Mickey Mouse Magazine is an American Disney comics publication that preceded the popular 1940 anthology comic book Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. There were three versions of the title – two promotional giveaway magazines published from 1933 to 1935, and a newsstand magazine published from 1935 to 1940. The publication gradually evolved from a 16-page booklet of illustrated text stories and single-page comic panels into a 64-page comic book featuring reprints of the Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comic strips.
The first version of the magazine was founded by Kay Kamen, the merchandising representative for Walt Disney Enterprises, and was given away by department stores and movie theaters that promoted Disney products. Nine issues were printed between January and September 1933. In November 1933, the second version was launched as a promotional giveaway for local dairies, edited by United Artists publicist and gag writer Hal Horne. 24 issues were published, until October 1935.
In summer 1935, the third Mickey Mouse Magazine was published by Horne, with the support of Kamen and Walt Disney Enterprises. This was a full-size newsstand magazine of short stories, poems, puzzles and comic panels, which promoted Disney films, cartoons and products. In the magazine's first year, Horne went into debt and had to turn the magazine over to Kamen, who continued the publication. In 1937, Kamen went into partnership with Western Printing and Lithographing Company, who evolved the magazine's content and format over several years into its final form, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, which became one of the best-selling comic books of all time.
1st series (1933) In 1932, Kay Kamen became the merchandising representative for Walt Disney Enterprises. In January 1933, he and business partner Streeter Blair (as Kamen-Blair) launched the first version of Mickey Mouse Magazine. The publication was a 16-page digest-sized booklet with a two-color cover printed in black and red, with a black-and-white interior. The first two issues were priced five cents, but most were probably given away for free, and the price disappeared from the cover with issue #3. Rather than a money-making venture, the magazine was intended to be a tool to lure children and their parents into "Official" Mickey Mouse stores, and movie theaters that promoted Disney cartoons. Nine issues were published between January and September 1933.
Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse appeared on the cover, sometimes accompanied by the dog Pluto and their friends Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow. The first issue's cover was drawn by Kamen staff artist John Stanley.
The first issue begins with an editor's message "written" by Mickey: "I am Mickey. I put my picture on this page so that you will know what I look like the next time you see me at the movies. I am the one with the little shoes and mouth-um-um-um-um; um-um-um-um."
In the first issue, Mickey introduces "the Official Mickey Mouse Password", which was: Spingle Bell! Chicko! This "password" was used throughout the magazine's run. To mark a noteworthy event – the doing of a good deed, or a new product line – the letter "K" was added to the end of the password. For example, an advertisement on the back cover of the first issue announces, "Minnie Mouse Says: These cute wool jerseys are 'Spingle-Bell Chicko-K'". To promote the password, a pinback button was given away at stores and theaters adorned with the picture of Mickey Mouse and the words "Spingle-Bell-Chicko-K".
There are five pages in the first issue that are essentially a spot illustration of Mickey Mouse, and a string of nonsense text: the introduction, the following page where Mickey throws a punch at a framed photograph of Walt Disney, and three pages headlined "Sneezes and Cheeses", "All About What!" and "Where All About It!" There are two pages with short comic strips – one about Minnie asking Mickey to sing a song, and another about Mickey, a porcupine and an apple tree. There is a two-page text story by Minnie about her adventures skiing, with illustrations of her and Horace on skis, and a two-page story by "Ruffles" about cats and the moon. The first issue was reprinted in its entirety in February 1996 in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #601.
2nd series (1933–1935)
The first version of Mickey Mouse Magazine ceased publication with the September 1933 issue, and two months later, the second version launched in November 1933 as a promotion for dairies. The new series looked very much the same as the previous magazine, but had the name of a local dairy printed on the cover, and vigorously promoted the benefits of milk consumption. The magazine was distributed door-to-door by milk delivery drivers. 24 issues were published between November 1933 and October 1935.
The magazine was edited by Hal Horne, director of advertising and publicity for movie company United Artists, who began distributing Disney cartoons in 1932.
One of the key assets that Horne brought to the publication was the massive "gag file" – millions of jokes written on 3x5 cards – that he had been collecting for many years as a newspaperman, head of publicity of the Boy Scouts, film director and radio scriptwriter. In 1931, he began to file and cross-reference his collection, and by 1935, he had a staff to copy down and categorize jokes culled from magazines. He was reported to have the largest collection of jokes in the world. A 1936 newspaper article reported: "Horne's office, in a Fifth Avenue skyscraper, is probably the world's largest commercial gag factory. 6,000,000 jokes are housed in steel cabinets, all neatly filed, cross-filed and counter cross-filed. His storerooms are piled with magazines containing the earliest known printing of many of these jokes... Horne's clients are comic strip artists, stage, screen and radio comedians, playwrights, columnists, governors, senators, house organs and advertising agencies."
Horne's gag file gave the writers and artists of Mickey Mouse Magazine a trove of jokes to use. Unfortunately, that kind of material was only useful for short cartoon panels, and the comic pages in the magazine tended to be collections of puns and single exchanges, rather than stories. The ever-present dairy theme was also a limiting factor on the quality of the content.
On the plus side, this series of Mickey Mouse Magazine kept up with the evolving cast of Disney characters as they were developing in the cartoons and the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony comic strips. There were occasional one-page illustrated features telling the story of a contemporary Disney short, starting with the December 1933 adaptation of Mickey's The Steeple Chase. Donald Duck made an early appearance in a comic panel in the November 1934 issue, just a couple months after his first comics appearance in the Silly Symphony comic's adaptation of The Wise Little Hen. In the panel, Donald in his sailor suit leads a crowd of ducks, saying, "Quack! Quack! Drink lots of milk, Mickey! Quack! Quack!" Mickey, staring fixedly at a full glass of milk, says, "Now, that's what I call a wise quack!" Donald appeared on the cover for the first time in the March 1935 issue.
In addition, a 1934 issue of Mickey Mouse Magazine may have been the first licensed Disney product to use the name "Goofy" (initially, "Goofie") instead of the character's original name, Dippy Dawg.
That being said, the focus on milk was relentless. Comics historian Daniel F. Yezbick writes,
The recurring feature "Gallery of Hollywood stars who Drink Milk" included caricatures of celebrities like Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable, Jack Dempsey, and Babe Ruth.
3rd series (1935–1940) Hal Horne (1935–1936) Early in 1935, Horne talked to Kamen about publishing a magazine, which would be sold on newsstands. Horne would be the editor and publisher of the new magazine, and he resigned from United Artists to devote himself full-time to his publishing company, Hal Horne Inc.
This magazine, the third and final incarnation of Mickey Mouse Magazine, was a full-scale periodical, which debuted in summer 1935. (The magazine was dated "June-August 1935", and billed itself as a "summer quarterly".) The 44-page magazine was slightly larger than was usual at the time – 13¼ inches by 10¼ – and was priced at 25 cents. The new magazine had a full-color cover, and an interior color centerfold.
The first issue contained four two-page comic stories, Now for School and Barnum and Gaily's Side Show featuring Mickey, The Fun Book Frolics with Mickey and Horace, and Pluto the Pup's Barkin' Counter with Pluto. There were also several 3-page text stories ("Mickey and the Corn Storks", "Treasure Smile-land" and "Lost By a Hare", a retelling of the Silly Symphony short The Tortoise and the Hare) and 2-page text stories ("Professor Goof's Useful Inventions", "Mickey Mouse in Blunderland" and "Over the Mickeyphone"). The contents also included several joke and riddle pages, a coloring page, a dot-to-dot puzzle, a crossword puzzle, a "Let's Draw Minnie!" page, and a "Horacescope".
Comics historian Michael Barrier says that the magazine's content was poor quality from the start: "Although the Mickey Mouse Magazine, first under Horne and then under Kamen, generally resembled an established children's magazine like St. Nicholas, with a mixture of short stories, poems, puzzles, and drawings, the level of inspiration was low. The drawings, including those of the Disney characters, were often weak and even amateurish, the jokes lame, the stories pedestrian."
Horne was very enthusiastic about his new magazine's prospects for success, as he wrote to Roy O. Disney in May 1935:
Adding to the print order turned out to be a mistake; Horne distributed 294,000 copies, but only 148,000 were sold.
The magazine became a monthly with issue #2, which was published in October 1935. For the second issue, the price dropped from 25 cents to 10 cents. The dimensions also shrank from 13¼ x 10¼ to a more typical 11½ x 8½. Horne remained optimistic, writing to Roy Disney in October 1935, "The actual net sales on the twenty-five-cent issue is, at this time, 150,000. On the second issue (October), they expect 200,000 net. The print order for November is 300,000." Horne's actual print order for #2 and #3 were 300,000 each; they respectively sold 124,000 and 135,000. Starting with issue #4, Horne started to reduce the print order to the low 200,000s, but the sales continued to fall gently into the low 100,000s.
Kay Kamen (1936–1937) By mid 1936, Horne was in financial difficulties, and asked Kamen to buy him out. Kamen reluctantly agreed, and Horne returned to the motion picture industry. Kamen sold a large number of excess copies of the early issues to foreign countries, which made the magazine profitable. In August 1936, Horne sold his gag file to Walt Disney for $20,000, which helped to recoup some of Horne's losses. Barrier reports:
Kamen's run of the magazine began with issue #10 (July 1936), under the company name "Kay Kamen Ltd". The artists who contributed to the magazine were from Kamen's staff, including John Stanley (who later became well known for his work on the Little Lulu comic book starting in 1948), and Otto Messmer (well known for his creation of Felix the Cat). The magazine printed some non-Disney material, including Messmer's strip Bobby and Chip, which ran from 1936 to 1938, and Benny Bug, which appeared in the magazine in 1936.