This Giant-Size Special comic book (or graphic novel, if you prefer), is a mash-up of the famous D¡sn*y funny animal family and Charles Biro's Crime Does Not Pay comic book series that has been created with the "anything goes" spirit of classic underground comix, and that really does the job; it is – amazingly, fantastically, incredibly –  successful.  Cramming every classic noir trope into one non-stop roller coaster narrative, Michael Mouse is a rollicking radical read that runs through 69 1/2 pages of full color comics, employing a merciless 12-panel grid without let up; there is no pause, no chance to catch your breath; it just goes.  

And where it goes – for life long comics readers, at least – is right into the rewards center of the brain (immediately adjacent to the punishment center) where addictions of all sorts lurk.  As the entire plot pivots on – surprise! – a drug deal gone wrong, drug addiction is right there front and center on the page, but lurking just below the surface (or in the gutter) is the unstated but clearly implicit – "for those who know how to look" – addiction to comic books.  Starting with the gateway funny animal comics through the gritty urban crime dramas before ending up at the hardcore sensations of the "return of the repressed" embodied in the underground æsthetic, Michael Mouse is a meta-comic meditation on the (addictive) pleasures of the (comics) text. 

While certainly influenced – or at the very least emboldened – by the comics of Simon Hanselmann, Mitch Lohmeier has nonetheless forged an original synthesis here, one that taps into a mainline of the 20th Century American psyche, linking crime, capitalism and comics – all of which run through gender roles – in an unforgettable manner, one that manages, despite everything, to craft a narrative with genuine dramatic pathos that reveals the human emotions embedded in these cartoon characters.

An instant classic!