Keskustelujen arkisto

As stated in Jonathan's Best Murry Serial/Non-Gottfredson Mickey Story You've Read thread, the Gottfredson / Walsh period was strikingly unique, as Bill Walsh boldly took the mouse in a much darker, edgier, crazier direction.

Jonathan pointed out the villains were often (always?) "downright dark and psychotic", and possibly most surprising ("The Syndicate of Crime").

Here are a few more thoughts to start this thread.

Bill Walsh took over the plotting & scripting of the daily strips (still under Gottfredson's supervision, but soon with much or total freedom) in 1943, until 1962 (source: I.N.D.U.C.K.S.), and was thus a contemporary of Barks'.

While Gotffredson "made the illogical logical" (to paraphrase Gremlins' Rand Peltzer) and Barks wavered between realism and fantasy, Walsh's world was most fantastic: ghosts truly exists in several stories, portraits and book covers truly react to the events (as opposed to the background gag pictures in Barks' stories).

You really cannot tell what is going to happen next, what new unusual character Mickey is going to meet, what Wonderland he is going to find himself in.

The fate of some characters is unforgettable: drowning in money, burning in a house.
The most striking example I can think of is most incredible because nearly graphic: [SPOILER] the villain in the ghost pirate ship story is burnt by a torrent of lava he was trying to escape; one panel shows him carrying a treasure chest, with the lava a few inches behind him; the next panel shows whatever remains[SPOILER].

I have often thought of Walsh's universe as a Disney comic strip equivalent (and years ahead) of David Lynch's movie world, more particularly Twin Peaks (co-created by Mark Frost): a quiet little town or neighborhood whose balance is upset by a string of crimes, which lead to the revelation of more mysteries that, in turn, break the surface to reveal the murky depths of society and human psyche; zany characters abound, cryptic and/or unsettling scenes or panels pop up once in a while (Agent Cooper's dreams, a boy carving demonic faces for a hobby), and this whole universe is incredibly appealing.

Another key element of those stories is that Mickey is much more of a victim, a passive "regular little guy" that somehow finds himself one the other side of the mirror and reacts more than he acts; he manages to survive and still be the hero, but he cannot control anything and is definitely no longer the bouncy, jesting hero ( la Spider-Man) he used to be-- as was the case in "Blaggard Castle", but it is taken to the extreme.
The adventure ends well, but it's not a rosy happy end: there is a bittersweet aftertaste; he could not save everyone, including the villain, as he used to, and is not quite sure of what happened, nor how he coudl ahve actually lived through it.