Webcomic / Cheer Up, Michael!

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Cheer Up, Michael! is an ongoing webcomic by Sarah Myer that debuted in 2023.

Set in a world where famous Disney characters are Animated Actors, the comic follows the story of Michael Theodore Mouse (Though you might know him better as Mickey Mouse) as he struggles in his new position of being the CEO of a major entertainment company after a lifetime of acting. Michael longs for the carefree days of his youth making cartoons with his best friends, but things have taken a downward spiral; no one in the office respects him, his wife Minerva is cold and distant as she pursues her law career, and he's barely on speaking terms with his best friend Don, who resents him for getting the CEO job instead of him. In the midst of it all, Michael searches for meaning and fulfillment while keeping up the happy-go-lucky façade the public knows him best for.

You can read the comic right here.

The webcomic provides examples of:

• Animated Actors: All of the Disney characters you're familiar with are actors who tend to act very differently from their on-screen personas. In Don's introduction we see a magazine article that establishes his trademark foul temper is merely for his role as Donald Duck and that he's not actually like that off-camera.
  • Basil of Baker Street is actually four-foot-seven in height off-screen and The Great Mouse Detective was actually shot on oversized sets. Basil laments that he's had issues getting work due to casting agencies assuming he was actually mouse-sized and not the size of a fully grown man.
• Bartender Confidant: Oswald, who has long since retired from acting to run a diner, is this to Michael.
• Break the Cutie: The series opens with Michael already broken by his fractured friendship with Don enough to need a therapist, and it only gets worse from there...
• The Cameo: Plenty of 'em, including but not limited to.
  • Bobby from A Goofy Movie as a director who passes on letting Michael on camera with Donald and Goofy due to his weight gain.
  • Scrooge McDuck is on the board of directors at the company.
  • The photographer who keeps hounding Michael and getting compromising snapshots of him is none other than Drake Mallard, who is bitter about not getting a reboot yet.
• Celebrity Power Couple: How the public sees Michael and Minerva's marriage; until the paparazzi catch glimpses of the tensions arising behind closed doors.
• Disappointed in You: Michael has a nightmare where he's confronted by a vision of himself from the past and a ghostly Walt Disney, both of whom express disgust at what he's become now.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Despite losing his temper more than once, Michael never swears. He's even taken aback when the nightmare of his past self swears and only remarks that "that's not very nice".
• It's All About Me: What Minerva and Don both accuse Michael of: they believe Michael's attempts to get back into acting are all just for the sake of glory and attention (Don in particular believes Michael just wants him to go back to being the Butt-Monkey to his Straight Man). All Michael wants though is to just be happy and wanted again.
• Mistaken for Betrayal: When Michael finds a duck feather left behind in his backyard despite having a ten-foot tall privacy wall around his property he assumes Don is the one who's been sneaking on to his property to take pictures of him for the paparazzi and confronts him over it. It turns out it's actually Drake Mallard, who has been working for Wolfek to pressure the shareholders for presently unknown reasons by showcasing Michael's downward spiral to the public.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: A few names are sneaky homages to certain real-life people in the entertainment industry. Michael's therapist is named Dr. Catzenbird (A play on Jeffery Katzenberg's name) and the antagonistic wolf he clashes with on the board of directors is named Wolfek (A parody of former Disney CEO, Bob Chapek)
• Post-Stress Overeating: Michael's go-to coping mechanism for his increasing stress at work and depressive spiraling is chowing down on junk food; most of which are in the shape of his iconic head.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: An in-universe example, if George's (AKA Goofy) words are anything to go by; he really was having issues relating to his son Max until they filmed A Goofy Movie and it helped work things out; and he's seemingly suggested Don and Michael do the same more than once.
  • In Chapter 20, Michael recalls two times he overheard Walt saying he was getting tired of Mickey cartoons. According to the authors notes, these two scenes are paraphrasing actual interviews following the failure of Fantasia and Walt's transition from studio work to planning out and constructing Disneyland.
• Reformed, but Rejected: Mortimer Mouse hasn't acted in years and he and Minerva are now on good terms with one another. Minerva constantly being out of the house is due to studying with him for the bar exam, but Michael is convinced Mortimer is still the same playboy he always was and that Minerva is having an affair with him. Despite Michael's wild jealousy Mortimer actually treats him fairly kindly.
  • If what Pete tells Michael is true; he had difficulties with people not being able to separate his on-screen persona from himself as a person; enough that he lives a rather private life away from the public eye.
• Soul-Crushing Desk Job: The crux of Michael's predicament is how creatively stifled he is in his new position as a CEO. Gone are the days of acting in cartoons; now he sits behind a desk all day signing documents and headshots for fans while drowning his sorrows in junk food.
• Strawman News Media: The "Snarky-Pop-O-Rats-I" is the news outlet that repeatedly posts the compromising and unflattering photographs of Michael at his worst.
• Third-Party Peacekeeper: When Don and Michael have a group therapy session to try and work through their issues, Goofy/George sits in as a neutral third party to listen to them both.
• What You Are in the Dark: During a moment wherein Michael is alone in the park at night and spiraling over the idea that Minerva might want a divorce; a homeless cat passes him by and asks for some spare change. Michael is having an absolutely horrible night and no one would blame or even know if he chose to ignore him. Instead, he doesn't hesitate for a second in helping the poor man out and gives him over a thousand dollars right on the spot before walking away.
• Weight Woe: Michael's depressive gorging leads to noticeable weight-gain, which results in unflattering paparazzi photos getting out along with a desire by directors to keep him off camera as much as possible.