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Sylvester Shyster is a male anthropomorphic rat.

Description[]

A recurring foe of Mickey Mouse, Sylvester Shyster is a crooked lawyer who started out as a normal enough conman but soon graduated to full-on villainy after Mickey Mouse exposed his intentions of embezzling his client Minnie Mouse's inheritance. Shyster often works with Peg-Leg Pete, in which was he acts as the duo's brain while Pete is the brawn.

Behind the scenes[]

Created for Mickey Mouse in Death Valley, Sylvester Shyster became a recurring antagonist of the early daily Mickey Mouse strips of the 1930's, though he had largely disappeared by the 40's. Early artwork by Win Smith depicted Shyster with a hairless tail like a rat, [3] though his species would later become somewhat ambiguous. He was redesigned as a bald dognose in The Thunderbolt Machine in 1954, drawn by Tony Strobl, but this redesign didn't stick.

Due to the early Mickey Mouse strips' status as "classics", after a handful of appearances in Italian comics, Shyster was more recently revived starting in the 90's by such writers as David Gerstein.

A lawyer called Sylvester Shyster and somewhat resembling the character's classic design was used by Carl Barks in Race to the South Seas. It is unknown if this is merely a coincidence, or if Barks was purposefully reusing the character.

Interestingly, in the French translation of The Horseradish Story, Chisel McSue was identified as Sylvester Shyster, though that fact is obviously non-canonical.

Notes & References[]

  1. Mickey Mouse Sails for Treasure Island
  2. The Sacred Jewel
  3. Sylvester Shyster in "Race to the South Seas" on The Feathery Society
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