American manga: I drew Superman in the Great Depression

Toyman, as Superman's regular opponent, Colin put some thought into creating him.

Although, due to the newspaper serialization, the origin story of Toyman cannot be introduced in the plot.

However, the comics of this period generally did not have any decent origins.

Even for Superman, who is the protagonist of the comics, his origins on Krypton are incomplete and are only briefly skipped in two or three frames.

Readers don't seem to care too much about this. On the contrary, they care more about Superman's fight against evil villains to save the world in Metropolis and the story of his relationship with Lois.

In some ways, readers during the Great Depression were the best audience for comics.

They have not been baptized by many comics of later generations and have no preconceived concepts.

Everything about "Superman" is full of novelty and attraction for them.

Just like the design of toy people in comics, such a character, no matter how it is placed in later generations, will only be positioned as a third-rate villain at most. There are almost countless scientist villain designs like this.

However, for comic readers of this era, the character Toyman is particularly interesting.

With the emergence of a new villain, sales of "The Courier" once again broke last weekend's record.

In fact, this record has been constantly being refreshed. In order to cope with the growing circulation of "The Courier", Colin has purchased the printing presses of more than one bankrupt newspaper. However, "The Courier" is still in short supply.

This reader has written to complain more than once.

"Why, in my neighborhood, I still can't buy the Courier..."

"The greatest comic in the world, I hope the Courier will continue to serialize it..."

"...Being able to make toys move is simply my childhood dream!"

"When I saw in the comics that Toyman controlled an army of toys and appeared in Metropolis, even though I knew that Superman was omnipotent, I couldn't help but feel cold sweat for him."

"Mickey, I saw the shadow of Mickey among the army of toy people. The moment I discovered it, I was shocked because there was an exact Mickey doll in my home!"

That's right, in the latest issue of the "Superman" comic, Colin also set up a little "Easter egg" plot. Among the Toyman's toy army, there is a doll that looks very similar to Mickey Mouse, and it

The shape of holding the rudder is undoubtedly a replica of Mickey's classic image in "Steamboat Willie".

The inspiration for this cameo character was just a random drawing he made after reading newspaper reports about Disney.

…

Los Angeles, Walt Disney Studios.

"Hey, Walt, maybe you should take a look at this."

Roy Disney walked into the studio studio with the newspaper.

In the studio, Walt Disney was trying out the latest film shooting technology invented by Technicolor. He placed a black-and-white Mickey stop-motion animation in the center of the machine, and used three-color printing technology to print it.

The animation is colored bit by bit.

Although in a previous interview, Roy Disney said that Disney would produce the world's first color animated film.

But in fact, the world's first color cartoon appeared as early as 1916. It was the American cartoon "Thomas.\nKate's First Appearance" distributed by Paramount and drawn by Bray Productions.

The entire work uses blues-made natural color technology.

However, due to technical limitations and cost considerations, no one experimented with color animation for a long time after Paramount released "Thomas.\nKate's First Appearance".

It wasn't until 1930 when Universal Pictures filmed "The Jazz Singer" that the film included color animation clips produced by Walter Lanz. At that time, the animation in the film used the two-color process.

It was not until 1932, two years after the release of "The Jazz Singer", that the animation process developed from the previous two-color method to three-color printing technology, and Walt Disney took the initiative to apply it to animation production.

In the dimly lit studio, when he heard his brother Roy's voice, Walter immediately stopped what he was doing and turned his head to reply.

"What is it again? Is it your latest interview in the newspaper, or the completion time of "Symphony of Confusion"? If it is the latter, it may take a few days, not a week or so..."

"Didn't you just tell me a week ago that the 28th episode of "Just Dogs" is almost finished?"

Hearing his brother Walt Disney's answer, Roy Disney couldn't help but frown.

"It's almost done, but the remaining bit will take another week to complete."

"Why can't you proceed as planned, Walt."

Facing his brother's explanation, Roy suddenly felt his emotions well up. When it came to animation production, Walt Disney was undoubtedly a genius, but in a certain aspect, his persistence in animation often made him the head of the studio.

Roy had a headache.

"Compared with this, you haven't told me the reason why you came to the studio specifically?"

Seeing that his brother Roy's anger began to rise, in order to avoid nagging, Walt immediately made an inquiry.

"It's a New York newspaper."

Hearing Walter's inquiry, Roy had to suppress his emotions and handed the newspaper in his hand to his brother in front of him.

"It is said that its sales in New York are in short supply. If it were not for the content serialized in the newspaper that happened to be relevant to us, the other party would not have sent the newspaper to us."

New York.

Hearing his brother Roy's words about New York, Walter couldn't help but frown, and some not-so-good memories resurfaced in his heart.

Speaking of which, Mickey Mouse was born due to the influence of a trip to New York.

In 1927, Walt Disney Studios produced the "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" series of animations. The animation received a good response after its release. So in February 1928, Walt Disney took his wife to New York to find the publisher at the time.

Charles Mintz discusses contract extension.

Walt's original intention was to raise the price, but Mintz asked Walt to lower the price and told Walt that he had bribed most of the production staff of "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" and that he owned it according to the contract.

As for the copyright of the animated series, if Walt does not agree to the price reduction request, he can continue to produce "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" himself.

During that trip to New York, Walt not only lost the copyright to "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit", but most of the animators in the studio were also poached.

This is undoubtedly a huge blow to Walt Disney Studios.

On the train back to Hollywood, the depressed Walt Disney suddenly had inspiration and created a cartoon character based on a mouse - Mortimer.

Later, at the suggestion of his wife, Walt changed the name of the cartoon character to Mickey.

At this point, Mickey Mouse has become a symbol of Walt Disney Studios.