When murder is committed, mankind takes alarm. There are cries for vengeance, calls for justice, motives are examined, clues run down, juries formed, detectives hired; All the combined efforts of man and his society are set loose on the hapless culprit who has done the deed.

When the murder of the spirit occurs, mankind seldom notices. If the murder is prolonged, interests drift elsewhere; If it is done by guile or by stealth, it is unknown; If it is done with openness to all, it
is unbelieved. It is a thing done by degrees, a truth that is stilled, a child’s outraged beliefs. Where one gives death, the other, drabness. There are many kinds of murder, and in this kind one can seldom find the culprit. There is no one to answer, there is no one to care. The victim doesn’t even know the crime. It is murder none the less.

There is a fact which is today unheralded, unknown to those it hurts most. It is a simple fact, a tragic fact, that Mickey Mouse is dead. There was a Mickey once that lived, and fought, and entertained the world. No battle was too great for him, no foe unchallenged. The marquees of ten thousand theatres proclaimed his fame, and in those dark Depression days the solace that he offered touched our souls. It was a shameless love affair. He was the stuff that poets from immortal time have sung. He was the celluloid crusader, an animated troubadour of song.

But somewhere, at some unknown time, he died. What artist, or author, or institution became so wearied of their trust, or failed to feel anew that miracles could happen everyday? If all things must end, should not our dreams be last?

There is today a traitor in his place. His name no longer inspires, no longer offers brief enjoyment for a troubled world. His face, now rarely seen on any screen, belies that great adventurer of old. The fire has gone out, he is contained, consumed, and worst of all, forgotten. Like his creator, at some secluded spot he should be be laid to rest, and propped up counterfeits back to their closets sent. The world is now governed in the grey light of ambiguity; It is the collective age when heroes are dismantled by committees.

There was a time, at distant theaters and raucous matinees, when cheers would reach the sun-filled streets when Mickey’s magic name appeared. And in the darker evening hours, the lines would smile in quiet pleasure at the poster which so proudly proclaimed his presence.

His voice and shape are stilled today, but not his soul, which all men gave him, for it goes on and will find other forms and places for embodiment. But in this form and at this time we can do little more than mourn his passing, as if it were a pleasant dream scattered by the dawn.

-Malcolm Willits

This requiem was published the second issue of the comic book fanzine Vanguard in February 1968. This was part of a pioneering article Willits wrote discussing in detail the history of the Mickey Mouse comic strip, and which also featured Willits' interview with Floyd Gottfredson, who started on the strip in 1930 and was still drawing it thirty three years later. Willits article and nostalgia for the 1930s Mickey Mouse is understandable. Starting in the 1950s, Mickey turned into a nonentity, a bland corporate figurehead instead of the likable adventurer he once was. Willits was critical about what Mickey had become, but nevertheless wrote a celebration of him instead of a put-down. 1968 was the year Richard Schickel’s The Disney Version became a best seller, and it was the start of Disney’s critical reputation taking a nose-dive. Back then, saying that you liked Walt Disney marked you as a Yahoo with your taste all in your mouth. A smirking Schickel lambasted Disney as gauche kitsch-monger, and consigned the man and all his creations to the dung heap of history along with other (according to Schickel) tasteless, worthless middle class crap that was once popular with the Booboisie. And at the time, it seemed like most of the spoiled brat Baby Boomers agreed with him. Disney was a greedy malevolent rip-off artist that preyed on our childhood innocence and dreams. All that Establishment asshole ever offered us was gaudy saccharine bullshit all slathered over with gooey sentimentality and twisted reactionary social values. Well, we wised up, didn’t we? Fuck Unca’ Walt and his phony baloney fascist fantasy con job! We want reality! We want peace, dope, and sex, especially the dope n’ sex ‘cuz that’s where it's at, man, that’s our reality, not that corrupt Mickey Mouse candy land bullshit! Burn down Disneyland, smoke a joint, get laid, and fuckin’ grow up, man! Right on! And so the enlightened Boomers seemingly rejected Disney now and forever. Seemingly, because in 1973 another best seller would be published, Christopher Finch’s The Art Of Walt Disney, and the irony was that Schickel- And I’ll bet you anything that he was gritting his teeth as he sat at his IBM Selectric- was forced to write a favorable review of it in Time magazine. And the other irony was that it was the fuck Mickey Mouse Boomers that made The Art Of Walt Disney a best seller. So much for reality, eh? They like Walt Disney? Philistines, nothing but Philistines! What an utterly empty generation...