Floyd Gottfredson on how he got the job drawing the Mickey Mouse strip

GOTTFREDSON:...Walt [Disney] asked me what sort of work I was most interested in, and I told him comic strips. He says, "You don't want to get into that. Newspaper work is a rat race." And he says. "Animation is where the future is going to be. That's the place to go. So I said, "All right, fine. I'll go into that if you have an opening. And he says, "Sure, we'll put you to work as an in-betweener. I'm especially interested in you because you've had this much experience with pen and ink reproduction." He says,"We're just beginning to develop the Mickey Mouse daily comic strip for newspapers, for King Features. It might be good to have you as a back-up man, in case the fellow who's drawing it needs some help or anything happens to him."
SABA: Who was that at that time?
GOTTFREDSON: This was Win Smith.
SABA: I thought Ub Iwerks actually drew the first few weeks.
GOTTFREDSON: No, I'll tell you how this happened. So I went in to animation then and started training as an in-betweener, and the first 18 strips were pencilled by Ub. They were written by Walt. Walt had lifted gags out of the animated shorts--the Mickey shorts up to that time--and adapted them to the strip. Ub pencilled the first 18, and Win Smith inked them. Then, after the first 18, Win pencilled and inked the strip, and Walt continued to write them. But he tried to get Win to write them, and Win kept stalling. And I don't know whether he just didn't want to take on the extra work...

In April--now the strip was launched in January 1930--and in April, Win came in to my desk, my animation desk, and he was pretty red in the face and quite agitated. I could see it. He says, "I think you got a new job." And I said, "What do you mean?" And he said, "I just quit." And I said, "Why the hell would you do thavt?" And he said, "No G.D. young whipper-snapper's going to tell me what to do." So he walked out into oblivion. And, of course, the young whipper-snapper turned out to be Walt Disney. [Laughter] But Walt had been after him all this time to write the strip, and Win kept stalling. And finally Walt called him into the office that morning and had a showdown with him. And Win, who had sort of a short fuse anyway, blew up and walked out...

About a halt hour after Win left the studio, Walt called me into the office and asked me if I would take over the strip. I said, "Well, Walt, I've come to realize that you were right when you told me that the comic strip business and the newspaper business was no place to go, that animation was where it was." And I said, "By now I've become quite interested in animation. I'd like to stay with it." He said, "Well, just take it over for two weeks until I find someone." And at the end of a month, I began to wonder if he was looking for anyone, and at the end of two months I began to worry for fear he was going to find someone. [Laughter] Because I had adjusted to the strip now, and was beginning to like it. So I continued for 45 and a half years. [Laughter]