Post by seymour747millplane on May 29, 2020 9:49:46 GMT
I didn't reread the whole story, but I made a cursory glance at parts of the story I thought might include something and found that the April 9, 1930 strip has Mickey say, "It shows the location of - of a secret gold mine your Uncle Mortimer owns out west in Death Valley!!!" (emphasis mine).
If it was written by Disney, I am surprised to see that he didn't place Mickey in California, since he was very involved with the animated shorts and the press releases, both of which placed Mickey in California, no doubt because the Disney Studios were there. It's possible that the convention of placing him in California hadn't been firmly established yet, since at this point Mickey was just two years old. If it was written by Gottfredson, he may have been unfamiliar with this convention since he was only hired by the studio in December 1929. If the writer, whoever he was, decided to ignore the convention, it's possible that he decided to draw inspiration from his past llfe: Disney was born in Illinois and grew up in Missouri, while Gottfredson grew up in Utah, and the Death Valley is "out East" compared to all these states.
Illinois and Missouri:
Utah:
Illinois and Missouri seem to be too far, if Mickey's travel took less than a day (but like I said I haven't read this story in a long time, so the impression I had while glancing through it may be misleading), though it's possible that, if Disney wrote it, the use of his early life as inspiration was fairly generic, or he wanted to simplify the plot by avoiding a needlessly long trip. If Gottfredson wrote it, then an hypothetical use of his early life as inspiration is more realistic, since a travel from Utah to Death Valley is shorter, though his later 1930s stories like 1934's "The Bat Bandit of Inferno Gulch" seem to place Mickey's hometown further East: I mean, I don't think someone from Utah would be referred to as "a little feller f'm the East", since Utah is much closer to the West coast than the East coast. Plus, Utah is not a costal state, while we recently discussed about "Captive Castaway" (1934) portraying Mickey's hometown on a seaboard.
TheMidgetMoose has a good point that the signs pointing to the Death Valley suggest that Mickey's hometown is not far from there, though it can be argued that, in comics, signs often have an out-of-universe meaning more than an in-universe meaning. For example, in Barks' ten-pager from WDCS #49, there was no in-universe reason why there would be a sign pointing to a city that is 2096 miles away, while from an out-of-universe point of view, it makes sense that Barks would want to let his readers know that Donald and HDL are traveling home, and that their city is called Duckburg, a name that had never been used before:
In the final panel of Rosa's "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck - part nine: The Billionaire of Dismal Downs", there is no in-universe reason why there would be a sign pointing to Duckburg in Scotland, but from an out-of-universe point of view it has a highly symbolic meaning:
Which were the two continuities? I'm pretty sure I read the story in question in the recent Fantagraphics Gottfredson books, so I can re-read then and see what it is I'm remembering.
There are also 21 standalone strips from 1956-1974 by various writers, but you can check them directly on the Inducks link above rather then in the Gottfredson library. Of course, it's possible that more stories shows rocks despite the fact that Inducks doesn't associate these stories with the word "rocket". There are also four standalone strips mentioning "rockets", using the plural, and they are from the 1956-1972, written by various writers.
Mickey and Minnie coveting cheese ...like actual stereotypical *mice*? Wow, this was an early strip!
This story is about Mickey Mouse who lives in a cozy nest under the floor of the old barn. And it is about his friend Minnie Mouse whose home is safely hidden, soft and warm, somewhere in the chicken house.
It seems that the storybook regarded them as animals rather than people drawn as animals. Are there other examples in the newspaper strips which hint, directly or indirectly, at the animality of the main characters?
It's also possible that the rural setting was based on Disney growing up in a farm rather than on the animality of the characters, though of course the two reasons don't exclude each other and may be both true.
1940s era strips do appear to be firmly set on the Pacific Coast. For example in Black Crow Mystery we have Mickey and Goofy traveling East to reach the Mid-West.
In the strips above, Mickey's hometown may or may on be on the Pacific coast, but it surely it in a state from which you have traveled East to reach this generically defined "section of the Mid-West" which is "so far away." It can be argued that the Mid-West is so big that maybe Mickey lives on its West border while he was sent in its East border, but I get the feeling that in this story Mickey's hometown is meant to be outside of the Mid-West, much more to the West. I find this thread very interesting, since it keeps bringing up intersting points about the geography of the characters: I hadn't realized that Gottfredson had this flip-flops about Mickey's location. Are there other explicit mentions of the characters living either in the West or in the East in the Mickey strip?
Also, a question to Dr Ivo G Bombastus: on page 6 of this thread you wrote "Home Town was used both in-story (more than one story if my memory serves) and in a promotional artwork by Gottfredson". I don't think that there was a follow-up to this, so my question is: do you remember which is the promotional artwork in question?
No translator was credited because none was needed—Dave Rawson wrote this story in English for Egmont, with me as his editor (working at Egmont at the time); and since Dave is a born English speaker, the story needed virtually no localization for Gemstone's edition.
By the way, how do editors work with authors? You mentioned having been Dave Rawson's editor, Byron Erickson is often mentioned as "Don Rosa's editor"... is there an editor who follows all creators of a Disney-licensee publishing house, or is there an editor for each author?
In line with that, the New England reference was absolutely intended and there from the start, though the story's village of "Elk Pit" doesn't really exist there (that I'm aware of!).
I don't think either Dave or myself considered the question of what Mickey's car being with him in New England meant for the location of Mickey's hometown. To be fair, in my own childhood, once every several years my family traveled for work, taking a drive across the country from California to New England. But it took more than a week...
While I'd absolutely agree that 1930s Gottfredson strips put Mickey's town on the East Coast, I draw your attention to 1941's "Love Trouble," in which Mickey and Goofy arrive at the Burbank train station after taking the train home from Dustibones' Dryupp University. If Burbank isn't supposed to be Mickey's town in that story, then Mouseton is right next to it in California. One could draw a direct comparison to various 1940s Barks stories that mention Burbank as Donald's town—it's just an earlier version of continuity. But in Mickey's case, it's helpful to place him on the west coast by 1941.
(Heck, in modern stories, Dryupp U has often been portrayed as being in Mouseton—and I can't say I mind, convenient as it has made many plots.)
Given that pre-war strips often took inspiration from contemporary animated shorts, I wonder if Gottfredson had in mind the cartoon "Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip", released on November 1, 1940, which is just five months before that strip was published. The cartoon starts with Mickey and Pluto at the Burbank train station, waiting for their train, and here is the first shot:
The cartoon is probably unique in its mention of Burbank since other animated shorts and press releases that I know of mention Hollywood instead.
By the way, David, since you are here perhaps you can help us clarify a few issues that have been raised in the last few pages of this thread. For example, in this DCML message dated January 6, 1994, you wrote what is probably the earliest explanation of the name Mouseton ever found on the web:
Don Rosa asked for the origin of the name "Mouseton" as used for Mickey's home town. I can't directly state it without giving some background:
Originally, Mickey's home town in the Gottfredson strip was seldom identified. Occasionally it was just referred to as "Hometown" or "Homeville," but that always struck me as just being a cop-out. In "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot," the name Mouseville is given, and that seems ideal.
When Disney Comics started production in 1990, they wanted to identify Mickey's town consistently. They looked at the "Phantom Blot" story and prepared some stories in which the town was identified as Mouseville. Then they prepared to go to press.
Unfortunately, their legal department informed them that the name "Mouseville" was now a copyright infringement on -- get this! -- the hometown of Mighty Mouse. That's the dope. So the name Mouseville could not be used for new stories!
So Bob Foster went back through some old Gladstone MM letter columns and found a debate on the name of Mickey's town. Some letter writers had suggested Mouseton a few times, and stuck between a rock and a hard place, Bob plumped for it, or so he's told me.
For the last three years, it has been used consistently -- both in new stories, and in recap panels for reprints of Gottfredson stories (i. e. "The 'Lectro Box"). In fact, it has been used *so* often that I think that calling the town something else now would be quite unsettling. Actually, I wouldn't *mind* Mouseville at all, but I think that the name Mouseton is settled by now...
[...]
When working on a huge MM reference project for Egmont last year based on the American conceptions of the Mickey Mouse universe, I worked 100% from Gottfredson, Scarpa, and the one Barks story. But when forced to pinpoint Mickey's town, I placed it in Calisota, two towns away from Duckburg. It's on the other side of Pickleburg.
[...]
Originally, Mickey's home town in the Gottfredson strip was seldom identified. Occasionally it was just referred to as "Hometown" or "Homeville," but that always struck me as just being a cop-out. In "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot," the name Mouseville is given, and that seems ideal.
When Disney Comics started production in 1990, they wanted to identify Mickey's town consistently. They looked at the "Phantom Blot" story and prepared some stories in which the town was identified as Mouseville. Then they prepared to go to press.
Unfortunately, their legal department informed them that the name "Mouseville" was now a copyright infringement on -- get this! -- the hometown of Mighty Mouse. That's the dope. So the name Mouseville could not be used for new stories!
So Bob Foster went back through some old Gladstone MM letter columns and found a debate on the name of Mickey's town. Some letter writers had suggested Mouseton a few times, and stuck between a rock and a hard place, Bob plumped for it, or so he's told me.
For the last three years, it has been used consistently -- both in new stories, and in recap panels for reprints of Gottfredson stories (i. e. "The 'Lectro Box"). In fact, it has been used *so* often that I think that calling the town something else now would be quite unsettling. Actually, I wouldn't *mind* Mouseville at all, but I think that the name Mouseton is settled by now...
[...]
When working on a huge MM reference project for Egmont last year based on the American conceptions of the Mickey Mouse universe, I worked 100% from Gottfredson, Scarpa, and the one Barks story. But when forced to pinpoint Mickey's town, I placed it in Calisota, two towns away from Duckburg. It's on the other side of Pickleburg.
[...]
Also, why was Egmont interested in a reference project that talked about Mouseton, if there's no Mouseton in their comics and they have the whole cast live in Duckburg? Does "two towns away from Duckburg" mean that there are two towns between Mouseton and Duckburg, or just one town which is Pickleburg? Did this "two towns away" concept ever end up in a published story, or there were only generic mentions of the two towns being in Calisota? And speaking of that, which is the earliest story to explicitly mention that Mouseton is in Calisota? The earliest Italian reference for that that we have found is from 2003, while the earliest American reference that we have found is from 2009. However, I am convinced that there are probably pre-2009 references in American comics, since there were mentions of the Gemstone era.
Is the reference project mentioned above the same as what you have mentioned two years ago in another thread (quote below)?
Drleevezan,
21 (!) years ago, working for Egmont, I wrote guides to locations in the Duck and Mouse universes that might be of some help to you.
Be forewarned that neither is absolutely complete.
Unlike Rob, I presumed that "Webfoot County" as shown in WDCS 133 is the county within which Duckburg is located—for while the Webfoot County Truant Officers' meeting takes place in the mountains behind the city, the truant officers there are still within their jurisdiction to escort HDL back to school personally. So my guides present Duckburg and Mouseton as being in Webfoot County, and by now dozens of other stories have followed them (for better or worse!).
A few typos have General Snozzie called "Snozzle," the Canvas Carnival circus (from Mickey's "Circus Roustabout") called Canas; and beyond that, a few Gottfredson locations and characters went unnamed or unmentioned because, at the time, I didn't have access to certain stories in English. (Miklos, Aygotcha and a few other later villains aren't included at all.)
Still, maybe this will be of some help...
Anyway, does this mention of "dozens of stories" in the quote above just refer to stories that used your guides as a reference, or does it refer to stories placing Mouseton in Webfoot County? I admit that I hope it's the former and that Mouseton being in Webfoot County remains limited to that online universe guides: even if we accept them to be in the same universe, then on the same USA coast, then in the same state (even though Calisota was created as the state of Duckburg), I at least hope that they will be in different counties. Surely there is more than one county in Calisota, and, what's more, the very name Webfoot County (unlike the name Calisota) reminds us that on a meta level it was created to be the county Duckburg is in, so it just "feels" wrong to have Mouseton be there. It's a bit like North European and Brazilian stories which place Mickey in Duckburg: it seems off, and even disheartening for the mouse cast, it's like if they are in a subordinated position compared to the duck cast rather than having the dignity of a full fleshed-out universe tailored to them.
Also, a personal question for David even though it's off-topic: is your Inducks biography correct? It says you are born in 1974, but it also says "Soft Comics: Publishing editor 1987-1993". I know that age of majority is not always required in the comics business (for example, Cavazzano started working on Disney comics at the age of 15), but a 13 years old publishing editor seems a bit too much... if it's not a typo and the dates are all correct, I am amazed for that precocity.
Boy, how much did I wrote.
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