreign Legion' and 'Island in the Sky' (published between November 30, 1936 and April 3, 1937) for which Gottfredson created this full color painting in 1979 (click to enlarge):

Fantagraphics' classic Mickey vol. 2 out tomorrow.

Fantagraphics' second volume of classic Mickey Mouse comic strips by Mr. Floyd Gottfredson will be out tomorrow, but it seems that the slipcase box set, collecting both volume one and two will be arriving later than expected, so guess I'll have to wait a little while longer, 'cause I went with the box set, which is obviously way cooler and fits nicely with their classic 'Peanuts' sets I got here on the shelf.

Also, it seems like Fantagraphics has signed many contracts with foreign distributors for publication abroad, seeing they're stating on their site that they will not be able to deliver outside the US anymore. I had pre-ordered this one a while ago so hopefully I'll still be able to get this somehow, otherwise I'm gonna have to find a workaround, because of course I want to have this in English with the original lettering!

The stories in the second volume titled 'Trapped on Treasure Island' include: 'The Great Orphanage Robbery' originally published from January 11 to May14, 1932 and 'Mickey sails for Treasure Island' published between May 16 and November 12 1932 (both of course with inks by the great Al Taliaferro), 'Blaggard Castle' written by Webb Smith published between November 14 and February 10 1933. 'Pluto and the Dogcatcher', also from Februari 1933 and 'The Mail pilot' from februari 27 - June 10, 1933 were both written by Ted Osborne. Also included are 'Mickey Mouse and his horse Tanglefoot' published from June 12 to October 7, 1933 and 'The Crazy Crimewave' (with a script by Merrill de Maris) from October 9 - January 9 1934. All stories have inks by Ted Thwates, except for the first one (on the second he cooperated with Taliaferro).
It also includes 'Return to Blaggard Castle' from Disney Adventures no. 3, 10 and 11 from August / September 1993 writen by David Cody Weiss with art by Stephen DeStefano.

While the stories are restored from Disney's originals and negative proofsheets, the book also includes over 50 pages of supplementary features, with rare behind-the-scenes art and vintage publicity material and has great paintings by Gottfredson from all stories. But I still think the covers could be way better though, looks like they're designed for a tall book, rather than for wide oblong books, which they actually are.

Here's a little clip from the guys at Fantagraphics, showing us how to hold a book with two hands!

Gottfredson original for sale, Del Connell dies.

If you like to get your hand on some original art by Floyd Gottfredson, now you can! As part of their internet auction coming Sunday, Heritage Auctions is now selling the original comic strip by Gottfredson from July 9, 1964 (YM 64-07-09). It's 17.75" x 5" (for us Europeans that means it's 45 x 12.7 cm). The bidding closes in two days, so you better hurry! (click the strip to get a really good look!) the strip is part of the period when Gottfredson was doing newspapers comics with Roy Williams. That was until 1968, when Del Connell (left) took over as storyman. Sadly, Connell just past away this month (August 12) at the age of 93. Just last July he was awarded with the Bill Finger Award for comic book writing at the San Diego Comic-Con International, which he couldn't attend because of his illness. Beside being a storyman for Disney, he also worked as an editor for Western Publishing on its Dell and Gold Key.

Connell started working at Disney in 1939 on feature animations ('Fantasia', 'Dumbo'). After serving in WWII he continued as a screenwriter on 'The Three Caballeros' and 'Alice in Wonderland' and a whole bunch of animated shorts. Working as an editorial director for 28 years from 1956 at Western, he created and wrote comics like 'Wacky Witch' (1971), the 'Space Family Robinson' with Dan Spiegle in 1962 and 'Super Goof' with Paul Murry in 1965. 'Space Family Robinson' was turned into the popular tv series 'Lost in Space' by producer Irwin Allen (which was the basis for the 1998 movie starring William Hurt and Gary Oldman). Until his retirement in 1988, Connell worked on the Mickey newspaper strips. The last strips were done with Mexican artist Roman Arambula and inker Bill Langley.