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Disney comics

Comics featuring Walt Disney characters

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The first Disney comics were newspaper strips appearing from 1930 on, starting with the Mickey Mouse comic strip. Mickey Mouse Magazine, the first American newsstand publication with Disney comics, launched in 1935. In 1940, Western Publishing launched the long-running flagship comic book, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, which reached 750 issues in September 2019. Uncle Scrooge, launched in 1952, reached issue #450 in June 2019. In recent decades, Disney comics have seen a decline of popularity in the United States. In the rest of the world Disney comics have remained very successful, especially in Europe, where weekly Disney comics magazines and monthly paperback digests are national best sellers.

Disney comics have been the basis for academic theory, cultural criticism, and fan-created databases.

U.S. comic strips

The first Disney comics appeared in daily newspapers, syndicated by King Features with production done in-house by a Disney comic strip department at the studio. Initially Floyd Gottfredson along with his responsibilities for the Mickey Mouse comic strip oversaw the Disney comic strip department from 1930 to 1945, then Frank Reilly was brought in to administer the burgeoning department from January 1946 to 1975. Greg Crosby headed the department from 1979 to 1989.

Mickey Mouse

The Mickey Mouse daily comic strip began on January 13, 1930, featuring Mickey as an optimistic, adventure-seeking young mouse. It was initially written by Walt Disney with art by Ub Iwerks and Win Smith. Beginning with the May 5, 1930, installment the art chores were taken up by Floyd Gottfredson (often aided by various inkers), who also either wrote or supervised the story continuities (relying on various writers to flesh out his plots). Gottfredson continued with the strip until 1975. By 1931, the Mickey Mouse strip was published in 60 newspapers in the United States, as well as papers in twenty other countries.

From the beginning, the strips were parts of long continuing stories. These introduced characters such as the Phantom Blot, Eega Beeva, and the Bat Bandit, which Gottfredson created; Disney created Eli Squinch, Mickey's nephews, Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse, and Sylvester Shyster, which were also introduced in the comic.

Starting in the 1950s, Gottfredson and writer Bill Walsh were instructed to drop the storylines and do only daily gags. Gottfredson continued illustrating the daily strip until he retired on October 1, 1975.

After Gottfredson retired, the strip was written and drawn by many other creators. The Sunday page went into reprints in February 1992, and the daily strip ended on July 29, 1995.

In 2011, Fantagraphics Books began the Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse series, a hardback collection of Gottfredson's run on the strip. A total of 14 volumes were published between 2011 and 2018, collecting the entirety of Gottfredson's Sunday color work (two volumes) and all of his serialized story-themed daily strips (12 volumes). The collection doesn't include any of Gottfredson's gag-oriented material from 1955 onwards.

Silly Symphony

The Mickey Mouse Sunday strip started on January 10, 1932, with a topper Silly Symphony strip.Silly Symphony initially related the adventures of Bucky Bug, the first Disney character to originate in the comics. It went on to print more adaptations of Silly Symphony shorts, often using the characters and setting of the original shorts, but adding new plotlines and incidents. It also went on to print adaptations of the feature films, as well as periods of gag strips featuring Donald Duck and Pluto. By late 1935 the strip was a standalone half-page, not strictly a topper for the Mickey Sunday.

The strip was initially titled Silly Symphonies; after two years, the name was changed to Silly Symphony. The switch happened in the February 18, 1934, strip, just three weeks before Bucky Bug would be replaced with a new storyline, "Birds of a Feather".

The complete rundown of Silly Symphony strips, from 1932 to 1945:

  • Bucky Bug (January 10, 1932 – March 4, 1934)
  • Birds of a Feather (March 11 – June 17, 1934)
  • Penguin Isle (July 1 – September 9, 1934)
  • The Wise Little Hen (September 16 – December 16, 1934)
  • The Boarding-School Mystery (December 23, 1934 – Feb 17, 1935)
  • The Robber Kitten (Feb 24 – April 21, 1935)
  • Cookieland (April 28 – July 21, 1935)
  • Three Little Kittens (July 28 – October 20, 1935)
  • The Life and Adventures of Elmer the Elephant (October 27, 1935 – January 12, 1936)
  • The Further Adventures of the Three Little Pigs (January 19 – August 23, 1936)
  • Donald Duck (August 30, 1936 – December 5, 1937)
  • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (December 12, 1937 – April 24, 1938)
  • The Practical Pig! (May 1 – August 7, 1938)
  • Mother Pluto (August 14 – October 16, 1938)
  • Farmyard Symphony (October 23 – November 27, 1938)
  • Timid Elmer (December 4, 1938 – Feb 12, 1939)
  • Pluto the Pup (Feb 19 – March 19, 1939)
  • The Ugly Duckling (March 26 – April 16, 1939)
  • Pluto the Pup (April 23 – December 17, 1939)
  • Pinocchio (December 24, 1939 – April 7, 1940)
  • Pluto the Pup (April 14 – November 3, 1940)
  • Little Hiawatha (November 10, 1940 – July 12, 1942)
  • Bambi (July 19 – October 4, 1942)
  • José Carioca (October 11, 1942 – October 1, 1944)
  • Panchito (October 8, 1944 – October 7, 1945)

The Silly Symphony Sunday strip ended on October 7, 1945, and was replaced by Uncle Remus and His Tales of Br'er Rabbit.

Three of the Silly Symphony stories inspired long-running features in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. Original Bucky Bug stories first appeared in issue #39 (Dec 1943) and appeared every month for seven years, wrapping up with issue #120 (Sept 1950). "The Three Little Pigs" feature inspired the creation of Li'l Bad Wolf, the Big Bad Wolf's errant son, who wants to be friends with the Pigs. Li'l Bad Wolf's adventures began in issue #52 (Jan 1945), and he made regular appearances until almost the end of the comic's original run, issue #259 (April 1962). Finally, Little Hiawatha had his own monthly story for two years, from issue #143 (Aug 1952) to #168 (September 1954).

The complete strip has been reprinted in four hardcover collections, Silly Symphonies: The Complete Disney Classics, published by IDW Publishing's Library of American Comics imprint. The first volume, published in 2016, includes all of the strips from "Bucky Bug" (1932) to "Cookieland" (1935). Volume 2, published in 2017, includes "Three Little Kittens" (1935) to "Timid Elmer" (1939). Volume 3, published in 2018, includes "Pluto the Pup" (1939) to "Little Hiawatha" (1942). The fourth volume, published in 2019, concludes the series with "Bambi" (1942) through Panchito" (1945).

Donald Duck

Donald Duck made his first comics appearance in the Silly Symphony adaptation of the 1934 Disney short The Wise Little Hen (Sept. 16, 1934-Dec. 16, 1934). As Donald's popularity grew, he became the star of the Silly Symphony strip for an extended run (August 1936 to December 1937), and then got his own daily strip starting on February 7, 1938. A Donald Sunday strip premiered December 10, 1939. Carl Barks, known to fans as "The Duck Man," wrote at least 20 of the strips between 1938 and 1940. Donald Duck ran until May 2005, when it went into reprints.

Starting in 2015, IDW Publishing's Library of American Comics imprint has been publishing hardcover collections of the Donald Duck strip. As of 2019, five volumes of Donald Duck: The Complete Daily Newspaper Comics and two volumes of Donald Duck: The Complete Sunday Comics have been released.

Uncle Remus and His Tales of Br'er Rabbit

Uncle Remus and His Tales of Br'er Rabbit was launched as a Sunday strip on October 14, 1945, as a preview of the upcoming 1946 film Song of the South. The Uncle Remus strip began, like Silly Symphony, as a topper for the Mickey Mouse strip, but after the first few years, almost always appeared on its own.

The previous comic strip adaptations of Disney films lasted for four or five months, but the Uncle Remus strip continued for almost thirty years, telling new stories of Br'er Rabbit and friends, until the strip was discontinued on December 31, 1972.

Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales

In 1950, Disney distributed a limited-time Sunday strip adaptations of their new animated feature Cinderella, and followed the next year with Alice in Wonderland. Judged a success, the experiment was turned into an ongoing feature in 1952—Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales—beginning with The Story of Robin Hood.

The Sunday strip ran for thirty-five years, from July 13, 1952, to February 15, 1987. The animated features adapted for the strip include Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1958), The Sword in the Stone (1963) and The Jungle Book (1968). Classic Tales also featured animated shorts, including Lambert the Sheepish Lion (1956) and Ben and Me (1953), and featurettes like Peter & The Wolf (1954) and Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966). The 1979-80 adaptation of The Black Hole was particularly notable for featuring pencil art by comics icon Jack Kirby, with Mike Royer inking.

Treasury of Classic Tales also adapted live-action films like Old Yeller (1957–58), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), Mary Poppins (1964) and The Love Bug (1969). The strip transitioned from historical dramas like The Sword and the Rose (1953) and Kidnapped (1960) to comedies like The Shaggy Dog (1959) and The Parent Trap (1961).

In 2016, IDW Publishing and their imprint The Library of American Comics (LoAC) began to collect all the Treasury of Classic Tales stories in a definitive hardcover reprint series. As of 2019, three volumes have been published, reprinting all the stories from Robin Hood (1952) through In Search of the Castaways (1962). In April 2018, it was announced that, due to the sales goal of the series not being met, the third volume may be the last one to be published.

Scamp

In 1955, the animated film Lady and the Tramp inspired a new comic strip based on an adorable, unnamed puppy glimpsed at the end of the movie. Scamp debuted in newspapers on October 31, 1955, and ran for more than 30 years, ending on June 25, 1988. The strip was created by Ward Greene, a King Features Syndicate editor who wrote the original magazine story, Happy Dan, the Whistling Dog, and Miss Patsy, the Beautiful Spaniel, which inspired the film. Greene and artist Dick Moores produced the strip for eight months as a continuing story. Starting in May 1956, other creators took over, and the strip moved to a gag-a-day format.

Disney Christmas Story

Beginning in 1960, a special daily strip with a holiday theme utilizing the Disney characters was offered each year through 1987. It generally ran for three to four weeks with the concluding strip appearing a day or two before Christmas, often promoting the latest Disney release or re-release. These were unique in that in some cases, they showcased the crossover of Disney characters that otherwise rarely interacted.

The tradition was revived in 1992 as Disney Holiday Story to publicize contemporary Disney feature animated films.

In 2017, the Christmas stories were collected in a hardback volume, Disney's Christmas Classics, published by IDW Publishing. The collection includes all of the Christmas stories except for 1986's story based on Song of the South.

Winnie the Pooh

Disney created a Winnie the Pooh comic strip for King Features Syndicate starting June 19, 1978. Based on the Disney adaptations of the characters, the strip was written by Don Ferguson and drawn by Richard Moore. In addition to the regular cast of characters, Ferguson and Moore also added a knight named Sir Brian, and his worrywart dragon. The strip lasted for almost ten years, ending on April 2, 1988.

Other comic strips

Other Disney strips distributed over the years included (chronologically by start date):

  • Merry Menagerie [humorous daily panel featuring anthropomorphic animals, but no Disney characters] (Jan. 13, 1947-March 17, 1962).
  • True Life Adventures [daily panel] (March 14, 1955 – February 27, 1973)
  • Mickey Mouse and His Friends [pantomime aimed at an international audience, gag strips featuring Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Pluto] (September 1, 1958 – March 17, 1962).
  • Gummi Bears (Sept. 1, 1986–April 1, 1989)

A proposed Roger Rabbit strip underwent development but cancellation of the sequel led King Features to pass on it.

The Disney comic strip department closed in January 1990. The last two strips, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, continued to be supervised by King Features. The Donald strip was drawn by Larry Knighton with King Features staffers writing it. The Donald strip was discontinued in the mid-1990s. In this period the Mickey strip had Floyd Norman as the writer and art rotating between Rick Hoover and Alex Howell. Norman convinced the syndicate to allow him to drop the gag-a-day format in favor of adventure continuities of up to four weeks, much in the style of the classic Gottfredson era. By 1994 the strip was running in only 30 newspapers and by mutual agreement of Disney and King Features it ended. Both strips continued with reprints.

In recent years Creators Syndicate has offered reprints of the Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh strips as part of a "classics" package and posts the current strip on its site (without archiving). Domestically the strips have 20-30 clients at any one time; they also appear in many newspapers outside the United States (exact number unknown).

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