The name was changed to Mighty Mouse in his eighth film, 1944's The Wreck of the Hesperus, and the character went on to star in 80 theatrical shorts, concluding in 1961 with Cat Alarm.

In 1955, Mighty Mouse Playhouse debuted as a Saturday morning cartoon show on the CBS television network, which popularized the character far more than the original theatrical run.

[5] In his book Of Mice and Magic, critic Leonard Maltin describes the character's origin story: Cats of the city have imposed a reign of terror on the rodent community.

Returning to earth, he is hoisted on the shoulders of his happy comrades, as the narrator declares, "Thus ends the adventure of Super Mouse... he seen his job and he done it!

In Pandora's Box (1943), he battled bat-winged cat demons, and his origin story was changed: now he becomes Super Mouse by eating vitamins A through Z.

[8] The first short under the character's new name was The Wreck of the Hesperus, released February 11, 1944, adapting the celebrated poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with the addition of a superhero mouse.

In this cartoon, redesigned by animator Connie Rasinski, Mighty Mouse has a fuller figure with an exaggerated upper body, and is clad in a yellow outfit, with a red cape and trunks.

The early cartoons often portray him as a ruthless fighter; one of his most frequent tactics is to fly under an enemy's chin and let loose a volley of blows, subduing the opponent through sheer physical punishment.

However, his powers can vary, depending on the demands of the story; he is sometimes knocked unconscious or rendered temporarily immobile by the villain, only to rise again by the end of the cartoon and save the day.

Biographer W. Gerald Harmonic notes that as of the mid 40s, Mighty Mouse would be pictured living on a star or a cloud, up in the heavens, and that he became "a Christ-like figure, a savior of all 'mouse-kind'.

Several of the earliest "Super Mouse" films (having been made during World War II), feature the cats as thinly veiled caricatures of the Nazis, hunting down mice and marching them into concentration camp–like traps to what would otherwise be their doom.

In rare moments, he confronts non-feline adversaries such as human villain Bad Bill Bunion and his horse, or the Automatic Mouse Trap, a brontosaur-shaped robotic monster.

While these were very similar to the musical melodrama spoofs that were soon to emerge, they didn't have an overwrought narrator, or the suggestion that the cartoon is an episode of a continuing story.

In November 1947, A Fight to the Finish was the first in a series of musical melodrama spoofs, with Mighty Mouse saving damsel in distress Pearl Pureheart (sometimes "Little Nell") from the villainous, mustache-twirling cat Oil Can Harry.

A Fight to the Finish begins with a snatch of Cole Porter's song "And The Villain Still Pursued Her", which had also been used as the theme for the Fanny Zilch cartoons.

But on with the story..." Mighty Mouse is engaging in "a fight to the finish" with Oil Can Harry, now a villainous cat with a mustache, a top hat and a big black cloak, voiced by Tom Morrison.

Harry manages to knock out Mighty Mouse, and leaves him tied to the railroad track with a bomb on his head, and the 5:15 train due to pass by.

At Harry's house, they fight with fists, guns and swords, as Pearl slips out the window and onto a passing log which is floating down the river into a mill.

Hypnotized for three and a half minutes of the six-minute cartoon, Pearl continues to sing as the battle between Harry and Mighty Mouse rages around her, even underwater.

In 1955, Paul Terry sold the Terrytoons studio to CBS, which repackaged the theatrical cartoons as a popular Saturday morning show, Mighty Mouse Playhouse.

The show introduced two new characters: a vampire duck named Quacula (not to be confused with Count Duckula), and Oil Can Harry's bumbling, large, but swift-running, henchman Swifty.

[15] That commercial shows Mighty Mouse dining calmly on cheese in a restaurant, utterly unconcerned with a scene of chaos and terror visibly unfolding in the street outside.

[16] Until 2019, the rights to Mighty Mouse were divided as a result of the 2006 corporate split of Viacom (the former owner of the Terrytoons franchise) into two separate companies.

The first official release of Mighty Mouse material has been announced and what is now CBS Media Ventures has television syndication rights (the shorts are currently out of circulation).

On December 4, 2019, CBS Corporation and Viacom re-merged into a single entity, ViacomCBS (now Paramount Global), officially reuniting the rights to Mighty Mouse under the same company.

[18] In April 2019, Jon and Erich Hoeber signed on to script the film for Paramount Animation while Karen Rosenfelt (Wonder Park) and Robert Cort (Terminator Genisys) are set to produce.

In these early films the character's costume is much closer in design to that of Superman (blue tunic and tights with red trunks and cape).

After successfully saving several different characters, he is reminded of the girl, and attempts to smell the flowers she gave him (now a pink powder), inhaling them in the process.

[32] Mighty Mouse was planned to make a cameo in the deleted scene "Acme's Funeral" from the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

In 2008, Man and Machine, Inc., a company that produces medical grade, chemical-resistant, mice and keyboards, sued both Apple and CBS for trademark infringement.