In the mid-20th century, comic books came under fire in the United States. Though the medium started out as reprinted collections of popular newspaper strips in the 1930s, it quickly grew into a diverse and wildly popular original art form. By the 1940s, original comics filled newsstands across the country; in 1948, 80 million to 100 million comic books were being sold in the U.S. each month. This was far from a niche hobby; comic books were mass entertainment for a range of ages (though primarily children), covering everything from superhero adventures and Westerns to genres such as horror, romance, sci-fi, and war stories.

Across the country, some church groups and parent organizations began expressing concerns that comics glorified violence and led to delinquency. Public comic book burnings began in the late 1940s as a protest. The concern reached fever pitch in 1954 with the publication of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, which argued that comic books were a major cause of juvenile crime. Though widely publicized at the time, Wertham’s reporting was later found to be deeply flawed, often misrepresenting research to support his claims.

The outcry that followed led to Senate hearings and, eventually, the creation of the Comics Code Authority (CCA), a self-governed body that publishers used as a censorship guide to stay in the good books of distributors and newsstands. Under the code, scenes of violence, horror, and anything deemed morally questionable were heavily edited or banned altogether. The backlash reshaped the comic book industry for decades: Superheroes such as Batman, originally dark and gritty, were toned down to seem more wholesome, and entire publishers went out of business. The CCA had a decent hold on the industry until the 1970s, when specialty comic book stores started popping up. Direct relationships were established with publishers, bypassing most distributors, and eventually, the code was dropped, allowing the comic book industry to resume its expansive storytelling.

Despite essentially being synonymous with his most famous character, Walt Disney didn’t draw Mickey Mouse. The iconic cartoon rodent was actually designed by Disney’s best friend, animator Ub Iwerks, in 1928. Indeed, A Mouse Divided: How Ub Iwerks Became Forgotten, and Walt Disney Became Uncle Walt author Jeff Ryan described Mickey as “basically the child of two dads.” The pair worked together for decades, and Iwerks created effects for such Disney classics as Mary Poppins and Sleeping Beauty, in addition to helping develop theme park attractions such as “It’s a Small World.” But he rarely received much credit for his contributions to the company, especially in comparison to its namesake. That began to change when his granddaughter Leslie Iwerks directed the 2000 documentary The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story, but even today, Iwerks remains relatively unknown.

For the first 20 years of Mickey Mouse’s existence, Disney voiced the character himself. The world was introduced to Mickey in the 1928 animated short Steamboat Willie, though Disney produced two previous shorts featuring Mickey that same year, Plane Crazy and The Gallopin’ Gaucho, which weren’t picked up by distributors. Steamboat Willie was the first of these to feature sound, though Mickey didn’t utter his first actual words (“Hot dog!”) until the following year’s The Karnival Kid. Disney last lent his vocal talents to The Mickey Mouse Club between 1955 and 1958, though 2013’s Get a Horse! patched together previous recordings to once again feature him as the voice of the famous cartoon mouse.