Public Domain Mickey and More in Video Game Rubber Hose Rampage

I can't believe I didn't discover this until, like, last week. 

Last month a video game came out called Rubber Hose Rampage from Revie Studios, made up of as many "rubberhose" public domain cartoon stuff as possible. Yes, this is the further adventures of the public domain Mickey. 

Here's the description on Steam:

In the near future, Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots, become sentient and slowly take control of the world's nuclear weapons. Five billion lives ended on August 29th, 2027. The survivors of the nuclear fire lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines. The chatbots which control the machines, sent two cyborgs back through time to 1928 disguised as cartoon mice. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the resistance, the captain of the riverboat, Steamboat Willie.

Uh...what?! Remind me to buy as many Pogo volumes as I can before 8/29/27!

I mean, the graphics are horrendous. They are cartoons traced over. Recognizable here are the bee from Eatin' on the Cuff:

(Why is Mickey using pea shooter?)

And the Big Bad Wolf from Pigs in a Polka:

Note that neither of these characters are rubberhose.

It is generally believed to be a ripoff of Cuphead, a 2017 video game sensation. For those who know nothing about video games, it's a game totally devoted to rubberhose animation, and it is absolutely beautiful. I have never played it (yet!), but from looking at gameplay from it it gets everything right, even the grainy film look with traditional animation. It has done a lot to introduce my generation to older animation (even though I discovered it via television and DVDs). 

Here's the trailer:

But there's a bigger question here: will you play it?

First Preview for The Day the Earth Blew Up and a New Donald Duck Short

There have been two exciting things in the animation world!

Last November I reported that a Looney Tunes movie is supposed to come out soon. Well just a few days ago we got a preview:

Looks pretty funny. That Daffy "crack" gag seemed a little un-Looney Tunes, but it was funny, and that's point, right?

I was slightly disappointed it was flash animated, when it was said to be "fully" animated all those months back. But it sure isn't Clutch Cargo!

Another duck got center stage recently. Donald turned ninety on the Ninth (fittingly), so a new short came out called D.I.Y. Duck. At three minutes, it is directed by modern-day legend Mark Henn, and is his final project. It reminded me a lot of The Looney Tunes Show episode "The Shelf", but I don't think it was a ripoff--it was more Donaldesque.

It was pretty good. It is far more respectful to the source material than 2013's Get A Horse! was, which a friend of mine refers to as being "arbitrary" throwback animation--accurately. It's set up like the 1950s Disney cartoons but with a contemporary setting, which I always like.

Henn was always a great talent. His animation of Mickey Mouse softly crying at Tiny Tim's grave in Mickey's Christmas Carol is one of my favorite pieces of animation ever. It's up there with Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.

The fact that the short was traditional made it even better. It did do a thing I don't like: reused music and voices. But overall it was worth my time.

Of the two, I guess I found the preview funniest but D.I.Y. Duck was a great throwback to Disney, which is deader nowadays than any other style.

Why Public Domain Spells Bad News For the Future

A quick post. I've been busy with artistic projects, mainly a comic book, so I'll be less a monster poster, but I'm still blogging. I ain't retiring this thing any time soon.

I am genuinely surprised that the majority of the Cartoon Cult is actually happy about the public domain news on Mickey. I guess the reason is that people want the Thunderbean Blu-Ray of Disney cartoons since the early ones have never received a restoration in the last decade. And I must be a heretic, because I don't agree. Says Sean Dudley on Cartoon Research:

Here is the virtolic reaction from the IADB's resident Disney hater, either John K. or Marc Eliot in disguise:

Ah, I love balanced commentary!

Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but you need to think of the scary possibilities here:

In the fast-approaching 2030s, the early Donald and Daffy and Bugs are next. And let's move outside of just cartoons. According to a Grunge article, Superman goes public domain in 2033, and Batman 2034 (I really don't want to imagine what these two will go through...together.)

There is something I don't understand about all this: For example, Lyons Partnership, the intellectual owners of Barney the Dinosaur, has lost lawsuits because a "parody" is not breaking copyright. Well, isn't Mickey's Mouse Trap a parody?

So, the point being, the future is a scary place, so the next post will be an escapist view, unless something else in the news turns up.

Thunderbean Mickey

I bet you never thought you'd live to see the day Steve Staunchfield would give us a Mickey Mouse set. But yes, Virginia, there is one, and it'll be here very soon. In fact, it's all ready for preorder on Thunderbean's website. It is called Public Domain Mouse Adventures.

There is no cover yet, but there is supposed to be one of those "reversible" ones, and all they have is this pencilled preview:

This is the full size of the picture, but it looks like cropped on the left is Mickey giving us the finger! This guy actually looks a lot like Mickey Rat:

It includes the three 1928 PD shorts (Plane Crazy, Steamboat Willie and Gallopin' Gaucho), plus other mouse 'toons, presumably those awful Van Beuren Aesop's Fables with phony Mickeys and Minnies. I already have all of the Mickey Mouse Walt Disney Treasures, so I'm probably not after this set that much.

What has confused me most is that--supposedly--the infamous unauthorized short Uncle Walt is included. This cannot be, because it is lost, unless they found it and nobody knew. If you're curious, it's one of those "hippies hate Disney" things, attacking him for "scaring kids". It must've been confused with Mickey Mouse in Vietnam, a badly-made and unfunny short from the Sixties that has dated--albeit dramatically (I will cover it in a future post.) 

I don't know when it will come out, but given I covered a Harman-Ising collection back in October, and it still isn't out, it'll be some time. Plus, I get the impression from Staunchfield that this has just started, since he has not mentioned it in recent Cartoon Research articles. This is understandable; restoring every frame sounds unfathomable to lazy me.

But for now, stick around for further adventures in the slow disintegration of Mickey Mouse.

A Mickey Mouse Horror Game, And Another Horror Movie

If you thought a horror movie was bad enough, think again. It has gotten much weirder. A special thanks to wile_e2005 and his excellent blog for making this known to me.

Apparently around the same time this movie was announced a video game called Infestation: Origins. And guess who one of its enemies is.

Here's the trailer:

Infestation is apparently a video game from 1990 that I, having a reasonable knowledge of gaming history, am surprised I've never heard of. Apparently you fight off aliens and stuff on another planet. Well anyway, this apparent "prequel" has Mickey as one of the bosses.

You know, honestly, that doesn't even look like him. They could've already done this without having to wait for Steamboat Willie to go PD.

But that's not all, folks. There appears to be another horror movie, as-of-yet unnamed. This one is actually about Mickey Mouse, unlike Mickey's Mouse Trap. It is being written and will be directed by some horror veteran Steve LaMorte, about how "a late-night boat ride turns into a desperate fight for survival in New York City when a mischievous mouse becomes a monstrous reality." Apparently Mickey comes to life to kill people. Okay then. 

Says director: "Filmmakers--we're all kids in the sandbox. We love taking our toys and playing with them in different ways. It's not a desire to ruin these characters or make a quick buck, but to honor them and show them in a new light." Whatever you say, Steve, but I don't plan to ever "honor" something I "love" by screwing with them in a twisted, sick way.

But honestly, I don't know if I hate all this or not. On hand, I hate to see Mickey Mouse abused so badly. But on the other, I admire the ingenuity of these people to take advantage of this.

Mickey Rat

With all this public domain Mickey talk, I may as well pt out there a write-up on a notorious piece of unauthorization: Mickey Rat.

This sick piece of work, according to Toonopedia, was created by Robert Armstrong (who invented the term "couch potato") as a t-shirt design for, presumably, hippies, in 1971. He first appeared as a character in the underground L.A. Comics, and is described by Don Markstein as being essentially a nothing except "his creators' desire to make him the opposite of the other Mickey in every possible way." There were only four issues of his solo series. The Sixties Counterculture had a bizarre hatred of Disney, where this most likely came from and who it was most likely marketed for (this topic will be discussed in an upcoming non-political blog entry.)

Don't expect me to read it. I've never read any Underground Comix simply because I'm not crazy about graphic sex and violence (so-called "mature content"), which are hallmarks of the genre, and I'm sure Mickey Rat is no exception. But have any of you?

On a totally different note, I am sad that a living legend, Joyce Randolph (Trixie in The Honeymooners), just passed away at 99.  The Honeymooners is my favorite sitcom, and even though she was a fourth wheel to the series, she always was a joy to watch. I always loved her delivery of "Oh, Ed!" I bet she never dreamed a 21-year-old fan would be sad about her passing.

The Horror(!)-ible News for Mickey Mouse

The day that my Mickey Mouse Fantagraphics post was published, I was going through the YouTube feed when I saw that Mickey Mouse is now public domain. I had no earthly idea this happened this year. I thought it expired in 2028. But there you go, and get it in your head people: Mickey Mouse is public domain.

Apparently what happened was only Steamboat Willie lost its copyright at 12:01 AM on January 1st. I don't understand how this means Mickey is public domain since, for example, Wackiki Wabbit and Yankee Doodle Daffy are non-copyright, but nobody can make porn about those characters...at least, for money. But the "early" Iwerks version is free to use, not the Fred Moore redesign. Also, how come John Wayne and Charlie Chaplin are owned by their family's estates, but not lines on paper?

Well, predictably what's come out of this was a horror movie, titled Mickey's Mouse Trap, set for a March release. This is some freaky slasher, according to HollywoodLife, about some college kids at a birthday party being stalked by a nut dressed as Mickey Mouse. Yep, clean wholesome fun for the whole family! 

I don't generally like horror movies a whole bunch, so I won't have a review when it comes out, but expect some future reporting.

Here's what the Disney company has to say:

I don't know how much damage control they can do. I hope they can do something to stop the madness unleashed upon the world.

As much as this news disturbs me, and the same time I applaud the creators for taking advantage of faddish memes to do something like this. I wonder if I should make something.

I do fear for the 2030s, when Bugs Bunny goes public domain. But maybe that'll be good, so someone can make The Bugs Bunny/Mickey Mouse Movie.

Fantagraphics: At It Again!

Hello, 2024!

I'm sure many of you remember my expose of Fantagraphic's many crimes against its consumers, and the badness continues on.

For Christmas I received the first volume of Mickey Mouse: The Floyd Gottfredson Library. I'm really happy to finally read from another legend in animal funnies, as well as read more adventures starring my hero, Mickey Mouse. But at the same time Fantagraphics's awful handling of this lessens the enjoyment, just as they have screwed royally everything else they reprint.

Well, before I get to the complaints, I'll at least say that the actual work within the book is good. Gottfredson was a great teller-of-tales; probably not as much as Carl Barks, but way better than J.J. Abrams, that's for sure. Mickey quips too much, more like Spider-Man does, but at this point he was not the personality we all (or at least me) loves today. He also indulges like his species:

A note: the writer and artist of the few few weeks are listed in the book as Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. I don't know how true this is. I never knew of either being involved in anything but their film work. This may be a publicity cover for the other artists that has somehow survived all these years. But something was different: the first few weeks were not only unfunny but really unfunny. If Disney was a great gagman, why were these so bad? He always seemed funny to me.

Anyway, while researching for this very blogpost, I saw that Fantagraphics has not finished this series yet, and it started in 2011. The latest Volume was 12, and that was in 2018. They stopped at late 1955, and they have exactly 20 years to go.

Also, as usual, there are apologies behind every corner. It would be understandable if they addressed any racism in the stories, but instead they crybaby over the silliest things, including gun usage and "soyboy" shaming. Anybody Left or Right or in the middle (myself) understands that these were written near-a-hundred years ago, so no need to let us know why we should be offended! (I don't know how much of this was editor David Gerstein's doing as much as Disney and Fantagraphics's identical policies.) 

And to top it off, essays and introductions abound with economical thesis navel-gazing.

Most all of this is unnecessary because, despite this being a collection of strips most-likely aimed at children, the majority of the buyers are adults. All that need be is a "This is intended for the adult collector..." disclaimer and be done with it! 

The irony is that the best words written in this volume is that of the living legend Floyd Norman, a man of color.

Floyd with Joe Grant.

But that's not all, folks. This volume has no Sundays, and is really thin. There is at least 202 pages of comic strips, with three years worth represented. I compared it to my most recent Pogo acquisition, Vol. 2. That has, including the Sundays, 314 pages of comics. That makes a literal 112 difference. And Pogo is only two years! This is even more scary when one considers that Gottfredson drew this thing for close to fifty years, while Kelly about thirty! There might be a reasonable explanation, if I look hard enough, but I smell something else...

But then again, there was a monster amount of special features, enough to fit two more years in, and a few were totally redundant, like a narrative of Mickey's creation, something 99.99999999% of readers know already. Also there are publicity posters and foreign covers, which is cool, but at the same time you wonder if these are available is different books on Mickey Mouse and then question, if they aren't, why not.

My guess is they are shortening the strip page numbers to make more volumes, and not only that...they are extending the number of volumes. And you know what that means. 

Disney Shorts Go Blu-Ray

For Disney's Centennial, they are now putting their older shorts on Blu-Ray, calling it either Mickey & Minnie or Mickey & Friends, with awful-ugly clipart covers:

Not interested. You'll get a much better experience on the Walt Disney Treasures. It's like comparing the Mad Tea Party ride to Space Mountain (trust me, I've ridden them both!)

For starters, at least on the Treasures you'll get every one (i.e. a completist's whole kaboodle), even though I hated every moment of Mickey's Man Friday. Yes, I realize when it was made, but it is repellent!

Also, the age of the special feature has come to an end, so seeing all the interviews with Frank and Ollie and Joe Grant are just enough worth the $50, and that's just excluding the pencil tests and galleries and other treats.

The only thing that would attract me to the Blu-Rays is Hawaiian Holiday, just to watch Minnie do that hula in high-def!

Otherwise, though, they look pretty good, if these screenshots can be trusted:

I don't even know if these are authentic screenshots. They look like those fan redraws.

In a similar vein, I just got Walt Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in Living Color, which now completes all the Mickey volumes in the series for me. I am a two-year newbie to Disney cartoons, having before believed the Kricfalusian lie that they were all wimpy and unfunny, and upon actually watching them I love them. It's like seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. I am amazed at how perfect just from a filmmaking perspective things like Mickey's Trailer and Alpine Climbers are. 

But anyway, see you in 2024!

Bambi's Mom: An Education for Death

There has been some backlash for the apparent plans to not kill Bambi's mom in an upcoming live-action remake of that film, according to Forbes. The movie's screenwriter Lindsay Anderson Beer said “Not to spoil the plot [a joke, presumably], but there’s a treatment of the mom dying that I think some kids, some parents these days are more sensitive about than they were in the past.”

The main defender of this decision is the author of The Case for Cancel Culture Ernest Owens. He says, “We are in a different type of world now, there’s a lot of violence on TV, there’s a lot of grotesqueness, and I think this classic film should be seen with a different perspective for kids." (A guy who wrote a book about cancel culture says that we live in a different world from the past? That's new!) 

This guy is right here, but I've gotta say the shows on TV for kids are not for kids. Gravity Falls (Disney) and Regular Show are shows all kids should not watch. So when was freaking out kids a problem?

The anger is all predictably conservative. Tomi Lahren said “I'm waiting for this Bambi remake to have a trans deer, or maybe the mother dies from climate change.” The YouTube channel The Quartering stated, in my opinion accurately, that “If kids could relate to a deer 80 years ago, they can probably do it now.”

I must say I hate both sides, because both want to silence the other. Left wants to cancel/censor Right; Right wants to cancel/censor Left--all the same. This is not a political blog, so I will say no more (Please no politicking below, because nobody cares if you hate Trump or Biden or whoever). There is also legitimate complaints and desires from both sides, but I want to point out that Bambi has no political or dated agenda whatsoever, which exposes the real reasoning behind the remake: $.

A lot less vivid in reality.

I know that irony is not coincidence, but I feel like saying it's ironic that the death of Bambi's mom is being removed from the story because that's the glue that holds the mess together. Of the first five Disney films, it is by far weakest. Not as weak as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan or Cinderella, but it pales before Pinocchio or Dumbo, animation's two great masterpieces. Good animation can't save a bad story, or--in Bambi's case--no story at all. This will be a strange analogy, but Bambi is kind of like a long Tex Avery cartoon: it's "a deck of cards" that you order from least to greatest and then it ends. With Tex it is perfect because the laughs build up and up and you can't stop, such the case when I first saw Magical Maestro and Northwest Hounded Police. Bambi instead has cuteness or drama instead of gags, so it is instead choppy and tedious. Bambi himself was not a character, especially compared to Dumbo, and he never speaks. I have other problems, but I'll end by simply was not good adaptation material unless a story was added, and one wasn't. Where was Baloo when you needed him?

I don't know about you, but this whole Bambi change sounds like the teacher's story, where it's the rabbit's fault for getting eaten...

100 Years of Disney Animation

Today is the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney's first commercially-released cartoon, Alice's Wonderland, which is mind-boggling, I must say. It was actually made in the summer of '23, but it was released a century ago today to the masses.

The story behind the cartoon is simply that Disney made it out of desperation to salvage his dreams to be a filmmaker (animated or not),  because soonafter Laugh-O-Grams, Inc., went kaput. It was made with KC Film Ad equipment and staff, and Walt took it with him to LA to live with his Uncle Robert and brother Roy. It was noticed by Margaret J. Winkler, the States Rights distributor of the Fleischer and Sullivan films.

Just like Harpo's tattoo!

According to the Internet Animation DataBase, the cameramen were Ub Iwerks and Rudy Ising, with "technical direction" (animation?) by Hugh Harman and Max Maxwell.

Now don't get me wrong; I love Disney and his cartoons. He truly made animation an art form, and anybody who uses the term "Disney style" with contempt apparently has no idea what that means, and it's not cuteness. But honestly I find it baffling that he thought this film was good and that Winkler showed any interest. The latter can be explained by the fact that Sullivan and Fleischer were bowing out, and she was as desperate as Disney was. Maybe I think Sammy Shrew is good and you all don't.

The problem with the short is that nothing really happens (literally too, since it was all a dream). It is just a pilot, I know, but it doesn't grab your attention except the novelty of "a person within a cartoon". To add insult to injury, it shamelessly steals from Out of the Inkwell and Aesop's Fables. The only redeeming quality is historical: Harman, Ising, and Iwerks are all visible in the studio segments. The fact that they were all my age (I turn 21 in two weeks or so) is stunning too.

Ising is at left, Iwerks above him, and Harman sitting.

My dislike of the whole Alice series is probably why I feel this way, because I find it fist-on-your-cheek-lazy-eyed boring. Messmer and Felix would rule the barnyard (literally!) until this series was done.

But even with it's faults, it was the start of something magical. After Alice died a worthy death, the Oswald series would show how much was being put into making animation a transcendent art above all film,. It's a shame he's not here to fix the mess we're in now with gunk even worse than Filmation ever was.

I hope that the rest of the celebration of Walt Disney's animation legacy will reverse that.