90 years ago today, Walt Disney made history with the release of Steamboat Willie. While not the first cartoon of its kind, the short became so popular and influential that the movie it was made to precede became a lost film. As everyone knows, it was the debut of Mickey Mouse... kind of, it's sort of debatable whether this or Plane Crazy counts as his first appearance. I personally consider Steamboat Willie his debut because it actually came out first, whereas Plane Crazy was just the first to be made and had a brief test screen, but I don't think that counts since it was later released as Mickey's fourth episode.







Nevertheless, Mickey is undeniably one of the most important and iconic characters of all time, right up there with Santa Claus, Mario and Sonic, Snoopy and Garfield, DC's Trinity, Spider-Man and more. A lot of people complain about his "boring" personality, but I always saw it as the perfect template. Mickey is an everyman, so as a cartoon + ma$cot, he can be put into a million different situations without it sounding stupid. That's not to say EVERYTHING with his name is good , just that he's easy to use without really being a stereotype.





To celebrate such a huge event minus ten, I wanted to do something different than just Mickey in my style. I tried to follow a good rule made by an awful excuse for a person: never draw the same face twice. Some of these (like the skinny one or contour drawings) are just me trying to be experimental, but others are direct references to stuff. For example, you see that creepy, giant ink face? That's based off this



