Four Color #16
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFour Color #16 stands as the first comic book devoted entirely to Mickey Mouse, translating Floyd Gottfredson's celebrated newspaper strip adventure into the standard comic-book format for the first time and placing the world's most recognizable cartoon character at the center of the burgeoning Golden Age medium. The issue reprints 'Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot,' the strip serial that introduced both the Phantom Blot and Chief O'Hara — two characters who became enduring pillars of Mickey's supporting cast across decades of Disney comics worldwide. Beyond its character introductions, the story cemented Mickey's identity as a detective-adventurer rather than a mere gag figure, a narrative model that Gottfredson had been developing in newspapers since 1930 and that directly influenced the later tradition of Disney adventure comics from Carl Barks onward. As the crown jewel of Dell's Four Color Series One, it also marks a pivotal moment in the history of licensed comics: proof that a single Disney character could anchor an entire solo comic-book issue and sustain a long-form thriller narrative.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The content of Four Color #16 originated as a newspaper strip serial written by Merrill De Maris and drawn by Floyd Gottfredson, with inking contributions from Ted Thwaites and Bill Wright, that ran in American newspapers from May 20 through September 9, 1939. Dell's Four Color series had launched that same year as a one-shot anthology vehicle for licensed newspaper-strip characters, and issue #16 — published in September 1941 — was the first time the complete Phantom Blot continuity appeared gathered into a single comic-book package of approximately 68 pages. The Four Color Series One ran for only 25 issues before Dell restarted the numbering in mid-1942, meaning #16 belongs to a short, finite run that predates the far longer second series; the series as a whole was notable for pioneering the 'one-shot' format, with each issue devoted to a different licensed property rather than following a single ongoing character.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published September 1941 by Dell Comics as part of Four Color Series One (the first series of 25 issues, 1939–1942).
- First comic book devoted entirely to Mickey Mouse — the first solo-titled Mickey Mouse feature in a standard comic-book format.
- Reprints the newspaper strip serial 'Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot,' originally published in daily newspapers from May 20 to September 9, 1939.
- Script by Merrill De Maris; art by Floyd Gottfredson (pencils), with inking by Ted Thwaites and Bill Wright.
- First comic-book appearance of the Phantom Blot, a cloaked criminal mastermind who became one of Mickey Mouse's primary arch-enemies in comics globally, and of Chief O'Hara, Mouseton's dog-faced police commissioner who became a long-running ally of Mickey.
- Includes supporting appearances (cameos) by Minnie Mouse and Pluto.
- Runs approximately 68 pages — an unusually substantial page count for a Golden Age comic book, which contributed to the physical fragility of surviving copies.
- The story has been reprinted multiple times, including a 1990 Disney Comics album edition, collections by Gladstone Publishing, and most recently in Fantagraphics' hardcover Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 5: Outwits the Phantom Blot (2014), which brought Gottfredson's complete strip run to a new scholarly audience.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate History #[nn] (2020)
Key issues in Four Color
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