Camera-ready comic art drawing for Mickey Mouse

This pen-and-ink drawing prepared for the Mickey Mouse comic strip shows Minnie saying she misses the birds’ songs after they fly south, so Marty opens a bird-whistle stand.

Arthur Floyd Gottfredson (1905-1986) began working for Walt Disney Studios in 1929 as an apprentice animator. After contributing to Silly Symphonies, a series of animated Disney shorts, Gottfredson was asked to take over the recently launched Mickey Mouse newspaper strip. Even though Walt Disney had been the original writer, and would continue to sign the strips, he gave Gottfredson responsibility for the art and the story shortly after its debut. Gottfredson originally wrote Mickey Mouse as an adventure strip, but by 1955 had changed the format to a “gag-a-day.” And though he only drew the Sunday pages for Mickey Mouse for six years during the 1930s, Gottfredson drew the daily strip until his retirement in 1975.

Mickey Mouse (1930-1976) was a comic strip based on the character originally appearing in the short film Steamboat Willie in 1928. In the strip, as in films and other media, Mickey was joined by his girlfriend, Minnie, and his friends, including the most popular among them the dogs Goofy and Pluto.

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