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UNCENSORED MOUSE #1 COMIC BOOK!!
The series reprinted Mickey Mouse comics from the 1930s, though the strips were published without Disney's permission. As result of this, Eternity Comics printed the comic with totally black covers, bag and boarded (to prevent casual buyers from flipping through the comic), and the inside of the comic had a printed notice "Mickey Mouse is a registered trademark of Walt Disney Productions" so as not to confuse the market that it was an authorized Disney production. However, Eternity Comics had not violated any copyrights due to the fact that strips had fallen into public domain. Regardless, Disney brought a lawsuit against the company and the series was cancelled after two issues.
The strips were reprinted un-cut and as such contained racial stereotypes, language, and other things deemed inappropriate. Content such as this was more commonplace when the strip was first puplished in the 1930s.
Once upon a time (actually early 1989), the Mailbu Graphics group (Scott Rosenberg, Dave Olbrich, Tom Mason, Chris Ulm) was publishing the Eternity Comics line of independent black and white comic books.
Eternity Comics were able to reprint many of these classic comic strips thanks to the collections of the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art. The San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection was the life work of author and collector Bill Blackbeard.
Many of the classic comic strip collections published in the last thirty years are thanks to Bill Blackbeard's accumulation efforts which resulted in a source for some of the only existing copies of American comic strips. Supposedly, Blackbeard's research revealed that the copyright on the early MICKEY MOUSE comic strip had not been maintained and of course, Malibu Graphics thought this was a wonderful opportunity.
So Malibu Graphics through its Eternity Comics line would reprint the earliest MICKEY MOUSE comic strips under the title THE UNCENSORED MOUSE.
Each issue would have a totally black cover and no where on the cover or the backcover would there be a mention of "Mickey Mouse." There would be references to "a classic collection of Uncensored Floyd Gottfredson Comic Strips From the 1930s." Inside the comic book, there would be the notice that "Mickey Mouse is a registered trademark of Walt Disney Productions" to demonstrate that they were not trying to challenge that fact. In addition, each issue would be bagged and sealed so that a casual buyer couldn't flip through the comic book and mistake it for a Disney comic book. Basically, Malibu tried to do everything to indicate that while it may have had the right to publish the early comic strip, it was not intending to confuse the marketplace that this was an authorized Disney production.
Bill Blackbeard wrote a wonderful introduction for the first issue entitled "How Walt Disney Gave A Mickey to America-and Floyd Gottfredson Gave Us A Classic Mouse." That first issue was also supplemented with some great extras like reproductions of an OAKLAND POST-ENQUIRER (the nation's only newspaper to carry the strip from its start) page featuring the comic strip, the first Mickey Mouse Sunday page, a publicity drawing by Gottfredson for a 1936 issue of the HONOLULU ADVERTISER and more.
EXTREMELY RARE item!!
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