Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett looks at what the new Mickey Mouse videogame means for the character:I never been what you'd call a hard-core gamer. These days I don't even own a system, but I am of course a Disney fan so I paid attention to the headline "Disney Takes Mickey Back To His Roots" which appeared on the front page of the November 2nd online edition of Variety. The piece by Chris Morris concerned Disney's Epic Mickey, an upcoming Wii exclusive created by Warren Spector, best known for designing games like Deus Ex and Thief.
The premise of the game sounds like something Alan Moore might have come up with on a good day (or if Grant Morrison needed to make a house payment). In it Yen Sid (I never knew the guy even had a name but apparently he does and its 'Disney' backwards), the wizard Mickey Mouse interned for in The Sorcerer's Apprentice segment of Fantasia, creates Cartoon Wasteland, a twisted version of Disneyland that the company's forgotten characters* can call their own.
In a previous column (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--Say Goodbye To Kandor") I asked if Disney had any actual plans for ever using Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Walt Disney's first animated star, considering how much time, money and effort the company spent to reacquire him. Well apparently they did because Oswald is a major character in the game and, understandably, more than a little bitter at having become the Pete Best of cartoon characters.
The secondary headline from the article claims "Videogame gives icon retrofit" and while in comic book terms this would be more of a relaunch I can definitely see the wisdom of using the term "retrofit," seeing as how as they're taking a retro approach to Mickey and fitting him into a post-modern storyline (this may well be the first video game that has allusions to T.S. Elliot's The Wasteland). And hopefully the cutting edge visuals will help dissipate at least some of the cloying cuteness associated with him that's made "Mickey Mouse" into a derogatory term.
As to what all of the above has to do with us, Spector is actively pushing for Epic Mickey movies and comics; hopefully right now someone from BOOM! Studios is talking to someone at Disney. But I'll confess I have selfish reasons for wanting this revival to take; for one thing I've always liked Mickey Mouse (the character, not the corporate icon). For another I've been a lifelong fan of the work of Floyd Gottfredson, the man who wrote and drew Mickey's comic strip adventures back when he had a tail. And it's good to see the classic approach he worked with being celebrated like this.
And if you've never gotten the chance to see Gottfredson's work… well, that's just sad, but easily fixed. They run his Mickey Mouse strips on The Funny Page section of the D23 website.
In the past I've written entirely too much too often about how you can (and can't) revive classic comic characters and there's no question that the Epic Mickey version could go wrong fast (nobody wants to see a 'Dark Mickey'). But if does work it would mean the return of a Mickey Mouse worth our emotional investment and just as importantly, if Disney can do it with Mickey there's no reason DC couldn't do it with Superman.
I mean, you know, besides inertia and indifference.
While we're still on the subject of Disney comics, BOOM! Studios clearly has faith in their new Classic Disney character line (I know there have been sell-outs and second printings of the first few issues) seeing as how both Disney's Hero Squad and Wizards of Mickey are getting titles of their own. And being the huge Mickey Mouse fan that I am, I'm delighted to see that in Walt Disney's Comics & Stories #703, they will start running "Mickey's Mysteries," a detective series with a film noir setting considered one of the best Disney stories ever done in Italy. With this being translated hopefully X Mickey (another more serious series, this one with a paranormal bent) will be next.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
