Apologies if I'm repeating myself here--I know I said this somewhere/when, but don't remember if if was on Feathery. One story published by Gemstone in 2005, Rawson/Ferioli's "Vacation Brake" in WDCS 662, has strong internal evidence that Mickey and Minnie live in the Northeast. In the story, they are on vacation in autumn in New England--that is stated. The setting looks and feels to me like Vermont, but "New England" is said explicitly. But here's the thing: they drove there in Mickey's red "113" car. This would not be reasonable if Mouseton were on the West Coast.
In contrast, to jump to another country's publication, in Terry LaBan's "The Great White Whale" (SPG 145), Donald, Huey, Dewey and Louie are on vacation on Cape Cod (Massachusetts)...and they do *not* have Donald's car with them.
I realize neither of these authors has the canonical weight of Gottfredson or Barks, but I mention it solely because in both cases the evidence aligned with my own predilections. Mouseton is in the Northeast (I still like the Pennecticut coinage), Duckburg is in Calisota on the West Coast. Not everything fits with this...as I believe I've noted somewhere, you wouldn't get a "Northeaster" on Cape Quack if it were on the West Coast! But though Barks's Duckburg shifted from one climate zone to another to suit his narrative needs, my Duckburg has taken root in West Coast Calisota.
The DCF really seems a goldmine of information. Wasn't there a discussion about the possibility of putting the website online again, if only for consultation, since most of these pages are not accessible through the Wayback Machine?
The DCF is available online (although in HTML format), see this thread. I had hoped to post some of the more interesting threads in a more user-friendly format here on this forum, but haven't had the chance yet.
And good point on O'Hara, Casey and accents, all further indirect evidence of an Eastern setting. I could have sworn there was a late Gottfredson story that showed Mickey taking off in a rocket, with a map-view panel showing it arising from the East Coast somewhere, but I don't recall which one. Does anyone recall?
On Eli Squinch's accent: David Gerstein wrote recently on GeoX's website--on the Mickey's Inferno page--that Eli Squinch has a "highly specific 19th century Cape Cod dialect."
In Mickey Mouse in Death Valley, the characters mention Death Valley as being in the West, and the implication, at least to me, seems to be that it is west of their residence. I believe Mickey and Minnie ride a train to Death Valley, though I don't know what the means in regards to how close it is to Mickey and Minnie's home. At the same time, Mickey and Minnie only have to travel a short distance by bicycle to get to a place that already has signs posted for Death Valley. It'd be kind of hard to believe that there would be signs pointing towards Death Valley in, say, Massachusetts.
At the end of the story, Uncle Mortimer says, "Well, goodbye, children, I'm off for the East". Whether "East" means the Eastern Hemisphere, the Eastern American Coast, or somewhere just a few towns to the east, I do not know.
I haven't read the story in a while, but a quick glance at it made me find the Uncle Mortimer line you mentioned. It's in the very last strip, dated September 20, 1930:
Do you remember which strip of the story mentions the Death Valley as being in the West?
Apologies if I'm repeating myself here--I know I said this somewhere/when, but don't remember if if was on Feathery. One story published by Gemstone in 2005, Rawson/Ferioli's "Vacation Brake" in WDCS 662, has strong internal evidence that Mickey and Minnie live in the Northeast. In the story, they are on vacation in autumn in New England--that is stated. The setting looks and feels to me like Vermont, but "New England" is said explicitly. But here's the thing: they drove there in Mickey's red "113" car. This would not be reasonable if Mouseton were on the West Coast.
In contrast, to jump to another country's publication, in Terry LaBan's "The Great White Whale" (SPG 145), Donald, Huey, Dewey and Louie are on vacation on Cape Cod (Massachusetts)...and they do *not* have Donald's car with them.
Your memory about a previous message of yours in which you said that is correct: with the help of the search engine, I found that you have written this in the thread How Many Inhabitants Are There in Duckburg?:
In Dave Rawson's story "Vacation Brake" (which I re-read every year in mid-October, aka Color Time), Mickey and Minnie are on vacation during foliage season in what is pretty clearly meant to be Vermont (anyway, it's not the West Coast!). They have driven there in Mickey's car, #113. I take that as evidence for the theory that Mouseton is in the Northeast, at least for purposes of that story.
In Terry LaBan's "The Great White Whale," Donald and the boys are on vacation on Cape Cod...but there is no indication that they have *driven* there from home.
In the same thread, Robb had asked another question that I recently asked myself here: since Gottfredson was raised in Utah, what was his reason for placing the mouse character in the East? Also, in that thread Ramapith agreed with the fact that "1930s Mouseton often seems to have a New England feeling about it, right down to certain characters' accents (Eli Squinch) and the look of its waterfront", though he also claimed that "from the 1940s on, Mouseton looks more Pacific Coast to me". Not being an American, I can't neither agree nor disagree on the matter.
Anyway, I checked "Vacation Brake" (a D-coded story from 1999, published in the USA in WDCS #662, November 2005), and I saw that "New England" is mentioned right in the first panel:
I wonder if it the reference was also present in the original version, or if the uncredited translator added it. If it's the former, I am a bit surprised, since I thought that outside Italy the duck and mouse characters were portrayed as living in Europe in most European comics. I guess it may depend on the fact that, despite the story having a D-code, it was written by an American. After all, Rosa hmself worked for Egmont for most of his career, and he always portrayed the ducks as being Americans. Also, the 113 car would be an interesting subject for another thread.
By the way, what's the deal with comic covers often having a month but not a year? At least in the example above I could find it inside the book itself, but it's not always the case. And why are there no page numbers?
I don't have access to "The Great White Whale", which hasn't been published in Italy nor in the USA, so I can't comment it. It is a 2006 D-coded story written by an American, so the vacation on Cape Cod without a car can have two interpretations: either they live in the West coast as per the tradition of American and Italian stories, or they live in Europe as per the tradition of D-coded stories. At any rate, it seems they went there by plane.
This makes me want to make a list of non-Gottfredson pre-2003 stories which place Mouseton in a specific part of the USA, just to see if there are more stories placing it in the West or in the East.
I realize neither of these authors has the canonical weight of Gottfredson or Barks, but I mention it solely because in both cases the evidence aligned with my own predilections. Mouseton is in the Northeast (I still like the Pennecticut coinage), Duckburg is in Calisota on the West Coast. Not everything fits with this...as I believe I've noted somewhere, you wouldn't get a "Northeaster" on Cape Quack if it were on the West Coast! But though Barks's Duckburg shifted from one climate zone to another to suit his narrative needs, my Duckburg has taken root in West Coast Calisota.
A list of stories featuring Cape Quack. would be another interesting subject.
The DCF really seems a goldmine of information. Wasn't there a discussion about the possibility of putting the website online again, if only for consultation, since most of these pages are not accessible through the Wayback Machine?
The DCF is available online (although in HTML format), see this thread. I had hoped to post some of the more interesting threads in a more user-friendly format here on this forum, but haven't had the chance yet.
Thanks for the link! The thread is from a period in which I had been absent from this forum, and I hadn't noticed it. The DCF being available online again is great news.
And good point on O'Hara, Casey and accents, all further indirect evidence of an Eastern setting. I could have sworn there was a late Gottfredson story that showed Mickey taking off in a rocket, with a map-view panel showing it arising from the East Coast somewhere, but I don't recall which one. Does anyone recall?
I checked all Gottfredson's stories for which Inducks used the keyword "rocket", which are several standalone strips and two continuities. I didn't find any map-view in these stories, though.
In Mickey Mouse in Death Valley, the characters mention Death Valley as being in the West, and the implication, at least to me, seems to be that it is west of their residence. I believe Mickey and Minnie ride a train to Death Valley, though I don't know what the means in regards to how close it is to Mickey and Minnie's home. At the same time, Mickey and Minnie only have to travel a short distance by bicycle to get to a place that already has signs posted for Death Valley. It'd be kind of hard to believe that there would be signs pointing towards Death Valley in, say, Massachusetts.
At the end of the story, Uncle Mortimer says, "Well, goodbye, children, I'm off for the East". Whether "East" means the Eastern Hemisphere, the Eastern American Coast, or somewhere just a few towns to the east, I do not know.
I haven't read the story in a while, but a quick glance at it made me find the Uncle Mortimer line you mentioned. It's in the very last strip, dated September 20, 1930:
Do you remember which strip of the story mentions the Death Valley as being in the West?
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).
I checked all Gottfredson's stories for which Inducks used the keyword "rocket", which are several standalone strips and two continuities. I didn't find any map-view in these stories, though.
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.
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).
Mickey and Minnie coveting cheese ...like actual stereotypical *mice*? Wow, this was an early strip!
Also, in that thread Ramapith agreed with the fact that "1930s Mouseton often seems to have a New England feeling about it, right down to certain characters' accents (Eli Squinch) and the look of its waterfront", though he also claimed that "from the 1940s on, Mouseton looks more Pacific Coast to me".
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.
Anyway, I checked "Vacation Brake" (a D-coded story from 1999, published in the USA in WDCS #662, November 2005), and I saw that "New England" is mentioned right in the first panel:
I wonder if it the reference was also present in the original version, or if the uncredited translator added it. If it's the former, I am a bit surprised, since I thought that outside Italy the duck and mouse characters were portrayed as living in Europe in most European comics. I guess it may depend on the fact that, despite the story having a D-code, it was written by an American.
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.
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.)
I haven't read the story in a while, but a quick glance at it made me find the Uncle Mortimer line you mentioned. It's in the very last strip, dated September 20, 1930:
Do you remember which strip of the story mentions the Death Valley as being in the West?
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).
Thanks for the strip. However, the correct date is May 9, 1930. Anyway, at least for the purpose of this story, Mickey's hometown is not in California. So, who wrote this strip, Walt Disney or Floyd Gottfredson? Inducks is not very clear on the matter: on one hand, the writers are listed as "Floyd Gottfredson (the rest), Walt Disney (30-04-01 to 30-05-17)", which would mean Disney wrote it, but on the other hand, it says below that this strip was written by Gottfredson.
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:
I checked all Gottfredson's stories for which Inducks used the keyword "rocket", which are several standalone strips and two continuities. I didn't find any map-view in these stories, though.
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.
Here is the Inducks reference I used. The two continuities are "Goofy's Rocket" (12 strips, 1946) and "Be-junior and the Aints" (132 strips, 1949) both of which were written by Bill Walsh. I didn't find any map-view (not of the Earth, at least) in these two stories, but I admit that I have only glaced through them rather than re-reading them, so you are of course free to re-check them and see if I missed something. The stories are found in volumes 9 and 10 of the Gottfredson library.
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.
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).
Mickey and Minnie coveting cheese ...like actual stereotypical *mice*? Wow, this was an early strip!
Although it can be argued that many people are also very found of cheese in real life, it seems very likely that the scene above was based on the fact that real mice covet cheese. In the early days of Disney the concept of "people who happens to be drawn with animal features but are no animals" was not as well defined as it later became. Indeed, characters like Horace and Clarabelle went back and forth between being actual animals (Mickey would ride Horace and milk Clarabelle) and humans drawn as animals. Even Mickey and Minnie were portrayed as actual mice in the sixth Mickey short, "When the Cat's Away" (1929). This may even be one of the reasons why in the earliest shorts, and in the earliest strips which drew inspiration from the them, there was a rural setting, and Mickey lived in a farm. After all, actual animals are often associated with a farm. Plus, Wikipedia mentions that in the first sentences of one of Mickey's first storybooks, "The Adventures of Mickey Mouse: Book I" (1931) their setting is described this way:
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.
Also, in that thread Ramapith agreed with the fact that "1930s Mouseton often seems to have a New England feeling about it, right down to certain characters' accents (Eli Squinch) and the look of its waterfront", though he also claimed that "from the 1940s on, Mouseton looks more Pacific Coast to me".
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.
Thanks for the reference. Here is another image of the same two strips, dated August 27-28, 1942:
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?
Anyway, I checked "Vacation Brake" (a D-coded story from 1999, published in the USA in WDCS #662, November 2005), and I saw that "New England" is mentioned right in the first panel:
I wonder if it the reference was also present in the original version, or if the uncredited translator added it. If it's the former, I am a bit surprised, since I thought that outside Italy the duck and mouse characters were portrayed as living in Europe in most European comics. I guess it may depend on the fact that, despite the story having a D-code, it was written by an American.
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.
It makes sense. It is also in line with what I know about Don Rosa's scripts for Egmont and their subsequent publication in America.
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!).
Good to see it was already there in the original. So, I guess it means that either authors working for Egmont are free to place the characters in America or Europe, or the tradition of placing them in Europe is no longer alive. I guess it's the former, but I can't be sure. After all, when Euro was introduced in 2002 I think France has started to have the characters use dollars as a currency.
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...
The location of Mickey's hometown was not considered? That's strange, as soon as I saw that image I thought "so, Mickey went in vacation in a place that is not far from where he lives, he can easily reach it by car, without the need of using a plane". I don't get the feeling that they traveled for more than a week to reach the location of their vacation, so in this story at least Mickey and Minnie seem from the East rather than the West.
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.)
Thanks for mentioning the story, this is just the kind of deatails I am looking for. I checked the story, and it is like you said. The Burbank train station is shown in the very first strip, dated April 14, 1941:
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.
[...]
We have been looking at the Gladstone MM letter columns, but didn't find any suggestion of the name Mouseton. Is there an issue that we may have missed, or is it possible that Foster misremembered it when he told you, or you misremembered it what he told you when you wrote this? Or maybe there was an actual letter suggesting the name Mouseton but it didn't end up being published? Also, is there a Mickey strip using the term "Homeville" instead of Hometown? So far, the only example of Homeville that we have found is in the Donald strip.
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)?
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.)
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.
Last Edit: Nov 4, 2019 22:35:47 GMT by drakeborough
Thanks for the strip. However, the correct date is May 9, 1930. Anyway, at least for the purpose of this story, Mickey's hometown is not in California. So, who wrote this strip, Walt Disney or Floyd Gottfredson? Inducks is not very clear on the matter: on one hand, the writers are listed as "Floyd Gottfredson (the rest), Walt Disney (30-04-01 to 30-05-17)", which would mean Disney wrote it, but on the other hand, it says below that this strip was written by Gottfredson.
I'm not sure what you mean by "it says below," but as far as I'm aware, this one was written by Walt and drawn by Floyd.
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 just speculation, but maybe Walt imagined Mickey, for the comics, as living near his own former home of Missouri?
Although it can be argued that many people are also very found of cheese in real life, it seems very likely that the scene above was based on the fact that real mice covet cheese.
To be fair, in actuality mice and rats covet lots of salty and strong-scented foods, not specifically cheese—but in the old days, before modern refrigeration, cheese was often the stinkiest food in an area, thus it became the stereotype that rodents especially enjoyed it.
A close friend of mine had a pet rat for many years; it liked cheese, but it loved peanut butter.
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?
In the "Traffic Troubles" strip of 4 January 1931, when Mickey's brakes don't work in his car, Horace stops the car by reaching out of it with all four feet and putting them on the wheels to act as brakes. (Yes, four feet: Horace briefly becomes an animal-horse, with what are normally his hands becoming hooves in this panel.)
In "The Great Orphanage Robbery" strip of 4 February 1932, a happy Clarabelle says, "I'm so excited I could break down on all fours and moo!" The implication is that she would forget her civilized nature and begin behaving like an animal-cow.
In the Sunday strip for 26 November 1933, after Horace accidentally wrecks Mickey's and Minnie's tandem bicycle, the mice ride Horace back to the city, pretty much like an animal-horse except that he's got the bike wheels on his feet.
In the "Mystery at Hidden River" strip of 5 November 1941, Mickey is trying to find a kidnapped Clarabelle. He gives a man a description of her, and the man leads him to an animal-cow.
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?
When I worked at Egmont, each editor had several writers who reported to them, though not always exclusively.
I was principally a Mickey-world, Beagle Boys, and Fethry editor, supervising about 2/3 of Egmont's Mickey/Goofy/Horace production and most of their Beagles and Fethry production. Some writers who wrote mostly Mouseton characters—such as Sarah Kinney—reported exclusively to me for some years. Pat McGreal, who wrote Beagle Boys and other characters, reported to me on the Beagle Boys stories but to other editors on other characters. I still edited some other characters now and then, of course; now and then I would edit Donald and Scrooge pocketbook stories. But my concentration was on Mickey, Beagle Boys and Fethry because they were personal specialties, or because I liked working on them more than some other editors did.
I worked with the authors by having them submit stories as plot ideas, page-by-page synopses, and scripts in that order, with each stage needing to be approved not just by me, but my one of several higher-ranking editors above me. Pretty standard procedure, I think. I would edit each stage to solve what I perceived as plot and characterization problems, should they appear. (And of course, during the same period, when I wrote one of my own original stories, one of the other editors would edit my work the same way.)
Good to see it was already there in the original. So, I guess it means that either authors working for Egmont are free to place the characters in America or Europe
When I worked at Egmont, we aimed for a kind of location-neutral setting; more in common with the USA than Europe, but only explicitly the USA if a story really needed it. Important: I have no idea whether this is still the case at Egmont today.
And now to my messages from 25 years ago (!!):
[Disney's] legal department informed [the Disney Comics Inc. staff] that the name "Mouseville" was now a copyright infringement on—get this!—the hometown of Mighty Mouse. [...] 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.
We have been looking at the Gladstone MM letter columns, but didn't [find] any suggestion of the name Mouseton. Is there an issue that we may have missed, or is it possible that Foster misremembered it when he told you, or you misremembered what he told you when you wrote this?
I think there may be an issue that we missed. Maybe a non-Mickey title? It bugs me, admittedly, that I can't find it now, either.
I can add that in 1990, it was Disney Comics editor-in-chief Len Wein who ferried the request from the legal department and greenlit the name Mouseton. So the change from Mouseville to Mouseton involved several people's decisions.
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? [...] Is the reference project [...] the same as what you have mentioned two years ago in another thread (quote below)?
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.
Yes, same reference project.
Byron Erickson, then Egmont's Editor-in-Chief, didn't want a project about Mouseton specifically; he simply wanted extensive guides to Mickey's and Donald's various worlds as best as a scholar understood them. I described Mouseton in the Mickey guide as a separate place from Duckburg simply because, with my non-Egmont upbringing, I'd always understood it to be separate. My guide didn't reflect preexisting "Egmont culture" very well—it was Byron's job to absorb it into Egmont culture, if you catch my meaning.
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?
Two towns away meant "just one town [between] which is Pickleburg." That said, I don't think the concept ever ended up in a published story. (And, right now, I think it's a little easier if Mouseton really is next to Duckburg.)
I added the copyrights when I made them available on Per Starbäck's site (with permission from Egmont at the time), referring to the year they were "published" online there: 1996. As you noted, the DD guide at first "carried another copyright notice, because of a misunderstanding"; my memory is dim now, but I think I at first dated it 1993, then decided the copyright should match the year of publication.
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
It's the former, though I've definitely been involved with an occasional translation or original story that did place Mouseton in Webfoot County. Admittedly, as you say, the name Webfoot reminds us it was created to be the county Duckburg is in—but that doesn't bother me.
Trivia bit: the original Egmont versions of Don Markstein's Mickey stories placed Mickey in Duckburg, not Mouseton, because editorial tradition required it. Annoyed, he decided to go all the way and give Mickey's street address as "2317 Quack Street," just to underline how peculiar it felt to him. At Gemstone and later, my American team changed "Duckburg" references to Mouseton in Egmont Mickey stories (as both we and, later, Disney preferred), but we kept "2317 Quack Street" as a wink to Don... and it has stayed Mickey's street address in some other, more recent publications. (=
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.
Well—these weren't the most professional comics in the world. I was artist and (usually) writer as well as publisher; and my idea of publishing was to photocopy, staple and sell them locally. They were my main source of income in high school, and hundreds of copies of certain issues were sold; but mostly by me knocking on doors, sometimes with a friend helping me.
You can see what they looked like here. I drew rather blatant Iwerks and Barks style imitations, complete with a WDCS-inspired logo. I later rewrote a few of the "Soft Comics" stories as Disney stories, though they needed some improvement...
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).
Thanks for the strip. However, the correct date is May 9, 1930. Anyway, at least for the purpose of this story, Mickey's hometown is not in California. So, who wrote this strip, Walt Disney or Floyd Gottfredson? Inducks is not very clear on the matter: on one hand, the writers are listed as "Floyd Gottfredson (the rest), Walt Disney (30-04-01 to 30-05-17)", which would mean Disney wrote it, but on the other hand, it says below that this strip was written by Gottfredson.
Thanks for correcting me on the date. I didn't pay much attention to it when I wrote my message, simply glancing at it and misreading it as April.
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:
Great point, especially on Rosa's story. Unless we want to believe there is a second Duckburg in Scotland, it seems an argument can be made that signs aren't always relevant or should be used as evidence for how close things are to each other geographically.
I'd like to think that Mickey and his friends had their start in one place (Mouseville? Silo Center?), but moved to Calisota/Burbank/Mouseton when their fortunes started picking up, so that Mickey and Donald don't live too far from one another. Mirroring Walt Disney's journey from Kansas City to New York/California, as it were.
So where did Mickey grow up? Mouseline, Moussouri. Of course.
Considering all the evidence that Mickey was in the East in early strips and in the West in later strips, maybe this hypothesis has some weight. I'd love to see if someone can compile more hints from Gottfredson strips on Mickey's location, but the clear references to the East in some strips and the proximity to Burbank in others sure seem to imply that Mickey and co. moved at some point. The real question here is when they moved.
Anyways, based on all evidence I've seen thus far, I'd place Silo Center (or whatever name you want to use for Mickey's hometown in the early strips) somewhere along the Gulf of Mexico. If we put it along the Atlantic Ocean, we now deal with the problem of Silo Center being so very far away from Death Valley. The distance from, say, East Texas to Death Valley is still pretty large, but not as bad as the distance from Massachusetts to Death Valley!
Borrowing this image from another thread ... apparently the creators of "The Zodiac Stone" continuity got Duckburg and Mouseton's relative placements absolutely as per my headcanon:
Apparently the German translation (above) erased the names rather sloppily since they don't have the Ducks and Mice living in separate cities (let alone separate states, let alone separate universes as they do in the opinions of extreme splitters like me); does anyone remember what IDW did with this panel?
I don't agree with placement of Duckburg on this image, but there may be something to their placement of Mouseton.
Borrowing this image from another thread ... apparently the creators of "The Zodiac Stone" continuity got Duckburg and Mouseton's relative placements absolutely as per my headcanon:
Apparently the German translation (above) erased the names rather sloppily since they don't have the Ducks and Mice living in separate cities (let alone separate states, let alone separate universes as they do in the opinions of extreme splitters like me); does anyone remember what IDW did with this panel?
I don't agree with placement of Duckburg on this image, but there may be something to their placement of Mouseton.
You believe Mouseton is near Tallahassee?
When I said the map shows where I believe Mouseton is in my headcanon (as you have quoted above) I was misreading it (as I clarified after Robb corrected me); I don't think Mouseton is in Florida. I believe it's in the Northeast, possibly within New Hampshire of our world (which is where Pennecticut is in my headcanon).
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:
That sign is not meant to actually be physically there, it's an artistic prop. Look at the wavy lines, its indistinct outline and translucency. We, the readers, see it. The characters do not.
It's always seemed strange to me that some people connect "Mouseton" with "Houston." True, if you (mis)spell it as John Clark did there, it's *visually* similar. But in terms of pronunciation...the only people I've ever heard pronounce "Houston" to rhyme with "Mouseton" ("House-ton") are newscasters on BBC radio. Do any Americans pronounce it that way? I've always heard it as "Hue-ston".
I agree, I think if Mouseton was supposed to evoke Houston, it would have been spelt "Mouston", as John Clark did. I have always imagined it to be inspired by Boston. I have never heard Houston pronounced "House-ton".