Terrytoons' 'Mighty Mouse' background Artwork.

Today I'll post a series of original background artworks created by the New York based 'Terrytoon' studio's for their 'Mighty Mouse' theatrical animated shorts between 1942 and 1961. Paul Terry's studio also created animated shorts featuring 'Heckle and Jeckle' and 'Gandy Goose'. I'll do a seperate post on those next. Make sure to click any image to see it in full view.

Introduced as 'Super Mouse' by Paul Terry's animation studio's in 1942, there were exactly seven animated theatrical shorts before they decided to change the main character to 'Mighty Mouse', with the short 'The Wreck of the Hesperus' in 1944. Between 1942 and 1961 eighty theatrical shorts were produced by Terry's studio, which was sold to CBS in 1955, making it possible for them to air the animated shorts on Television. In 1945 the short 'Gypsy Life' was nominated for an Academy Award, but lost to MGM's Tom & Jerry in 'Quiet Please!' Production numbers for every short are mentioned in the top left corner of the artwork. The corresponding scene numbers for every background are mentioned in top right corners.

From 'Eliza on the Ice', June 16, 1944. Story by John Foster and directed by Connie Rasinski:

From 'The Green Line', July 7, 1944:

From 'Mighty Mouse Meets Jekyll And Hyde Cat', April 28, 1944:

Two backgrounds from 'At the Circus', November 17, 1944:

Two backgrounds from 'Mighty Mouse and the Pirates', January 12, 1945:

Three backgrounds from 'The Port of Missing Mice', Februari 2, 1945:

From 'The Wicked Wolf', March 8 1946:

Four backgrounds from 'The Jailbreak', September 20, 1946. In this short directed by Eddie Donnelly, 'Bad Bill Bunion' escapes from Alcatraz and Mighty Mouse is the only one who can capture him again:

Three backgrounds from 'The Crackpot King', November 15, 1946:

From 'Aladdin's Lamp', March 28, 1947:

From 'The First Snow', October 10, 1947:

Three backgrounds from 'A Fight to the Finish', November 14, 1947:

Below, two backgrounds from 'Swiss Cheese Family Robinson', released on December 19. 1947. In this short, directed by Mannie Davis, a family of mice float at sea on a raft of cheese that grows smaller each day as they eat it to survive. Mighty Mouse saves them after they land on a remote island that appears to be inhabited by cats who want to enjoy them as a feast. The second background is from the final scenes, when the island has become a successful tourist spot. It included a ride-along with rotating ponies, moving roller coaster cars and a moving ferris wheel (you can see the base on the background right).

From 'The Witch's Cat', July 15, 1948:

Mighty Mouse: Wilbur the Weakling (1951)

Okay, sorry for the delay, but you know what it's like by the end of the year!
So here are the scans for the second Mighty Mouse story from August 1951. As the previous one, they re from the St.Johns Paul Terry comics 49. Its an eight page short!

Mighty Mouse: A Clue in the sky (1951)

Created as a new character for the New York based “Terrytoons” cartoon studio by Izzy Klein, Mighty Mouse didn’t start out as a mouse, but a fly.

Terrytoons was founded in 1929 by animator Paul Terry (photo below) after he left the Fables studios, which he and his partner van Beuren had set up to produce their Aesop Fables cartoon series. Together they had produced their very first cartoon with sound in September 1928 called “Dinner Time”, a month before Disney’s “Steamboat Willy” was widely released with synchronized sound.

Of the many characters that Terrytoons created, their cartoon series featuring “Heckle & Jeckle” and “Mighty Mouse” are probably still best known today.
Terrytoons licensed their characters and turned them into comic book favorites with the help of several publishers. Timely comics, as Marvel was called in the early days, published the first four Mighty Mouse books, after which the small publishing company St. John Publications, founded by Archer St. John, took over from issue 5.

Timely's "Terrytoons" comics were produced in-house under the editorship of Vince Fago but the
St. John comics had art by actual Terrytoons animators as Jim Tyer, Conrad Rasinski and Art Bartsch.
63 issues would follow between 1947 and 1955. Later on, Dell Comics and Gold Key would continue this series. St. John Publications only existed as comic publisher for eleven years, from 1947 to 1958. After that they continued with magazines until 1967.

The scans below are from issue 49 from August 17, 1951 which originally contains the Mighty Mouse stories, “A Clue in the sky” and “Wilbur the Weakling”, with a Gandy Goose short “The Magic Touch” and a single page of the “Terry bears”. I'll post the second story later this week!