To quote Gladstone Publishing's Mickey Mouse Comics Digest #4, where I plucked the reprint of this mess: "Since secret agents were so popular [in the 1960's], and since Mickey Mouse had always been popular, the reasoning must have been that Mickey Mouse as a secret agent couldn't miss." Never mind that James Bond and a cartoon mouse are so far removed from each other that a marrying of the two concepts can't result in anything but embarrassment for all involved.
When Gladstone was doing the digest format it could afford to take risks with the extra space, so it reprinted the first Mickey Mouse: Super Secret Agent story and asked the readers if they wanted to see more. The response was almost unanimous: "This is terrible. But YOU BET we want to see more!" So they printed the second one, and it wound up in my tiny hands at the Albertsons checkout line in the late 80's, and that brings us to here.
So I was going to say something in between all that but....y'know, it really speaks for itself.
Carl Barks made this! ...Nah, I'm just yankin' ya. The story writer didn't want to be identified for some reason, but the artists are double: Dan Spiegle, artist of many things over the decades, drew the realism and Mickey-comic veteran Paul Murry penciled Mickey and Goofy into it.
Back to the action....Their best lead is a bunch of supernatural mumbo-jumbo that no respectable organization, no matter how secret, would take as evidence. But by golly, they're taking it, and now how will Mickey and Goofy get to Kari? Only the best way EVER....
Say it with me: "THE THING!" Louder!
Kari explains to the toons that she and her father practiced "thought projection" ever since she was a little girl, and after his disappearance, she now sees a lot of aircraft carriers in her head.
Unluckily, the meeting is broken up by thugs with guns that fire mind control gas pellets. They order Goofy to jump out a window, but the narrator explains "Goofy's brain was too small to absorb much gas." So Goofy catches a lamppost on the way down and slides down it (don't ask me if this would work in real life, and don't try it).
Goofy looks up and sees Mickey about to jump after him! "Gawrsh, he might not be as lucky as me!" Dippy Dawg thinks, and smashes through a window into a couple's bedroom, steals their mattress from under them, and drags it into the street in about three seconds. That fixes that.
But now the thugs are gone. Where was Kari taken off to? Somewhere with ice, Mickey figures....
Mickey throws out a lot of brainy observances throughout this story. He knew to fly to Greenland, because only there on Earth is ice piled "a mile high," as Kari dreamed. Mickey Mouse knows way more than I've ever given him credit for. But given that he runs a multibillion-dollar, multinational, multisinister corporation, I should have figured as much.
Some nicknames just come easily.
"THE FIEND" cackles like a true villain as he explains he stole Narden's technology and is now using it to plan out the biggest heist in history. The aircraft carrier wasn't it? Nope....the big ship is what he's going to use to GET what he wants.
Y'see, Fiendster is going to use Narden's tech wizardry to make the ship....FLY.
Is this whole plotline out there, or what? All it needs now is great gross globs of baby brains and it could pass as a Fringe episode.
Mr. Fiend wants a BILLION dollars, or else he will destroy the world's major cities by hovering over the water and creating gigantic tidal waves!
What the....ARGH! How can a cartoon mouse be making me feel this stupid??
It makes me wonder if this was intended to be an "educational" comic book. But if it is, it fails at that too, what with all the mental telepathy and anti-gravity going on.
Mickey and Goofy have a small window while the iron filings clear out and the fish below choke on it. Mickey sneaks on board, but is caught and cornered by Fiendster! Just as he's about to meet his end.....Goofy charges into Fiend's end with "THE THING!"
KA-BOOM!
Mickey Mouse: Super Secret Agent lasted a full three issues. It was a dismal failure, but no lessons were learned. This isn't the only time Mickey's been forcefully shoehorned into a popular trend -- in addition to this comic, I also had a somewhat dated cassette of Disney songs that included a disco rendition of the Mickey Mouse Club theme. It came with a book that showed Mickey dancing with Minnie on a flashing colored-square floor. Mick might have had mutton chops and bell bottoms, but my memory isn't that clear.