Those unfamiliar with the wide, adventurous world of Disney comics might not suspect how epic they can be. Even those who are familiar with Disney’s epic side might not anticipate Mickey Mouse and the Amazing Lost Ocean, a post-apocalyptic, eco-punk high-sci-fi masterpiece from writer Denis-Pierre Filippi and cartoonist Silvio Camboni.
Set “17 years after the great war,” we’re forced to imagine what sort of bleak experience such a thing might be in a world of mice, ducks, and dogs; is Mouseton okay? Are Duckburg and St. Canard? One shudders to think.
The book throws us directly into sci-fi dystopia: Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy are now ecological scavengers, working to salvage fuel tanks from a submerged airship wreck deep under the ice of the arctic. Mickey, ever the hero, dives below into a florid aquatic wonderland; Steampunk Pete ultimately steals their score using his airship.
The story becomes even more ambitious quickly: mentally-controlled robot proxies are invented, conniving scientists pose sub-aquatic challenges, and impossible storms ravage the planet. Mickey undergoes a five year coma, and his crew is forced to team up with none other than Pete.
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All of this is in less than 70 pages of lush, beautifully illustrated Disney magic. Amazing Lost Sea is an unassuming treasure trove of adventure, allowing our beloved characters to play out a truly spectacular and utterly unique science fiction epic.
It’s a delightful contrivance that, outside of work by individual creators like Carl Barks or Floyd Gottfredson, Disney characters are free from any burdens of continuity. Any set of artists is free to concoct wondrous and fresh scenarios for some of the world’s most famous cartoon creations, and the varied, tumultuous array of stories become a sort of rich mythological tapestry. Few other characters are free to play their archetypes in epic fantasies, domestic slapsticks, and science fiction chillers the way that Mickey and the gang are.
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Filippi and Camboni have pushed these characters into a world that feels utterly unlike anything else in that massive Disney canon, and Amazing Lost Ocean is certain to become a worldwide classic. I can only imagine growing up in a household in which this book becomes a staple (the way that Donald Duck in The Old Castle’s Secret was in my household); what wild bouts of imaginative innovation such a childhood might enjoy. How will this story influence the next generation of global Disney cartoonists?
Mickey Mouse and the Amazing Lost Ocean is a treasure, a book that will dazzle readers and earn a cherished pace in the wider collection of Disney adventures.
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