In a far-flung future of flying cars, giant robots, and dog robots, Space Ranger M1ckey M0u-5e is the hero all of New Mouseton can look to to save the day.
Mickey Mouse Versus the Mouseton Society of Evil is a sort of retro-futuristic Mickey Mouse 2099 (without all the depressing dystopian nonsense). The book reimagines the Disney comics all-stars as a sort of crime-fighting league called U.F.O. Force Five – a team consisting of Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, and robot version of Pluto.
Fantagraphics
Pitted against a similar league of baddies, headed by the Phantom Blot and including a version of Pete and the Beagle Boys, our heroes have to take down robot crabs, travel to space, and interact with aliens. In the book’s slim 56 page runtime, a lot happens; the story feels oversized, somehow bigger than it actually is.
European creators Nicolas Pothier and Johan Pilet craft this dense new world with immaculate style; the designs for both the characters and their rocket-ship trappings are bold and fresh, adding to the wide aesthetic of the Disney comics. While the story itself can feel a bit stilted – each scene feels precise, but they move into one another in a sort of stumbling, jarring way – the style and energy carries the reader forward, eager to see the next near-episodic set of hijinks.
Formatted in an oversized hardcover storybook style, Mouseton Society of Evil resembles recent Fantagraphics books like Donald’s Happiest Adventures and The Amazing Lost Ocean, which means that it adds to a bookshelf of new classics. These books spotlight incredible talent and open the Disney brand to wild, inventive storytelling, and taken together, they’ll almost certainly become cornerstones of a child’s reading addiction.
Fantagraphics
Mickey Mouse Versus the Mouseton Society of Evil doesn’t feel as groundbreaking as something like The Amazing Lost Ocean or the impossibly lovely Donald Duck Vacation Parade, books in this series that push the absolute limit of their narrative concepts with such beautiful illustration. Mouseton Society of Evil relies less on pushing its limits as much as relying on Flash Gordon-style tropes: its world simply is what it is, and the reader is never drawn in the way the more inventive books manage.
Still, the book presents a welcome new adventure, a new set of smirkingly game jokes; it is a book that will happily transport a child with its capable storytelling and fantastic sense of style.
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