Can we do everything (and anything) with Mickey, the Disney mascot?

"The Wonderful World of Mickey", new animated series from Disney + with Mickey and his friends in all their forms -

• Spiritual sequel to the

  Mickey Mouse

  anthology

  , the

  Marvelous World of Mickey series

  is available on Disney +, two episodes per week

• The series returns to the Mickey of the beginnings, joker, absurd, but with a modern design

• Fabrizio Petrossi, author, designer and Disney specialist, explains how the character has evolved through the ages, between respect and innovation

On Wednesday, Mickey's 92th birthday, the Disney + platform posted the first two episodes

, a new animated series around the famous mouse and his friends.

The others will follow from Friday, November 27, two per week, for a total of 10 eight-minute episodes.

It would be more appropriate to speak of short films, moreover, because the series is in fact the spiritual sequel to the

anthology 

, which, from 2013, brought together the burlesque spirit of the first Mickey films and a more modern animation, closer to the current production.

The proof that Mickey is not the old man of the gang, and that it is possible to do everything with him.

Almost everything.

Goodbye Oswald, hi Mickey

Passionate about Disney since childhood, reader and then designer of 

the Italian equivalent of our

Fabrizio Petrossi also played the guardians of the temple in the Merchandising and Publishing department of Disney in Paris, and signed the

comic strip

(Glénat).

Mickey, he therefore knows, and recalls that the character was born under the influence of Oswald the lucky rabbit, whose rights Walt Disney had lost and which had to be replaced.

“He bit his mouse the first time on a train trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles,” he says.

But we must not forget the role played by Ub Iwerks, the greatest animator of all time.

"

"Mickey has the energy of childhood"

Plane Crazy

,

,

… The first shorts of the 1930s show a Mickey far from the image one can think of, naughty, joker.

His more kind, human, and even symbolic side arrived the following decade, “because he represents Walt Disney himself, explains the specialist.

He gave him his character, his voice.

He identified with this child, because Mickey is a child, a child hero in spite of himself.

Mickey always finds himself on adventures without being an adventurer, as children would love to have great adventures.

He is sometimes criticized for being a scholar, but I don't agree, Mickey has the energy of childhood.

"

The image of Mickey was thus born in the collective unconscious, unavoidable, immutable.

But Fabrizio Petrossi provides an important clarification: “At Disney, there are classic characters like the Snow Queen, who are the same in all their variations, film, book, derivative products… Then there are historical characters like Mickey, both stars of animated films and comics.

Comics offer more freedom to authors and designers to put their personal mark on them, to bring added value.

But on the rest, the model must be unique.

You can't change the smallest detail.

This is what he did for nearly ten years in Paris, responsible for the artistic direction of the characters and the training of new designers.

Wacky stories and drawings removed

Which isn't to say that Disney isn't experimenting.

Fabrizio Petrossi was the first witness to this when, in the early 2010s, he and other designers were asked to work on a new model of Mickey, which he wanted to inspire by Charlie Chaplin.

He does not know if his drawings and storyboards were used, but some time after, the series

arrived with its wacky stories and its drawings removed.

“They were looked for in the spirit of the beginnings, with more gags, a deep, almost absurd humor, while adding novelties, a modernity in the design, a dynamic in the narration, he comments.

It had to be in line with the rest of the current animation.

One thinks of the Cartoon Network channel, of the work of Genndy Tartakovsky (

), with whom Paul Rudish, director of

and the

worked

.

Respect but innovate

As for those who might be wondering "ah, OK, is that now Mickey's model?"

», You should know that

is not the only Mickey Mouse series on the air and coexists with

on Disney Channel

spin-off of

and soon with

scheduled for 2021. All take the classic look of Mickey but in 3D.

"There is also a particular choice, a bias, by taking the model of the 1940s, the character softer, very childish, for a target youth, the preschool", says the specialist.

Respect or innovate, hyper classicism or radical change, Fabrizio Petrossi enjoys both, meeting a requirement for a magazine illustration as well as exploring and developing the character.

This is why these favorite Mickey Mouse works are also the most experimental: 

(1995) and his body swap,

(2013) where Mickey literally bursts the screen, and

(2010), the game meta video that brought together Mickey… and Oswald for the first time.

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