Mickey was born in 1928, but he was conceived in 1925. Inspired by stories of Walt Disney’s childhood pet mouse, Hugh Herman, an animator at Disney Studios, drew sketches of a mouse around a photograph of Walt.

When Walt was forced to abandon his previous star character, Oswald the Rabbit, by contractual negotiations with Universal Studios, he tasked the animator Ub Iwerks with creating a new character to be owned exclusively by Disney. After attempting other anthropomorphic variations, Iwerks was inspired by the earlier sketches to create a new circular character, christened Mortimer Mouse. Fortunately, the new mouse was saved from the mortifying fate of that name by the intervention of Lillian Disney, Walt’s wife, who suggested the name of Mickey instead. Starring in dozens of comics, Mickey became Disney’s most important character—an anthropomorphized symbol of a particular style of creation and a particular time in entertainment history.