Now, however, concerned that Mickey has become more of a corporate symbol than a beloved character for recent generations of young people, Disney is taking the risky step of re-imagining him for the future. The first glimpse of this will be the introduction next year of a new video game, Epic Mickey, in which the formerly squeaky-clean character can be cantankerous and cunning, as well as heroic, as he traverses a forbidding wasteland. —The Times.

Illustration by Michael Kupperman

MEMO: To all Epic Mickey personnel

FROM: Disney Board of Directors

SUBJECT: New Mickey

Guys—we love the rethink, but we just have a few tweaks:

—When Mickey leers at Minnie in the waterfront bar, let’s have him squeak, “You know what they say, baby. Big ears . . .”

—In the “Brokeback Mickey” flashback, when Mickey makes tender love to Donald Duck, let’s have Mickey murmur, “Leave the little sailor hat on.”

—When Mickey is shown starving to death after the nuclear disaster, and he eats Porky Pig, we feel that Porky should still be alive when his feet are removed.

—When Mickey faces off with Bambi, let’s have him remark, “Only you can prevent forest fires. But I guess it’s a little late for that.”

—It’s fine to show Mickey getting hammered and then trying to drive the little train through the Magic Kingdom, but what if he plows right into a tiny clown car that gets stuck on the tracks? We hear the clowns screaming, confetti shoots into the night sky, and then we cut to a horrified paramedic, asking, “Good Lord, how many of them were in there?”

—Once Mickey is in the maximum-security prison, how about if he gets a crude tattoo of Jesus wearing the white gloves?

—In the scene where Mickey tries therapy, we love it when Mickey tells his rhino shrink, “I grew up behind the walls of a one-room hellhole in the ghetto. It was infested with filth and vermin, including my cousins.” But we question the moment when Mickey breaks down sobbing and howls, “It’s true! They used my mother to test hair coloring!”

—We love the bit when Mickey and Minnie take their seventy-eight children on a family outing, swarming over the subway tracks. But let’s have the kids crack up laughing as they watch their drunken dad try to proposition an empty wallet.

—We like seeing Mickey teaching the snootier characters some gritty life lessons. What if he drags Jiminy Cricket into an alley and pees on him?

—Let’s have Minnie appear on “The Real Housewives of Disney,” along with Cinderella, Snow White, and the Little Mermaid. Then Minnie could sneer, “Do any of you bitches not have a gay husband?”

—When Mickey finally hits rock bottom and runs into the church, seeking redemption, let’s have all the female parishioners instantly jump up onto the pews, pointing and shrieking, “Kill it! Kill it! ” ♦