mickey rat
Los Angeles Comic Book • Kitchen Sink • Last Gasp (1972-1982)
He started as a t-shirt design. Nothing but a crude rip-off of Mickey Mouse, not so close in design to Disney’s character that he’d get in trouble, but close enough to be obvious. His name was Mickey Rat.
The Mickey Rat t-shirt sold a lot of cotton at the dawn of the ’70s. Sales were so good that when Chester Crill, member of the psychedelic rock band Kaleidoscope, suggested to rat creator Robert Armstrong that Mickey Rat would be great in a comic strip, the idea was instantly embraced. And so in 1971, Mickey Rat appeared in L.A. Comix #1, in a seven-page story appropriately titled “The King of Rotten Stuff.”