User:Wrk3/Draft Work

This is the draft of a rewrite I'm working on for the Mighty Mouse article.

NOTES:
 * Removed link to Russian Wikipedia as that link pointed to an Alvin & the Chipmunks page.
 * Re-ordered history section so the information is now chronological.
 * Created new Cultural Impact section to contain references to the way the character has influenced other people.
 * Created separate section to refer to the issue of Apple using the name Mighty Mouse for one of their products and the legal issues that resulted.
 * Moved the Comics section lower (just above the DVDs).
 * Built episode guides for films and both television shows.

TO DO
 * Develop opening summary paragraph.
 * Create episode guide.
 * Rewrite history section so it reads more smoothly.
 * Finish the Apple trademark section.
 * Add additional information discovered during research (more books, cultural references, music notes, etc.)
 * Get picture of original Mighty Mouse design for infobox
 * Transfer New Adventures photo that shows sniffing episode to the Criticism section.
 * Move current character picture to New Adventures section to provide contrast in the character's evolving design.

Mighty Mouse is an American animated anthropomorphic superhero mouse character created by the Terrytoons studio for 20th Century Fox. The character made its first appearance in 1942 (originally named Super Mouse), and subsequently appeared in 80 theatrical films produced between 1942 and 1961. These films later appeared on American television from 1955 through 1967 on the CBS television network on Saturday mornings. The character went through two later revivals, once by Filmation Studios in 1979, and again in 1987 at the hands of animation director Ralph Bakshi, who had worked at the Terrytoons studio during his early career.

Mighty Mouse has also appeared in comics, in a television commercial about cheese, and has graced the front of a major musician's guitar. The name Mighty Mouse caused an accusation of trademark infringement to be leveled at Apple, and the character was even accused of promoting cocaine use.

History
The character was originally conceived by story man Izzy Klein as a super-powered housefly named Super Fly. Created as a parody of Superman, he first appeared in 1942 in a theatrical animated short titled The Mouse of Tomorrow. The original name of the character was Super Mouse, but after 7 films produced during 1942 to 1943, it was changed to Mighty Mouse in the 1944 cartoon The Wreck of the Hesperus when Paul Terry learned that another character named Super Mouse was being published in comic books. Super Mouse appeared briefly in the Marvel Comics interpretation of the character and was nicknamed Terry the First, as he was the first version of the character.

Mighty Mouse was first drawn wearing a blue costume with red trunks and a red cape, similar to Superman, but over time this outfit changed to a yellow costume with red trunks and a red cape, his most popular colors. Roy Halee, Sr., was the first actor to provide the voice of Mighty Mouse. The role was later taken by Tom Morrison. In The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle Alan Oppenheimer provided the voice, and during the run of Mighty Mouse, the New Adventures Mighty Mouse was voiced by Patrick Pinney.

As with other imitations of Superman, Mighty Mouse's super powers include flight, super strength, and invulnerability. In various films he has demonstrated the use of X-ray vision, and has used a form of telekinesis that allowed him to command inanimate objects and turn back time (The Johnstown Flood and Krakatoa). Other cartoons show him leaving a red contrail during flight which he can manipulate at will like a band of solid flexible matter.

Mighty Mouse has had two recurring female leads. In the cartoon shorts it was a mouse named Pearl Pureheart, while in the comics published in the 1950s and 1960s the character was named Mitzi. His recurring arch-enemy is an evil villain cat named Oil Can Harry (who originated as a human in earlier Terrytoons as the enemy of Fanny Zilch).

The early formula of each story consists of a crisis which needs extraordinary help to resolve. At the decisive moment, Mighty Mouse comes to the rescue. Beginning with A Fight to the Finish (1947), the story line usually begins with Mighty Mouse and Pearl Pureheart already in a desperate situation, as if they were in the next chapter of the serial.

Mighty Mouse cartoons spoofed the cliffhanger serials of silent films, as well as the classic operettas of stage that were still popular at the time.

The characters often sing mock opera songs during these cartoons (e.g., Pearl: "Oil Can Harry, you're a villain!"; Oil Can Harry: "I know it, but it's a lot of fun..."). Mighty Mouse sings tenor, Pearl is a soprano, and Oil Can Harry a bass-baritone. Mighty Mouse is also famous for singing, "Here I come to save the day!" when flying into action.

The early Mighty Mouse cartoons often portray Mighty Mouse as a ruthless fighter. He doles out a considerable amount of punishment, subduing opponent cats through sheer physical punishment.

Mighty Mouse fights various villains, though most of them appear in only one or two films. In at least two cartoons between 1949 and 1950 he faces a huge, dim-witted, but super-strong cat named Julius Pinhead "Schlabotka" (voiced by Dayton Allen) whose strength rivals Mighty Mouse's own. In another cartoon, titled The Green Line (1944), the cats live on one side of the main street of a town and the mice on the other, with a green line down the middle of the street serving as the dividing line. They agree to keep the peace as long as no one crosses it. An evil entity, a Satan cat, starts the cats and mice fighting. At the end, Mighty Mouse is cheered by mice and cats alike.

At least one episode of Mighty Mouse, ''Wolf! Wolf!'' has fallen into Public Domain and is available at the Internet Archive.

The 1945 film Gypsy Life was nominated for an Oscar in the category of Short Subject (Cartoon).

Mighty Mouse Playhouse
Mighty Mouse was not very popular in theatrical cartoons, but became Terrytoons' most popular character and a cultural icon when he appeared on television. Paul Terry sold the Terrytoon company to CBS in 1955. The network began running Mighty Mouse Playhouse on December 10, 1955. It remained on the air until Sep. 2, 1967 (and featured The Mighty Heroes during the final season).

Although the program was packaged as Saturday morning cartoons for television, the content reused the theatrical film releases. Terrytoons produced only three further Mighty Mouse theatrical cartoons while the show was running on television.

Some early vinyls credit the original 1955 Mighty Mouse Playhouse theme song to The Terrytooners, Mitch Miller and Orchestra, but recent publishing has generally credited The Sandpipers (not the same easy listening group by the same name from the 1960s).

The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Filmation made television cartoons starring Mighty Mouse and fellow Terrytoon characters Heckle and Jeckle (both voiced by Frank Welker) in a show called The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle. In that show, two new characters were introduced: a vampire duck named Quacula (not to be confused with Count Duckula), and Oil Can Harry's bumbling, large, but swift-running, henchman Swifty. The show premiered in 1979 and lasted for two seasons. It spawned a limited theatrical release matinee movie, Mighty Mouse in the Great Space Chase, released December 10, 1982. In the Filmation series and movies, Mighty Mouse and Oil Can Harry were voiced by veteran voice artist Alan Oppenheimer, and Pearl Pureheart was voiced by Diane Pershing.

Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
right|thumb|260px|Ralph Bakshi's reimagined Mighty Mouse, circa 1987.

In 1987 and 1988, animator Ralph Bakshi created a new series of Mighty Mouse cartoons entitled Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures for the CBS Saturday morning children's lineup. In this series, Mighty Mouse has a real identity, Mike Mouse (both identities voiced by Patrick Pinney), and a sidekick, Scrappy Mouse (voiced by actress Dana Hill), the little orphan. Though a children's cartoon, its heavy satirical tone, risque humor and adult jokes made the Bakshi Mighty Mouse series a collector's item for collectors of older TV series.

Later years
Marvel Comics produced a 10-issue comic book series (set in the New Adventures continuity) in 1990 and 1991. Nothing new has been produced using the Mighty Mouse character except for an arcade game by Atari and a 2001 "The power of cheese" TV commercial. That commercial shows Mighty Mouse dining calmly on cheese in a restaurant, utterly unconcerned with a scene of chaos and terror visibly unfolding in the street outside. The commercial was hastily pulled off the air in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

As early as 2004 Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies announced their intention to bring Mighty Mouse back to the motion picture screen with a CGI Mighty Mouse feature film, with similar announcements in 2006 and 2010. The film is tentatively scheduled to be released some time in 2013, according to IMDB, with Barry E. Jackson providing conceptual art, and screenwriting by Maurice Chauvet and Christopher Vail. A CGI TV series will follow the film. A Mighty Mouse history book is in the works and will be released to tie-in with the movie.

The rights to Mighty Mouse are now divided as a result of the 2006 corporate split of Viacom (the former owner of the Terrytoons franchise) into two separate companies. CBS Operations (a unit of the current CBS Corporation) owns the ancillary rights and trademarks to the character, while Paramount Home Entertainment/CBS DVD holds home video rights. The first official release of Mighty Mouse material has been announced and what is now CBS Television Distribution has television syndication rights (the shorts are currently out of circulation).

Criticism
right|thumb|260px|Stills from the Mighty Mouse: The New adventures episode "The Littlest Tramp". Top left: the flower is crushed by the rich man. Top right: Mighty Mouse receives the remains of the flower, which falls apart in his hand. Bottom left: Mighty Mouse thinks fondly of the girl, and brings out what's left of the flower. Bottom right: Mighty Mouse smells the flower, inhaling it in the process.

Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures was the subject of media controversy when one scene was interpreted as a depiction of cocaine use. In the episode The Little Tramp a poor mouse girl attempts to sell flowers, and is repeatedly harassed by a rich man who crushes her flowers. She runs out of flowers and makes new ones from sundry items she finds, such as tomato slices, but the man crushes these too. Mighty Mouse attempts to purchase the flowers with his chunk of cheese, and to avenge the girl, but she gives Mighty Mouse the crushed flowers and insists that others need help more than she does. After successfully saving several different characters, he is reminded of the girl, and attempts to smell the flowers she gave him (now a pink powder), inhaling them in the process. He then finds the man that has been harassing the girl, and spanks him. The girl is sympathetic to the man, and he is so moved that the two are married.

A family in Kentucky saw the episode and reportedly interpreted the scene as Mighty Mouse snorting cocaine. The family called the American Family Association in Tupelo, Mississippi. The group demanded Bakshi be removed from production of the series. Bakshi and CBS denied the allegations, Bakshi stating the whole incident "smacks of McCarthyism. I'm not going to get into who sniffs what. This is lunacy." To defuse the controversy, Bakshi agreed to cut the 3.5 seconds from the episode. Rev. Donald Wildmon claimed that the editing was a "de facto admission" of cocaine use, though Bakshi maintained that the episode was "totally innocent".

"It's because of Fritz that they're going after Mighty Mouse. I grew up in Brownsville in Brooklyn and attended High School for Industrial Arts. I remember teachers who quit. Because of McCarthyism they weren't able to teach what they wanted. This is the same thing. Mighty Mouse was happy after smelling the flowers because it helped him remember the little girl who sold it to him fondly. But even if you're right, their accusations become part of the air we breathe. That's why I cut the scene. I can't have children wondering if Mighty Mouse is using cocaine."

- Ralph Bakshi

Cultural Influences
In the book Astro Boy Essays, author Frederik L. Schodt quotes Japanese animator Osamu Tezuka as saying that Mighty Mouse was the influence that inspired him to name his well-known character Mighty Atom (also known as Astro Boy). He also chose to imitate Mighty Mouse's signature flying pose with one arm stretched ahead with a clenched fist.

Mighty Mouse was featured on famed guitarist Tom Scholz's Les Paul guitar.

Apple Trademark Dispute
In 2005, Apple began selling a USB computer mouse called the Mighty Mouse, a name it also gave to a later Bluetooth wireless mouse. Apple licensed the Mighty Mouse name from CBS. However, in 2008 a company called Man and Machine, Inc., sued both Apple and CBS for trademark infringement claiming it had been using the name for mice since 2004 and that CBS did not have the right to license the name for computer peripherals. In 2009 the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office agreed and Apple changed the names of their products.

Terrytoons Theatrical Shorts
The first seven films starred the character named Super Mouse. In these early films the character's costume is much closer in design to that of Superman (blue tunic and tights with red trunks and cape).

The next 73 films changed the character's name to Mighty Mouse.

The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle
This is the first series of Mighty Mouse cartoons created by Filmation Studios specifically for television.

Comics
Several publishers put out Mighty Mouse comic books. There were two main titles: Mighty Mouse and The Adventures of Mighty Mouse.

Mighty Mouse
 * Timely Comics #1-4 (1946)
 * St. John Publications #5-67 (1947–1955)
 * Pines Comics #68-83 (1956–1959)

The Adventures of Mighty Mouse (renaming of Terry's Comics, where Mighty Mouse appeared)
 * St. John Publications #126-128 (1955)
 * Pines Comics #129-144 (1956–1959)
 * Dell Comics #145-155 (1959–1961)
 * Gold Key Comics #156-160 (1962–1963)
 * Dell Comics #161-?? (1963–??)

Mighty Mouse, Marvel Comics, #1-10 (1990), based on the Ralph Bakshi version (Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures)

DVD releases

 * Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, the first official release of Mighty Mouse material, was released on January 5, 2010.
 * The animated short "Wolf Wolf", the only Mighty Mouse cartoon in the public domain, has been released on low-budget DVDs and VHS tapes numerous times.