Floyd Gottfredson!

The best news I've heard come out of San Diego this year are plans for Fantagraphics to reprint the Mickey Mouse comic strip by Floyd Gottfredson (including the early, politically incorrect strips!) I can't think of a better outfit to pull this off, and it will add Mickey Mouse to their already impressive reprint roster that includes Peanuts, Pogo, Popeye, Dennis the Menace and Krazy Kat.

The scans below are some of the wonderful watercolor paintings Gottfredson created between 1978 and 1983 for Malcolm Willits, a lifelong fan of both Gottfredson and Carl Barks, and the first person to interview each artist for publication. These paintings were supposed to be used in a licensing deal Willits had with Disney, but I don't know if any commemorative plates or buttons were ever made from this work.

I scanned everything from a 1993 auction catalog from the Howard Lowery Gallery; it is an excellent publication and well worth searching out just for the full color images of each painting, and the article written by Willits regarding the history of the work. It also reprints that first interview with Gottfredson from Vanguard, published in 1968.

7 comments:

Mykal Banta said...

Doug: Such great news. I have been waiting for a decent publishing effort concerning Floyd Gottfredson's work, and you are right. Fantagraphics has always done first-class stuff. I can hardly wait. I have started to imagine the shelving space I need to reserve already for all the volumes.

August 3, 2010 10:50 PM


Doug Gray said...

Mykal: You and me both! To date, I think the only large reprint runs of Gottfredson's work are from Dell's run of Walt Disney's Comics & Stories, and Gladstone's run of Mickey Mouse. To have his work reprinted in order is the best I could have hoped for. This and the Bob Montana Archie collection are the two archival projects I've been wanting the most!

August 4, 2010 12:35 AM


Gabriel said...

Such a beautiful illos! And such a really great news!

Looks like they had been hearing us while we were emailing each other about Gottfredson's work a while ago and very much regretting because it hadn't a good compilation of his Mickey Mouse strips. Rest assured that I'll start to save money from now on (God keep us on the run for the meantime to get it! - considering the large volume of his work)

Welcome back, my dear friend!

August 5, 2010 7:25 AM


Doug Gray said...

Gabriel: It is great news, especially since (for me at least) I think almost all the old strips I have wanted in book form have now been accounted for (well, I'd still like to see new Wash Tubbs and Moon Mullins collections...and if the upcoming Barney Google books don't collect DeBeck's Parlor, Bedroom and Sink, then I still want that, too) Okay, maybe I'll never be completely satisfied!

I'm already running! That's why I haven't been on the blog for a while!

August 5, 2010 11:45 AM


Mykal Banta said...

Doug: I've been waiting for the Bob Montana collection myself, but Amazon (and the publisher, of course) keep pushing back the date!! Grumble Grumble.

August 8, 2010 6:49 AM


Doug Gray said...

It seems like almost every book gets pushed back a bit, except maybe the Peanuts collections. Those get out on schedule, at least. Hopefully the Archie collection won't end up like Pogo, which has been pushed back what, two years (at least) and counting? Aargh. At least with Pogo, I have my old books to look at.

August 8, 2010 12:40 PM


Sherm said...

That IS some incredibly good news! Thanks for the heads-up -- I'll be eagerly waiting ^_^

August 29, 2010 10:55 AM