Peg Leg Pete

Pete (also called Peg-Leg Pete, Pistol Pete and Black Pete, among other names) is an anthropomorphic cartoon character created in 1925 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. He is a character of The Walt Disney Company and often appears as a nemesis and the main antagonist in Mickey Mouse universe stories. He was originally an anthropomorphic bear but with the advent of Mickey Mouse in 1928, he was defined as a cat. Pete is the oldest continuing Disney character, having debuted three years before Mickey Mouse in the cartoon Alice Solves the Puzzle (1925).

Pete has appeared in more than 40 animated short films between 1925 and 1954, having been featured in the Alice Comedies and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons, and later in the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy cartoons. Pete's final appearance during this era was The Lone Chipmunks (1954), which was the final installment of a three-part Chip an' Dale series. He also appeared in the short films Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983), The Prince and the Pauper (1990), Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers (2004), and Get a Horse! (2013).

Pete has also made many appearances in Disney comics, and often appeared as Sylvester Shyster's dimwitted sidekick in the Mickey Mouse comic strip. In the Italian comic production he has come to be the central character in comics from time to time. Pete later made several appearances in television, most extensively in Goof Troop (1992–1993) where he was given more continuity, having a family and a regular job as a used car salesman and is a friend (albeit a poor one) to Goofy. He reprises this incarnation in 1999's Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas. Pete also appears in House of Mouse (2001–03) as the greedy property owner who's always trying devious ways and loop holes to get the club shut down.

Although Pete is often typecast as a villain, he has shown great versatility within the role, playing everything from a hardened criminal (The Dognapper, The Lone Chipmunks) to a legitimate authority figure (Moving Day, Donald Gets Drafted, Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip), and from a menacing trouble maker (Building a Building, Trombone Trouble) to a victim of mischief himself (Timber, The Vanishing Private). On some occasions, Pete has even played a sympathetic character, all the while maintaining his underlying menacing nature. (Symphony Hour, How to Be a Detective) He seems to have lost much of his antagonistic demeanor in his Mickey Mouse Clubhouse appearances and is today a largely friendly character, although his antics can occasionally prove an annoyance.

In comic strips and comic books, Pete is consistently depicted as a hardened criminal. In the 1943 comic strip story Mickey Mouse on a Secret Mission, he was an agent of Nazi Germany, working as the henchman of Gestapo spy Von Weasel. In the 1950 comic strip story The Moook Treasure, he's even portrayed as the Beria-like deputy chief of intelligence in a totalitarian state on the other side of the iron curtain.

Pete often teams up with Mickey Mouse enemies Sylvester Shyster, Eli Squinch, or The Phantom Blot. In earlier comic strips, starting with Mickey Mouse in Death Valley (1930) Pete was portrayed as Sylvester Shyster's henchman, but he gradually started to work on his own. Sometimes, Pete also teams up with other bad guys in the Disney universe, such as Scrooge McDuck's enemies (the Beagle Boys and Magica De Spell), Mad Madam Mim, Captain Hook, and the Evil Queen. In Italian comics, his girlfriend Trudy (Trudy Van Tubb) is his frequent partner-in-crime. His cousin the "mad scientist" Plottigat is another, less frequent, accomplice.

In his earlier comic strip appearances, Pete sported a knee-high pegleg, which was later reduced to a foot-high prosthesis. In Mickey Mouse in Death Valley, Floyd Gottfredson occasionally committed goofs, with the pegleg switching from Pete's right leg to his left one. In Gottfredson's story The Mystery at Hidden River (1941–42), the pegleg disappeared, with Pete having two normal legs: when Mickey expressed surprise at this, Pete described one of his legs as a new, "streamlined, modern" artificial leg. Pete has since been consistently depicted as having two legs; except in the 2004 feature- film Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers. His name in Italy has remained Pietro Gambadilegno ("Pegleg Peter"), or simply Gambadilegno ("Pegleg") even though it has been a long time since he was actually depicted with a pegleg in either comics or animated cartoons. In an Italian story by Romano Scarpa, Topolino e la dimensione Delta (Mickey Mouse in the Delta Dimension, first published in 1959), Pete briefly removes his artificial leg, revealing his old foot-high pegleg underneath.