Pete (Disney) - Comics

Comics

In comic strips and comic books, Pete is consistently depicted as a hardened criminal. In the 1943 comic strip story Mickey Mouse on a Secret Mission, he was an agent of Nazi Germany, working as the henchman of Gestapo spy Von Weasel. In the 1950 comic strip story The Moook Treasure, he's even portrayed as the Beria-like deputy chief of intelligence in a totalitarian state on the other side of the iron curtain.

Pete often teams up with Mickey Mouse enemies Sylvester Shyster, Eli Squinch, The Phantom Blot. In earlier comic strips, starting with Mickey Mouse in Death Valley (1930) Pete was portrayed as Sylvester Shyster's henchman, but he gradually started to work on his own. Sometimes, Pete also teams up with other bad guys in the Disney universe, such as Scrooge McDuck's enemies (the Beagle Boys and Magica De Spell), Mad Madam Mim, Captain Hook, and the Evil Queen. In Italian comics, his girlfriend Trudy (Trudy Van Tubb) is his frequent partner-in-crime. His cousin the "mad scientist" Plottigat is another, less frequent, accomplice.

In his earlier comic strip appearances, Pete sported a knee-high pegleg, which was later reduced to a foot-high prosthesis. In Mickey Mouse in Death Valley, Floyd Gottfredson occasionnally committed goofs, with the pegleg switching from Pete's left right leg to his left one. In Gottfredson's story The Mystery at Hidden River (1941–42), the pegleg disappeared, with Pete wearing two shoes: when Mickey expressed surprise at this, Pete described one of his shoes as a new, improved model of pegleg. Pete has since been consistently depicted as wearing two shoes. His name in Italy has remained Pietro Gambadilegno ("Pegleg Peter"), or simply Gambadilegno ("Pegleg") even though it has been a long time since he was actually depicted with a pegleg in either comics or animated cartoons. In an Italian story by Romano Scarpa, Topolino nella dimensione Delta (Mickey Mouse in the Delta Dimension, first published in 1959), Pete removed one of his shoes, revealing his old foot-high pegleg.