Beginning with the May 5, 1930, strip, the art chores were taken up by Floyd Gottfredson (often aided by various inkers), who also either wrote or supervised the story continuities (relying on various writers to flesh out his plots).

She falls out of the plane, and Mickey travels through a storm to land on a deserted island, inhabited by fierce natives who want to cook him alive.

The story—begun by Smith, and continued by Gottfredson—involves a crooked lawyer, Sylvester Shyster, and his thuggish associate Peg-Leg Pete, who kidnap Minnie in order to find a map to her Uncle Mortimer's hidden gold mine in Death Valley.

The story runs through a number of Western melodrama tropes—a desperate horse chase, gunplay, a crusty old sheriff, the heroine getting locked up in a jail cell, the hero unfairly branded an outlaw.

[7] The next story, "Mr. Slicker and the Egg Robbers", included a sequence in which Mickey, convinced that Minnie has thrown him over for a rival, spends a week trying (and failing) to commit suicide.

[8] In a 1931 publicity stunt, Mickey—just crowned boxing champion in the strip—had his photograph taken, and then encouraged readers to send a stamped, addressed envelope to him care of the newspaper to get a copy.

The thieves are Shyster and Pete, returning to the strip after a year and a half, but they manage to place the blame on Mickey's friend Horace Horsecollar, who's thrown in jail.

[10] In the second volume of the 2011 reprint collection, comics historian Thomas Andrae describes the resulting storyline: Gottfredson's newfound mastery of the serial format is evident in nearly every strip of "Orphanage Robbery".

Then the suspense increases through the use of an exciting chase -- conveniently supplied by [1932 Mickey short] The Klondike Kid -- as well as cross-cutting techniques developed from old movie serials, another influence Gottfredson now learned to mimic with ease.

The strip cuts back and forth between the trial, conviction, and near-execution of Horace Horsecollar -- who is falsely accused of the theft -- and Mickey's progress in tracking down the villains.

[6] In September 1932, Mrs. Fieldmouse saddled Mickey with baby-sitting her two pesky twins, Morty and Ferdie, who kept his house in an uproar for two months' worth of strips.

[16] Donald Duck first appeared in the Sunday pages in February 1935, where he got Mickey involved in "The Case of the Missing Coats" and then stuck around to fight with Morty and Ferdie.

[6] In the Sunday pages from August to November 1938, Mickey performed in an adaptation of the current short cartoon Brave Little Tailor, bookended with segments showing him as an actor, being cast in the film by Walt Disney.

At that point, Manuel Gonzales took over as the lead artist on the Mickey Sundays, and stayed in the post until 1981 (except for his military service during World War II, from 1942 to 1945).

[6] As Walsh was not interested in Mickey Mouse as a character,[24] and had a taste for science-fiction, mystery and horror, his stories quickly diverged from those of the previous decade.

In The 'Lectro Box (Oct 1943-Feb 1944), Mickey and nephew Morty create a powerful and unpredictable machine, which soon attracts the monstrous mad scientist Dr. Grut and his posse of mind-controlled Aberzombies.

The next story, The House of Mystery (Nov 1944-Jan 1945), had the evil scientist Drusilla die in a fire as her mansion burns around her, and her caretaker rushes inside to be with her in the flames.

He was joined in February by his pet Pflip the Thnuckle-Booh, and became Mickey's sidekick for the next few years, returning to his home in the future in July 1950, at the end of "The Moook Treasure".

Alberto Becattini says, "Especially after Eega Beeva left, Mickey found himself unwillingly mixed up in dangerous adventures whose development and outcome he no longer seemed to be able to control.

[6] Gottfredson originally wrote and drew the Mickey Mouse strip by himself, but scaled back in 1932, only plotting the stories and doing the penciling, while the dialogue was mostly done by other hands.

[28] Scripts were written by Webb Smith (1932–33), Ted Osborne (1933–38), Merrill De Maris (1933–42), Dick Shaw (1942–43), Bill Walsh (1943–64), Roy Williams (1962–69) and Del Connell (1968–88).

[38] When Floyd Gottfredson took over, he also took inspiration from Disney's animation department, who provided him with storyboards and model sheets for upcoming Mickey Mouse shorts.

[28] Mickey Mouse had adventure storylines from its inception until October 1955, when the syndicate instructed the creators to move to a simpler, gag-a-day format.

In 1990, writer Floyd Norman convinced King Features Syndicate to allow him to bring back the comic strip's adventure story format.

[37] Norman and Colette Bezio shared the scripting, with Rick Hoover, Alex Howell and Thomas Lewis providing art.

[68] The campaign involved "remakes" of three classic Gottfredson stories in the daily newspaper strip: "Blaggard Castle" (Jan-Feb 1994), "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot" (March–April) and "The Mail Pilot" (June–July).

[72] Abbeville Press' large size Best Comics anthologies in the late-1970s included two all-Gottfredson volumes (one headlined "Goofy"), though the stories were relettered and sometimes condensed.

In 1980, Abbeville issued a small-size Best Comics series that included three all-Gottfredson volumes (again, one headlined "Goofy"), all of which reprinted stories from the earlier large-size editions.

In 2011, Fantagraphics resumed production of the series Gemstone had started, with the same editorial team but with the individual books branded "Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse."

This book featured black-and-white daily strips newly arranged and printed in full color, in a 300-page "best-of" selection that included "Mickey Mouse in Death Valley" and "The Gleam" among others.