Mickey Outwits the Phantom Blot is a comic story written by Merrill De Maris and Floyd Gottfredson, penciled by Floyd Gottfredson and inked by Bill Wright and Ted Thwaites. It features Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Horace Horsecollar, Minnie Mouse, Pluto, Chief O'Hara, Inspector Casey, and, obviously, the Phantom Blot.
Plot
Chief O'Hara, chief of the Mouseton Police, asks Mickey Mouse to help him arrest a mysterious criminal known as the Phantom Blot, who has been stealing and smashing all the cameras of a certain model that he can find in town. As Mickey begins to investigate, it soon turns out that the camera thefts are only the tip of an illegal iceberg and that the Blot is quite prepared to kill to protect his secret…
Behind the scenes
This story was first published between May the 20th and September the 9th of 1939 in various American newspapers. The story was then reprinted in 1941 in a special issue, and then in 1955 in Mickey Mouse Club Parade in an altered version, and later in Best Comic Series #3, in both Mickey Mouse in Color #1 and Mickey Mouse in Color #2 (somehow), in Disney Comics Albums #4, Walt Disney Comics and Stories #605 and finally in the Floyd Gottfredson Library.
This story was the first appearance of Chief O'Hara and of the Phantom Blot. It is ranked among the best Disney comic stories of all times on I.N.D.U.C.K.S. and is, indeed, one of Gottfredson's most well-known Mickey Mouse stories. The story inspired the cartoon short Mickey Foils the Phantom Blot in 1999, although it is not actually an adaptation of the comic in a meaningful sense.