Mickey Mouse, Secret Agent...

I'm still putting stuff on eBay. Comic books from my lost youth, chiefly. Recently, I stumbled across a set of comics that were genuinely bizarre—"Mickey Mouse, Super Secret Agent."

In 1966, Walt Disney and Gold Key comics decided to get into the booming spy-story market (this was when James Bond and the Man From Uncle were at their peak). And so, Mickey Mouse was promptly retooled as a kind of furry, big-eared 007.

The comics produced on this theme are almost surreal. In them, Mickey and Goofy (as the only anthropomorphic animals in a world inhabited otherwise entirely by humans) engage in 007-style adventures, complete with Bond-type villains and beautiful heroines.

I've got two that I'm offering for sale. The first is the premier issue of the series, "Mickey Mouse, Super Secret Agent in Assignment Time-Lock," which is dated June of 1966 and recounts Mickey and Goofy's unwilling recruitment into "PI, police international." The second is "The Mystery at Misty Gorge," in which our heroes venture into "Africa's Taboo Territory," to rescue Mara Doorna, a brilliant scientist who just happens to also be a willowy blonde. It seems she's been kidnapped by bad guys who want her to use solar power to make artificial diamonds. (No. Really. Could I make that up?)

On one level, these stories are merely bizarre. But, on another, there is something wonderfully subversive about them…an excursion into a parallel universe where the conventions and pretensions of the Spy Flick, the Comic Strip, and the Real World come together disastrously in a sort of three-way car crash of the intellect.

Which brings up an interesting question. To wit: I'm trying to market these to comic book collectors. But, I wonder if I'm not barking up the wrong tree. Perhaps I ought to be selling them to tenured professors of postmodernism and gifted directors of Absurdist Theater.

All a question of market niche, as it were.




Ebay