Webcomic Weekly: ‘Mousetrapped’ by Randy Milholland — More Of Mickey In The Public Domain

Welcome to Webcomic Weekly, where we always manage to show you great comics online free to read and not too often manage to deliver on the whole weekly thing. This week, it’s more comics coming off the back of Steamboat Willie becoming public domain with Randy Milholland‘s Mousetrapped.

If you didn’t already know, Disney’s Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse from 1928, as well as from the short Plane Crazy from the same year became public domain on 1 January 2024.

I wrote about that already back here along with a couple of examples of artists making their own versions.

One of those artists, Dave Alvarez, summed it all up pretty well and succinctly with this…

“What’s in the public domain? The 1928 Steamboat Willie version is. (The ‘Plane Crazy’ version as well.) In short, Mickey in black and white with no gloves.

What can’t I do?
-You CAN’T create another black and white mouse and call it Mickey Mouse.
-You CAN’T market or sell the image of Mickey Mouse. So you better shelf those bed sheet and blankets ideas.
-The Copyright law didn’t give you a New Year’s gift. You DON’T own Mickey Mouse.
-You CAN’T use the name “Mickey Mouse”.

What can I do?
– The public has gained the right to creatively use the first black-and-white Disney characters strictly as they appear in the 1928 animated short film “Steamboat Willie,” as well as that year’s silent version of the short film “Plane Crazy.”
-You CAN use Mickey and Minnie from ‘Steamboat Willie’ and ‘Plane Crazy,’ but you cannot use the aggregated later Mickey that, for example, appears in ‘Fantasia.”

So, we were expecting rather a lot of works coming out from this and expecting Disney’s Mickey lawyers to be keeping quite a keen eye on things.

We’ve had a few announcements of potential films and video games but, in terms of daily comics, the prize for being first out the gate goes to Randy Milholland with his new strip Mousetrapped.

Milholland has been making webcomics for many years, including Something Positive, New Gold Dreams, Midnight Macabre, Classically Positive, and Super Stupor. But he got a hell of a lot more attention in 2022 when he took over as the author of the Sunday edition of the Popeye syndicated strip.

Here’s what Milholland had to say with the publication of the first Mousetrapped, up on 1 January 2024…

“As of today, the Mickey Mouse cartoon, “Steamboat Willie” is public domain. While all the trademarks and more recent copyrights remain in tact, I decided to do a comic that follows what happened after the steamboat docked. I’ve loved Disney comics since I was a kid, but as most of them are made in Italy and later translated, I’ve long given up on the dream of writing or drawing them officially.

So here’s hoping Disney doesn’t sue me anyway.” – Randy Milholland

As is allowed, Mousetrapped includes the Steamboat Willie versions of Mickey, Minnie, and Peg Leg Pete, with Milholland making a very big point of adding this to the bottom of each strip…

So far, it’s a very nicely done thing, absolutely true to the character, with Milholland already pointing out a few times that he’s not really got any interest in doing some edgy reimagining of the Mouse for the sake of it, saying this:

I just want to do a fun adventure comic. I am not interested in a hardcore, gritty, dark version of the characters.

However, he does gone on to point out that those early cartoons all had a dark tone and that he’s not averse to putting in dark moments:

“Will there be some darker tones? At times. Some horror? Everything I do tends to at least dip into horror, but I’d want it to be stuff appropriate from the 1920s. Plus, my kid watches me draw these and she really enjoys it, so I’m not going to draw anything that would upset her. But she’s also a Halloween kid who absolutely loves spooky stuff, so take that how you will.”

So, it’s a fascinating project from Milholland, one that I’d recommend you bookmark/follow Mousetrapped, that’s far more a love letter to Disney and the Mouse and particularly any number of Disney comics than a lot of the versions of this public domain Mouse will end up being.

Mousetrapped is free to read online here and at Milholland’s socials. Now, the first trio of strips for your enjoyment…