Floyd Gottfredson - Reprints and Compilations

Reprints and Compilations

Gottfredson's Mickey strips were often collected in the 1930s and 1940s. Western Publishing's Big Little Book series based most of its Mickey volumes on the strip; Dell Publishing's Walt Disney's Comics and Stories serialized stories from the strip through 1948.

Modern-day American reprints began with "The Bar None Ranch" (1940) which appeared in Walt Disney Comics Digest #40 (1973). The following year "The Bat Bandit" (1935) appeared in a deluxe edition The Best of Walt Disney Comics. Abbeville Press' large size Best Comics anthologies in the late-1970s included two all-Gottfredson volumes (one headlined "Goofy"), though the stories were relettered and sometimes condensed. In 1980, Abbeville issued a small-size Best Comics series that included three all-Gottfredson volumes (again, one headlined "Goofy"), all of which reprinted stories from the earlier large-size editions. In 1986, Another Rainbow/Gladstone Publishing began a tradition of serializing Gottfredson stories in regular Disney monthly comic books, which has continued on and off to the present day. Gladstone also collected a number of Gottfredson's serials in the larger-size "comic albums" it issued during the 1980s; in 1990, Disney Comics issued "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot" (1939) in the same format.

In 2007 Gemstone Publishing announced The Floyd Gottfredson Library, a comprehensive Gottfredson edition. But the series was postponed, then canceled when Gemstone lost its Disney license. In 2011 Fantagraphics Books began publication of the series instead. The volumes of this Library published to date are:

• Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: "Race to Death Valley" (1930-31 dailies; 2011) ISBN 978-1-60699-441-2
• Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: "Trapped on Treasure Island" (1932-34 dailies; 2011) ISBN 978-1-60699-495-5
• Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: "High Noon at Inferno Gulch" (1934-36 dailies; 2012) ISBN 978-1-60699-531-0
• Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: "House of the Seven Haunts" (1936-38 dailies; 2012) ISBN 978-1-60699-575-4
• Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: "Call of the Wild" (1932-1935 Sundays; 2013) ISBN 978-1-60699-643-0

David Gerstein (co-editor of the series) notes there are enough Gottfredson daily strips to make thirteen volumes but how many are published depends on sales.