As a child, I ran into what seemed to me to be a surprising number of super-rodents.
We had the multimedia marvel Mighty Mouse, of course — that ubiquitous cat-slapping champion of the CBS Saturday morning cartoon lineup.
A conceptual combination of Mickey Mouse and Superman, Mighty Mouse was also featured in or on a Dell comic book, View-Master disks, punching bags, etc. In the late 1950s, Mighty Mouse was at least as popular as Superman.
And that’s undoubtedly why Charlton Comics offered us Atomic Mouse and more. He shared his black, caped super-costume design with Atom the Cat and two out of Charlton’s three super-rabbits (Atomic Rabbit, Atomic Bunny and Happy the Magic Bunny, who had been Hoppy the Marvel Bunny in another life).
Liking them all, I probably would have called that crowd a sufficiency of anthropomorphic super-animals, had anyone asked. So I was surprised to discover the existence of yet another super-rodent, Pines’ Comics Supermouse. I assumed this was just some inferior rip-off of Mighty Mouse.
Never assume, as they say in journalism school. Because Supermouse was arguably the original, not Mighty Mouse.
Artist Kin Platt’s Supermouse debuted in the first issue of Coo Coo Comics, cover-dated Oct. 1942, while Terrytoons’ Mighty Mouse — then also named “Super Mouse” — first appeared that same month in the first of his 80 theatrical cartoons, The Mouse of Tomorrow. He was originally to have been “Super Fly,” a name that would later be immortalized in 1970s cinema.
To avoid confusion with Supermouse, Terrytoons retroactively changed the name of its character to “Mighty Mouse.”
“Between them, these mice were the first two ongoing funny animal superheroes,” observed Markstein. “Since normal publishing lead times caused comic books to appear on the stands a couple of months before their cover dates, the edge goes to (Supermouse) as the very first to appear before the public — the precursor to DC’s Terrific Whatzit, Marvel’s Super Rabbit, Fox’s Cosmo Cat and all the rest.”
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