236 FUNNY ANIMAL COMICS
child character named Th ursday. Th e repeated lesson for young readers seemed to be
that children, but particularly black children, were simply another species of friendly
animals.
Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse, fi rst animated by Ub Iwerks, began by following a
formula for cartoon animals that had already been established in Paul Terry’s cartoons
and Felix the Cat. Th e most immediate precedent for Mickey Mouse was “Oswald
the Lucky Rabbit.” Disney and Iwerks came up with Mickey Mouse as a replacement
for Oswald, a character owned by Universal Pictures, after Disney’s contract with the
middleman Charles Mintz to do the Oswald cartoons expired.
Th e release of the Mickey Mouse cartoon Steamboat Willie in 1928 was a landmark
success as the fi rst cartoon to successfully use the new technology of sound fi lms to
tightly integrate the action on the screen with music and sound eff ects. Disney built
his subsequent successes on attracting and coordinating the eff orts of enormously
talented cartoonists, and developing a style based on animated characters as real, believ-
able personalities with bodies that moved in a natural way and who were involved in
coherent stories.
Beginning in 1932, Herman “Kay” Kamen took over the licensing of Disney
characters, and their commercial use skyrocketed, with Disney characters appearing
on wristwatches, soap, dolls, toys, clothes, biscuits, and many other kinds of products,
especially in North America and Europe. With this inescapable visibility, Mickey Mouse
became a cartoon superstar. Mickey Mouse also became a brilliantly drawn and plotted
adventure newspaper strip in 1930, drawn at fi rst by Ub Iwerks, and for many years by
Floyd Gottfredson, whom Disney had originally hired as an animator.
Western Printing and Lithography held licenses to all the most important animated
fi lm stars, and signed contracts with artists, writers, and editors to put together comic
books featuring them, which they would then print themselves. Th ese comics were
fi nanced and distributed to newsstands by the publishing giant Dell. Donald Duck
and Mickey Mouse, after having appeared in several versions of Mickey Mouse Maga-
zine , moved to standard comic book format in Walt Disney Comics and Stories , which
Dell distributed beginning in October, 1940. Dell’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melo-
dies , featuring Warner Bros.’ Bugs Bunny, Daff y Duck and Porky Pig, began that same
month. Th eir line grew to include Walter Lantz’s Woody Woodpecker and Oswald the
Rabbit in New Funnies starting in July, 1942, and MGM’s Tom and Jerry in Our Gang
Comics , from September, 1942.
In addition to the newsstand sales that Dell handled, Western Publishing distrib-
uted giveaway premium comics, featuring many of the same funny animal stars, through
chain stores and other clients with press runs reported as high as fi ve million or more,
without Dell’s involvement. Western Publishing’s control over the rights to the most
popular characters left the other comic book companies to scramble for crumbs, or to
create characters of their own.
In 1942, Timely Comics (the forerunner of Marvel Comics ) became the second
comic book company to publish funny animals, employing their usual strategy of trying
