Interview: Sholly Fisch on Dynamite’s Mighty Mouse

Mighty Mouse #1 Alex Ross cover

Mighty Mouse #1 Alex Ross cover


Sholly Fisch is the writer of Scooby-Doo Team-Up, Teen Titans Go!, and Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, and has also worked on Action Comics, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, and Super Friends. Now he turns his attention to Dynamite’s revival of the classic superhero Mighty Mouse. Fisch tells Westfield’s Roger Ash more about this fun, new series.

Westfield: How did you become involved with the project?

Sholly Fisch: I guess the roots were laid a few years ago, although we didn’t know it at the time. Back when “mighty” Dynamite editor Anthony Marques was on staff at DC, he and I worked together on some Superman stuff, and we’ve been looking for a chance to do it again. He called to see if I wanted to pitch ideas for any of the projects that were coming up at Dynamite, and Mighty Mouse was one of the ones that made me go “Oooh!”

Westfield: Are you a fan of Mighty Mouse?

Fisch: Sure, for almost all my life. When I was a kid, I used to watch Mighty Mouse on TV all the time. In fact, I still have the 45 rpm Mighty Mouse record that my sister Mindy and I used to listen to when the show wasn’t on. A couple of decades later, I re-discovered Mighty Mouse in a whole new way, through Ralph Bakshi’s brilliantly insane New Adventures of Mighty Mouse. I’ve got that complete series on DVD too. Not to mention that I can still sing the whole Mighty Mouse theme song by heart. Actually, the one possible down side to working on the Mighty Mouse comic is that the song’s been running around in my head for months. Fortunately, it’s a pretty fun song.

Mighty Mouse #1 Igor Lima classic cover

Mighty Mouse #1 Igor Lima classic cover


Westfield: Why did you decide to bring him into the real world?

Fisch: The germ of that idea came from the folks at Dynamite, but pretty much everything else came from me. One of the challenges that I always face when I’m writing a character whom people have known and loved for 75 years – whether it’s Batman, Bugs Bunny, Mighty Mouse, or whomever – is finding new stories to tell. Bringing Mighty Mouse into the real world for the first time was a great way to do that.

As I started to think about how to approach the series, I gave a fair amount of thought to identifying the real core of the character, and realized that it’s all right there in his theme song: Mighty Mouse is his world’s greatest hero, always there in the nick of time to save the day. That’s a big part of our series, too. When Mighty Mouse first gets thrust out of his world into ours, he starts out trying to help a lonely kid. But things keep escalating over the course of the five- issue series, so by the end, he’s our only hope to save the world – or maybe even both worlds.

Westfield: What other characters will readers meet?

Fisch: Well, as you’d expect, we’ll see appearances by Mighty Mouse’s classic supporting cast – his girlfriend, Pearl Pureheart, and his arch-enemy, Oil Can Harry. But Mighty Mouse’s real co-star in the series is a real-world kid named Joey. When we first meet Joey, he’s a lonely, bullied kid who escapes from his problems by watching cartoons and drawing his own homemade comics. He could use a friend…but he gets a whole lot more than he bargained for.

Mighty Mouse #1 Igor Lima cover

Mighty Mouse #1 Igor Lima cover


Westfield: You’re working with artist Igor Lima on Mighty Mouse. What can you say about your collaboration?

Fisch: The tricky thing about a series like this is that it needs several completely different art styles: a realistic style for the real world, a cartoony style for Mighty Mouse himself and everyone back in Mouseville, and yet another style for the comics that Joey draws. Igor’s doing a great job of capturing all of those different styles and getting them to blend together, while also making it obvious that Mighty Mouse really doesn’t belong in the real world. Not an easy task, but Igor’s pulling it off well.

And while we’re talking about art, how cool is it that we’ve got covers by Alex Ross and Neal Adams? They’ve been two of my favorite artists for years, but I can’t say I ever expected to see them draw covers for a comic book that I wrote – let alone for Mighty Mouse, of all things! It’s pretty crazy, but hey, I’m certainly not going to complain.

Mighty Mouse #1 Neal Adams cover

Mighty Mouse #1 Neal Adams cover


Westfield: Any closing comments?

Fisch: Well, let’s see… I could talk about how Mighty Mouse is an all-ages book in every sense of the word, with action and engaging characters for kids, and nostalgic fun for older readers. Or I could say that buying a copy of Mighty Mouse will improve your life, cure cancer, and bring world peace. But, really, there’s only one way to end an interview about Mighty Mouse: Here he comes to save the dayyyyy!

Purchase

Mighty Mouse #1

USER COMMENTS

We'd love to hear from you, feel free to add to the discussion!


Notice: Undefined variable: user_ID in /home/wfcomics/public_html/blog/wp-content/themes/westfield2010/comments.php on line 73