Mickey and the Gang: Classic Stories in Verse

Book Review by Jon Cooke

Click for larger image.

Click for larger image.

The Good Housekeeping pages were used to help promote the cartoons when they were originally released to theaters. When they first started to be published, the pages featured adaptations of the Silly Symphonies but soon became used to help promote new shorts with such star characters as Mickey, Goofy, Donald and Pluto. The GH pages provide a fascinating window to what might-have-been. It is so interesting to take a look into the early development of many shorts we are so familiar with. Sometimes the magazine adaptations would be started when the cartoons were very early in development and, as a result, would end up differing from the final product. For example, the GH adaptation of "Donald's Golf Game" teams Donald up with Goofy instead of the nephews (and seems to foreshadow a gag that wouldn't appear until a number of years later in Goofy's "How to Play Golf"). Another example is the GH page based upon "The Beach Picnic" which apparently started life as a standard Mickey/Pluto/Goofy short before becoming a pairing of Donald and Pluto. Sometimes GH Disney pages would end up being finished while the shorts they were originally intended to promote were canceled. Examples of this are the pages based on "The Movie Makers" (with Mickey and Donald) and "The Delivery Boy" (with Donald). It's intriguing to think how the finished shorts might have turned out.

Other plot lines were toned down or changed to meet the standards of the magazine which aimed the Disney pages to the younger readers. As a result, the plots of some cartoons like "Officer Duck" bare little resemblance to short we remember. The rhyming verses are actually a lot of fun and, if you have kids, I imagine the little ones would love hearing these read aloud to them (and what a great way to introduce kids to the classic Disney cast). I am actually surprised that nobody has republished these before in recent years (perhaps even in a children's book format).

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The pages are filled with so much "bonus" material that you are guaranteed not to be able to put the book down for hours. There is so much to look at and read. This includes Sunday comic strip adaptations of the various shorts, various vintage merchandise items that reused the GH artwork, other print adaptations of the shorts, vintage magazine art, and loads of original animation and storyboard art (including a model sheet of the early Disney design of "Private Snafu"!). The comic adaptations that are included are especially a treat. Highlights include a funny series of strips starring Tommy Tortoise and Max Hare, an adaptation of "Pablo the Penguin" segment from The Three Caballeros drawn by Walt Kelly, and even samples of vintage daily strips of Donald and Mickey that tie-in with the shorts being covered (ie: they featuring a supporting player who originated in a short or have a similar theme as the short covered). The variety of comic material presented here made me wish that Gemstone published more of this great stuff in their usually mediocre monthly "Walt Disney's Comics & Stories" comic book. Text adaptations of Snow White and Pinocchio which were also printed in the pages of GH are also included in this book. As is a previously unpublished Good Housekeeping page based on the World War II Donald Duck cartoon "Sky Trooper."

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It's also interesting seeing the evolution of the Disney GH pages themselves. For many years the pages were done in rhyming format and eventually were freshened up to include non-rhyming features and some "gag" pages (while still promoting then-current productions, of course). Finally, in one last attempt to keep the page fresh, the GH pages featured the Disney characters in modern takes on nursery rhymes in a feature called "New Tales from Old Mother Goose".

The layout of the book is excellent. The information and pictures are presented in a way that the book doesn't feel cluttered or hard to read (which was a problem I had with somewhat disappointing "Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide"). That is especially impressive considering how much material is included here. The high quality glossy pages are also a plus. A minor complaint is that I would have liked a closer look at some of the pictures that I felt were printed awfully teeny. I guess that is understandable since, I imagine, there were space issues to deal with.

Mickey & The Gang is a feast for the eyes and a great read for any fan of the works of Walt Disney. You will be blown away at the amount of amazing artwork you have never seen before and probably wouldn't have if David G. hadn't opened the vaults for us. This book is a must-have on your bookshelf and well worth the money (for those of you with extra money to burn, an expensive special edition hardcover edition is also available). This book is a triumph and --- along with the excellent "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" paperback --- ranks as one of Gemstone Publishing's greatest achievements. You are sure to see something you never noticed before every time you open this book.