http://www.barnaclepress.com/comics/archives/comedy/mickey_mouse/index.html
A subject rarely addressed on the comic page, at least these days…
I read this story! But I only remembered the bit about the gas. Thanks for the refresher 
Good gravy! :eek:
WT*?
I’m a bit stunned, heh.
I’m surprised he tried it as early as 1930. I would imagine show biz would have gotten to the little guy sooner or later, but two years after his Hollywood debut? Looking at the story, I see that the reason Mickey tried to bump himself off is because someone else stole Minnie’s heart. There’s an old Hollywood story from you. Hell, if he wasn’t so important to the company’s assets, I imagine Walt would have let him go through with it.
I never pictured poor Mickey as the suicidal type.
How was the strip received at the time of publishing? Did publishers or readers protest? The moral is obviously positive (don’t kill yourself!), so I don’t really see the harm in it. The subject seems a bit gritty for the intended audience, but perhaps folks weren’t as sensitive back then.
Imagine a commercial strip trying to address that topic nowadays!
Mickey Mouse wasn’t the only one to make light of suicide during that time. You can also find “inept attempt at suicide” gags in the films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy, and many others. It’s also true for cartoons. There used to be a running gag in the Warner Brother’s cartoons where a character, after viewing something astonishingly weird, would exclaim, “Well, now I’ve seen everything!” and then pull out a gun and blow his brains out. Obviously, such dark humor wasn’t taboo for mainstream audiences in the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. Exactly when and how people became more sensitive about broadly playing suicide for laughs, I don’t know.
So Am I. But not for the same reason. Almost every time Disney comes out with a hit movie, I find myself wondering what concept they are ripping off/ruining. This time, however, it appears that the Savage Steve Holland may have ripped them off.
My favorite is the “Jumping off the bridge” scene. “But I’ll drown!” Hehheh.
Mickey, in the “Steamboat Willie” days, had a definite tendency toward grim humor.
Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay in his book The Panda’s Thumb about the changes in Mickey’s proportions over the years; notice how he’s been gradually assuming the shape of a human baby. Gould was making a point about physical neoteny, but the change applies to the subject matter as well; Mickey has gone from being the sadist who beat a cow’s teeth like a xylophone (while the cow was still using them) to being “the Gatekeeper of the Magic Kingdom.”
So I’m not terribly shocked to see this, although to my 21st-century eyes it does seem excessively macabre.