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Lost on a Desert Island is a comic story written by Walt Disney and with art by Ub Iwerks and Win Smith. It features Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and Wienie, with Charles Lindbergh appearing in Mickey's dream.

Plot[]

Mickey Mouse has a dream, and not just the kind of dream that occurs when one is asleep, but the kind that pushes a man, or a mouse, to do something which he has never done before and reach new heights. For Mickey, this dream is to build and fly his own "aeroplane". With the help of his barnyard friends, he achieves his goal, but his homemade plane's maiden voyage lands him on a deserted island, which may not be so deserted after all...

Continuity[]

  • Plane Crazy (1928) depicts very similar, and perhaps the very same, events as the beginning of this comic story. Both show Mickey Mouse and his barnyard friends being inspired by Charles Lindbergh and building a plane, which Mickey then flies with Minnie, who jumps off the plane and uses her undergarments as a parachute. Despite the major similarities, the two don't line up exactly, with one notable difference being the ending. In Plane Crazy, Mickey crash lands in the same barnyard he took off from, with he and Minnie being on bad terms due to his aggressiveness. In Lost on a Desert Island, he crash lands on the titular desert island, with him and Minnie having seemingly parted ways on good terms.
  • The desert island seems to have been inspired by the setting of Jungle Rythym (1929)[2], which also features Mickey dealing with wild animals in a jungle. In fact, a lion seen in Lost on a Desert Island has the exact same design as a lion seen in Jungle Rythym, perhaps indicating that the lions are the same and that the jungle of Jungle Rythym and the desert island of Lost on a Desert Island are one and the same.
  • The climax of The Castaway (1931) shows Mickey trapping a lion inside a crocodile just as he did in Lost on a Desert Island. It is unclear if the two stories take place at the same time, or if Mickey was simply reusing a skill of his in The Castaway. The fact that the stories have entirely different ways of explaining how he ended up in the jungle in the first place. The Castaway shows him washing up ashore after drifting in the ocean on a piece of debris. Lost on a Desert Island has his plane crashing on the island.
  • The Mail Pilot (1933) also shows Mickey learning how to fly, albeit under completely different circumstances. Quite possibly, when Mickey said he was going to "learn to fly" in The Mail Pilot, he was referring to learning how to fly professionally-made airplanes as opposed to homemade ones.
  • The airplane Mickey builds in this story, or a near facsimile, appears in certain episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (2006 - 2016), where it is referred to as the Toon Plane.

Behind the Scenes[]

Lost on a Desert Island was originally published as a serialized comic strip. It was the first story in the long-running Mickey Mouse comic strip. It was written by Walt Disney. The penciling was initially done by Ub Iwerks, but Win Smith took over partway through the story. Smith also inked the story.[1]

For an Italian publication of the story, three new strips were added, two of which helped explain how Mickey escaped the desert island. The art and, presumably, the writing for these new strips was done by Giorgio Scudellari.[2]

Notes and References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Lost on a Desert Island on INDUCKS
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Volume 1 of Fantagraphics' Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse series
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