Keskustelujen arkisto

Death and naturally also murder is one of the great taboos in Disney Comics. Nevertheless there exist some comics which show more or less the killing of persons. I read "Donald and the Wonderful Gamp With Mac Among the Arabian Nights" which was published in the late 30ies in Mickey Mouse Weekly and was restamped in late 40ies in Italy in Albi d´Oro. There the main villain makes two of his servants kill because they failed kidnapping Donald. It´s the most explicit scene of murder I know in a Disney Comic. Other examples are the great Walsh/Gottfredson-Story "The Atombrella and the Rhyming man" and Giorgio Pezzin´s and Giuseppe Dalla Santa´s parody of "Star Wars" and "Battleship Galactica" "Topolino e i signori della Galassia: L´invasione dei replicanti" where replicants bomb a prison full with rebels against the replicant regime. Do you know other examples?

I can't think of any stories where a character gets murdered in Disney Comics other than Mickey Mouse and the Delta Dimension where Atomo Bleep Bleep's brother Atomo Bloop Bloop gets killed by Pete. I have story in Mickey Mouse Adventures (Gemstone Series)#11.

As a marginal note: I think that it was in this story that Mickey and Goofy grapple with a guy, who is, according to the wanted poster with which he is presented first in the story, a murderer, Goofy being quite frightened by that. The story being apart from that not very spectacular, the "murderer" at least has burned into my memory inextinguishably, as one doesn't stumble across such naughty fellows very often in the Disney comics.
What, however, one can see quite often in fact is the act of attempted, failed murder against Mickey. I don't want to know how often I saw that a story ended with Pete (or some othe bad guy) aiming with a gun to Mickey, who just foiled the villain's deal, snarling something like: "Now speak your last prayer, you little rat!", and is only prevented from the lethal shot through Goofy tripping over him or something like that.--The authors always seemed to be quite carefree about showing actual attempted murder that way. Kind of the similar thing like the "death trap" in which Batman was locked every time in that TV serial by the clown or the penguin and from where even a paraplegic could get out effortlessly ... ;)

A lot of "deaths" in Disney comics could be classified more as "mysterious disappearances." It may look like the character (usually a villain) is dispatched, but a later reappearance can wipe this away. In fact, it's kind of fun to bring back a character everyone thought was gone for good!

One example is the Rhyming Man, who sinks out of sight underwater in Bill Walsh's "The Atombrella and the Rhyming Man"; we presume he drowned, but he was later brought back by various Italian creators, referencing the earlier drowning and Mickey's surprise to see him back.
Similarly, in Don Markstein's "The Power of the Gods," a big explosion seems to have blown the Phantom Blot away??it certainly looks fatal, but Mickey openly suspects he'll return.

Of course, now and then this kind of continuity leads to a mistake. In one Bill Walsh time travel story, "The Pirate Ghostship" (1944), we *suspect* Pegleg Pete's ancestor Greatbeard was buried in lava and doomed; we see his hat sitting on a lava floe, and Mickey presumes he's gone??even if we readers don't really know for sure.
The next Walsh story with Pete after that, "The World of Tomorrow" (also 1944), is a dream story, so it doesn't count toward "real" continuity...
Then comes the next Pete story in "real" continuity, "Pegleg Pete Reforms" (1946). Here Mickey meets the present-day Pete and is shocked to see him alive! It seems to be a reference to "The Pirate Ghostship," but Walsh appears to have forgotten it was Pete's ancestor, not Pete himself, who had been presumed dead in that story. :-)

There is quite a spectacular killing in "Paperino e il misterioso Mister Moster" (http://coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL++108-AP), when the villain's villa is projected to the sky and explodes - of course Mister Moster himself is not shown as he gets blown to bits, but it is clearly stated that this was fatal.