Saturday 11 July 2009

Gottfredson?

At the Seriernas värld exhibition were three Mickey Mouse strips on display.
(Click to enlarge.)

I've seen them exhibited before and always labeled as Floyd Gottfredson art.
If you know your Gottfredson art and how his style developed over the years it's obvious that the strips are by someone else. Notice how the copyright year has been removed to make identification harder. They were probably sold as Gottfredson dailies by someone who knew they weren't. Here are some close ups:



The first time I saw these strips I thought they were made by an assistant, toward the end of Gottfredson's run. But after seeing the original below for sale on eBay I'm quite sure wich strip we are dealing with...




"Mickey Mouse and his friends" was produced during the 50's and 60's and the main difference between this strip and the regular MM strip was that it always were a pantomime strip. (Just like the three strips at the exhibition.)

Checking inducks and comparing artwork I'd say the strips are by Julius Svendsen, not Gottfredson.
Anyone who disagree?

6 comments:

Lars Jensen said...

"Mickey Mouse and Friends" (or whatever it was called) was the first thing I thought of when I saw those strips. All three strips are pantomime -- that's a little too coincidental for me. And when you compare the Morty/Ferdie seen in those strips with the boy seen in http://coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=YF+61-04-29 ...

Yeah, it's very likely Julius Svendsen's artwork they've got hanging on those walls.

ssss said...

may want to check out my smugmug page. i'm posting comics for others to enjoy. I have thousands to add. So keeping it linked would be awesome. http://ilovecomix.smugmug.com

Joakim Gunnarsson said...

ilovecomics: Sure! It's now in my permanent list of links under "Other stuff you'll like"! :)

fortunato said...

KFS syndicated this pantomime strip from September 1, 1958 to March 17, 1962.

MICKEY MOUSE AND HIS FRIENDS was written by Milt Banta and drawn by Ken Hultgren.
From February 1959, art was by Manuel Gonzales e Riley Thompson.
From May '59 on, this strip was written by Roy Williams and drawn by Julius Svendsen.

So this is surely Svendsen art (in a certain degree he tried a Gottfredson imitation, but differences are evident).

-= Steamboat Willie =- said...

I concur.. it's definitely Svendsen.

Joakim Gunnarsson said...

Lars, Fortunato and Steamboat:
Thanks for the response! I'll let Thomas know about the mislabeled art. Let's hope the owner of the strips will enjoy them just as much even if it's not Gottfredson's artwork.
(Original Svendsen art is 100% rarer that MM dailies by Gottfredson BTW!)