Air Pirates
Encyclopedia
The Air Pirates were a group of cartoonists who created two issues of an underground comic called Air Pirates Funnies in 1971
, leading to a famous lawsuit by The Walt Disney Company
. Founded by Dan O'Neill
, the group also included Shary Flenniken
, Bobby London
, Gary Hallgren, and Ted Richards.
The collective shared a common interest in the styles of past masters of the comic strip, and in creating their stories for the collective each set out to imitate the style of an old time cartoonist: Flenniken emulated Clare Briggs
and H. T. Webster in her Trots and Bonnie comics, London's strip Dirty Duck
paid homage to the style of George Herriman
's Krazy Kat
, Richards' Dopin' Dan was supposed to be influenced by Bud Fisher
but showed more similarity to Mort Walker
's Beetle Bailey
, and Gary Hallgren drew a strip called Pollyanna Pals in the style of Cliff Sterrett
's Polly and Her Pals
. The original Air Pirates were a gang of Mickey Mouse
antagonists of the 1930s; O'Neill regarded Mickey Mouse as a symbol of conformist hypocrisy in American culture, and therefore a ripe target for satire.
The first issue of Air Pirates Funnies was dated July 1971, and the second issue dated August. Both were published under the Hell Comics imprint, and were distributed through Ron Turner's Last Gasp
publishing company. Both issues are considered highly collectible today.
The lead stories in both issues, created by O'Neill, Bobby London and Hallgren, focused on Walt Disney characters, most notably from Floyd Gottfredson
's Mickey Mouse newspaper strip, with the Disney characters engaging in adult behaviors such as sex
and drug
consumption. O'Neill insisted it would dilute the parody to change the names of the characters, so his adventurous mouse character was called "Mickey". Ted Richards took on the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs opening up a second wave of parody attacking Disney's grab of contemporary American and European folklore.
, an underground newspaper where both were staff cartoonists. London later drew a highly fictionalized account of their experiences at the Tribe in his story "Why Bobby Seale is Not Black" in Merton of the Movement. In 1970 they attended the Sky River Rock Festival near Portland, Oregon
and met Shary Flenniken and Dan O'Neill at the media booth, where Flenniken was producing a daily Sky River newsletter on a mimeograph machine. Before the festival was over the four of them produced a 4-page tabloid comic, Sky River Funnies, mostly drawn by London. After the festival Flenniken and Richards went to Seattle, where Flenniken was doing graphics for the Seattle Liberation Front
's brief-lived underground newspaper, Sabot
. London went back with O'Neill, who had a studio and a syndicated strip in San Francisco, and started working with him, contributing a "basement" strip to O'Neill's syndicated Odd Bodkins. In early 1971 they invited Flenniken and Richards, along with Gary Hallgren, a Seattle cartoonist who had met O'Neill at the festival, to San Francisco to form the Air Pirates collective.
After the Pirates were established, Willy Murphy, Larry Todd and Gary King started hanging around the collective and contributing to their projects, missing the original Air Pirates Funnies but appearing in later Air Pirates comics like Merton of the Movement and Left Field Funnies. Along with these projects the Pirates also released Dan O'Neill's Comics and Stories, a Bobby London Dirty Duck collection, and a Dopin' Dan book with side stories by other members of the collective. A Flenniken Trots and Bonnie comic was announced, but never released. Most of these comics were distributed through Last Gasp, some with a "Cocoanut Comics" logo on the cover.
.
Accurately telling the story of Disney's lawsuit against the Air Pirates is difficult, due to the conflicting memories of the litigants; however, it is fair to say that all through the lawsuit, O'Neill was defiant. The initial decision by Judge Wollenberg in the California District Court, delivered on July 7, 1972, went against the Air Pirates, and O'Neill's lawyers appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
. O'Neill suggested the other Pirates settle, and leave him to defend the case alone. Hallgren and Turner settled with Disney, but London and Richards decided to continue fighting. To raise money for the Air Pirates Defense Fund, O'Neill and other underground cartoonists began selling original artwork—predominantly of Disney characters—at comic conventions.
During the legal proceedings and in violation of the temporary restraining order, the Air Pirates published some of the material intended for the third issue of Air Pirates Funnies in the comic The Tortoise and the Hare, of which nearly 10,000 issues were soon confiscated under a court order. In 1975, Disney won a $200,000 preliminary judgement and another restraining order, which O'Neill defied by continuing to draw Disney parodies.
The case dragged on for several years. Finally, in 1978, the Ninth Circuit ruled against the Air Pirates three to zero for copyright infringement, although they dismissed the trademark infringement claims. In 1979 the Supreme Court
refused to hear an appeal. O'Neill later claimed that his plan in the Disney lawsuit was to lose, appeal, lose again, continue drawing his parodies and eventually to force the courts to either allow him to continue or send him to jail. ("Doing something stupid once," he said, "is just plain stupid. Doing something stupid twice is a philosophy.") O'Neill's four-page Mickey Mouse story Communiqué #1 from the M.L.F. (Mouse Liberation Front) appeared in the magazine CoEvolution Quarterly
#21 in 1979. Disney asked the court to hold O'Neill in contempt of court
and have him prosecuted criminally, along with Stewart Brand
, publisher of CoEvolution Quarterly.
By mid-1979, O'Neill recruited diverse artists for a "secret" artist's organization, The Mouse Liberation Front. An M.L.F. art show was displayed in New York, New York, Philadelphia
and San Diego
. With the help of sympathetic Disney employees, O'Neill delivered The M.L.F. Communiqué #2 in person to the Disney studios, where he posed drawing Mickey Mouse at an animation table and allegedly smoked a joint
in the late Walt Disney's office. In 1980, weighing the unrecoverable $190,000 in damages and $2,000,000 in legal fees against O'Neill's continuing disregard for the court's decisions, the Walt Disney Company settled the case, dropping the contempt charges and promising not to enforce the judgment as long as the Pirates no longer infringed Disney's copyrights.
In Bob Levin's 2003 book The Pirates and The Mouse: Disney's War Against the Counterculture, New York Law School
professor Edward Samuels said, "I was flabbergasted. He told me he had won the case. 'No, Dan,' I told him, 'You lost.' 'No, I won.' 'No, you lost.'" To Dan O'Neill, not going to jail constituted victory. However, Samuels said of the Air Pirates, "They set parody back twenty years." The case remains controversial among comics critics and free-speech advocates.
1971 in comics
This is a list of comics-related events in 1971.-Year overall:* The Comics Code Authority revises the Code a number of times during the year. Initially "liberalized" on January 28, 1971, to allow for the sometimes "sympathetic depiction of criminal behavior . ....
, leading to a famous lawsuit by The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
. Founded by Dan O'Neill
Dan O'Neill
Dan O'Neill is an American underground cartoonist, creator of the syndicated comic strip Odd Bodkins and founder of the underground comics collective the Air Pirates.-Odd Bodkins:...
, the group also included Shary Flenniken
Shary Flenniken
Shary Flenniken is an American editor-writer-illustrator and underground cartoonist. After joining the burgeoning underground comics movement in the early 1970s, she became a prominent contributor to National Lampoon and was one of the editors of the magazine for two years...
, Bobby London
Bobby London
Bobby London is an American underground comix and mainstream comics artist.-Biography:London created his underground newspaper comic strip Merton, in his native New York in 1969 and the raunchy Dirty Duck strip in 1971...
, Gary Hallgren, and Ted Richards.
The collective shared a common interest in the styles of past masters of the comic strip, and in creating their stories for the collective each set out to imitate the style of an old time cartoonist: Flenniken emulated Clare Briggs
Clare Briggs
Clare A. Briggs was an early American comic strip artist who rose to fame in 1904 with his strip A. Piker Clerk. Briggs was best known for his later comic strips "When a Feller Needs a Friend," "Ain't It a Grand and Glorious Feeling?" and "The Days of Real Sport".-Early life:Born in Reedsburg,...
and H. T. Webster in her Trots and Bonnie comics, London's strip Dirty Duck
Dirty Duck (comix character)
Dirty Duck is a fictional character created by underground comix artist Bobby London. He first appeared in an unsigned "basement" strip that ran underneath Dan O'Neill's syndicated Odd Bodkins strip in 1970, and later in Air Pirates Funnies #1 .-Publication history:London created the Dirty Duck...
paid homage to the style of George Herriman
George Herriman
George Joseph Herriman was an American cartoonist, best known for his classic comic strip Krazy Kat.-Early life:...
's Krazy Kat
Krazy Kat
Krazy Kat is an American comic strip created by cartoonist George Herriman, published daily in newspapers between 1913 and 1944. It first appeared in the New York Evening Journal, whose owner, William Randolph Hearst, was a major booster for the strip throughout its run...
, Richards' Dopin' Dan was supposed to be influenced by Bud Fisher
Bud Fisher
Harry Conway "Bud" Fisher was an American cartoonist who created Mutt and Jeff, the first successful daily comic strip in the United States....
but showed more similarity to Mort Walker
Mort Walker
Addison Morton Walker , popularly known as Mort Walker, is an American comic artist best known for creating the newspaper comic strips Beetle Bailey in 1950 and Hi and Lois in 1954. He has signed Addison to some of his strips.Born in El Dorado, Kansas, he grew up in Kansas City, Missouri...
's Beetle Bailey
Beetle Bailey
Beetle Bailey is an American comic strip set in a fictional United States Army military post, created by cartoonist Mort Walker. It is among the oldest comic strips still being produced by the original creator...
, and Gary Hallgren drew a strip called Pollyanna Pals in the style of Cliff Sterrett
Cliff Sterrett
Clifford Sterrett , was an innovative comic strip cartoonist who created the influential Polly and Her Pals....
's Polly and Her Pals
Polly and Her Pals
Polly and Her Pals is an American comic strip created by cartoonist Cliff Sterrett, which ran from 1912 until 1958. It is regarded as one of the most graphically innovative strips of the 20th century...
. The original Air Pirates were a gang of Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
antagonists of the 1930s; O'Neill regarded Mickey Mouse as a symbol of conformist hypocrisy in American culture, and therefore a ripe target for satire.
The first issue of Air Pirates Funnies was dated July 1971, and the second issue dated August. Both were published under the Hell Comics imprint, and were distributed through Ron Turner's Last Gasp
Last Gasp
Last Gasp is a book and underground comix publisher and distributor based in San Francisco, California.- History :Founded in 1970 by Ron Turner to publish the ecologically-themed comics magazine Slow Death Funnies, followed by the all-female anthology It Ain't Me Babe, Last Gasp soon became a major...
publishing company. Both issues are considered highly collectible today.
The lead stories in both issues, created by O'Neill, Bobby London and Hallgren, focused on Walt Disney characters, most notably from Floyd Gottfredson
Floyd Gottfredson
Arthur Floyd Gottfredson was an American cartoonist best known for his defining work on the Mickey Mouse comic strip. He has probably had the same impact on the Mickey Mouse comics as Carl Barks had on the Donald Duck comics...
's Mickey Mouse newspaper strip, with the Disney characters engaging in adult behaviors such as sex
Sexual intercourse
Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...
and drug
Recreational drug use
Recreational drug use is the use of a drug, usually psychoactive, with the intention of creating or enhancing recreational experience. Such use is controversial, however, often being considered to be also drug abuse, and it is often illegal...
consumption. O'Neill insisted it would dilute the parody to change the names of the characters, so his adventurous mouse character was called "Mickey". Ted Richards took on the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs opening up a second wave of parody attacking Disney's grab of contemporary American and European folklore.
Origins
The original nucleus of the Air Pirates collective began to form when Bobby London met Ted Richards at the office of the Berkeley TribeBerkeley Tribe
The Berkeley Tribe was a radical counterculture underground newspaper published in Berkeley, California from 1969 to 1972. After a staff dispute with publisher Max Scherr split the Berkeley Barb in July 1969, about 40 members of the Barb staff resigned and started the Tribe as a rival paper, after...
, an underground newspaper where both were staff cartoonists. London later drew a highly fictionalized account of their experiences at the Tribe in his story "Why Bobby Seale is Not Black" in Merton of the Movement. In 1970 they attended the Sky River Rock Festival near Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
and met Shary Flenniken and Dan O'Neill at the media booth, where Flenniken was producing a daily Sky River newsletter on a mimeograph machine. Before the festival was over the four of them produced a 4-page tabloid comic, Sky River Funnies, mostly drawn by London. After the festival Flenniken and Richards went to Seattle, where Flenniken was doing graphics for the Seattle Liberation Front
Seattle Liberation Front
The Seattle Liberation Front, or SLF, was a radical anti-Vietnam War movement, based in Seattle, Washington, in the United States. The group, founded by then-University of Washington visiting philosophy professor and political activist Michael Lerner, carried out its protest activities from 1970 to...
's brief-lived underground newspaper, Sabot
Sabot (newspaper)
Sabot was a brief-lived underground newspaper published in Seattle, Washington by the Seattle Liberation Front from September 11, 1970 to January 13, 1971. Sixteen weekly issues were published in all. The paper was started as a replacement for the Seattle Helix which had published its last issue in...
. London went back with O'Neill, who had a studio and a syndicated strip in San Francisco, and started working with him, contributing a "basement" strip to O'Neill's syndicated Odd Bodkins. In early 1971 they invited Flenniken and Richards, along with Gary Hallgren, a Seattle cartoonist who had met O'Neill at the festival, to San Francisco to form the Air Pirates collective.
After the Pirates were established, Willy Murphy, Larry Todd and Gary King started hanging around the collective and contributing to their projects, missing the original Air Pirates Funnies but appearing in later Air Pirates comics like Merton of the Movement and Left Field Funnies. Along with these projects the Pirates also released Dan O'Neill's Comics and Stories, a Bobby London Dirty Duck collection, and a Dopin' Dan book with side stories by other members of the collective. A Flenniken Trots and Bonnie comic was announced, but never released. Most of these comics were distributed through Last Gasp, some with a "Cocoanut Comics" logo on the cover.
Lawsuit
O'Neill was so eager to be sued by Disney that he had copies of Air Pirates Funnies smuggled into a Walt Disney Company board meeting by the son of a board member. On October 21, 1971 he got his wish as Disney filed a lawsuit alleging, among other things, copyright infringement, trademark infringement and unfair competition against O'Neill, Hallgren, London and Richards (Flenniken had not contributed to the parody stories). Disney later added Turner's name to the suit. The Pirates, in turn, claimed that the parody was fair useFair use
Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...
.
Accurately telling the story of Disney's lawsuit against the Air Pirates is difficult, due to the conflicting memories of the litigants; however, it is fair to say that all through the lawsuit, O'Neill was defiant. The initial decision by Judge Wollenberg in the California District Court, delivered on July 7, 1972, went against the Air Pirates, and O'Neill's lawyers appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Alaska* District of Arizona...
. O'Neill suggested the other Pirates settle, and leave him to defend the case alone. Hallgren and Turner settled with Disney, but London and Richards decided to continue fighting. To raise money for the Air Pirates Defense Fund, O'Neill and other underground cartoonists began selling original artwork—predominantly of Disney characters—at comic conventions.
During the legal proceedings and in violation of the temporary restraining order, the Air Pirates published some of the material intended for the third issue of Air Pirates Funnies in the comic The Tortoise and the Hare, of which nearly 10,000 issues were soon confiscated under a court order. In 1975, Disney won a $200,000 preliminary judgement and another restraining order, which O'Neill defied by continuing to draw Disney parodies.
The case dragged on for several years. Finally, in 1978, the Ninth Circuit ruled against the Air Pirates three to zero for copyright infringement, although they dismissed the trademark infringement claims. In 1979 the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
refused to hear an appeal. O'Neill later claimed that his plan in the Disney lawsuit was to lose, appeal, lose again, continue drawing his parodies and eventually to force the courts to either allow him to continue or send him to jail. ("Doing something stupid once," he said, "is just plain stupid. Doing something stupid twice is a philosophy.") O'Neill's four-page Mickey Mouse story Communiqué #1 from the M.L.F. (Mouse Liberation Front) appeared in the magazine CoEvolution Quarterly
CoEvolution Quarterly
CoEvolution Quarterly is a descendant of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog. It eventually became the Whole Earth Review.-History:...
#21 in 1979. Disney asked the court to hold O'Neill in contempt of court
Contempt of court
Contempt of court is a court order which, in the context of a court trial or hearing, declares a person or organization to have disobeyed or been disrespectful of the court's authority...
and have him prosecuted criminally, along with Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation...
, publisher of CoEvolution Quarterly.
By mid-1979, O'Neill recruited diverse artists for a "secret" artist's organization, The Mouse Liberation Front. An M.L.F. art show was displayed in New York, New York, Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
and San Diego
San Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...
. With the help of sympathetic Disney employees, O'Neill delivered The M.L.F. Communiqué #2 in person to the Disney studios, where he posed drawing Mickey Mouse at an animation table and allegedly smoked a joint
Joint (cannabis)
Joint is a slang term for a cigarette rolled using cannabis. Rolling papers are the most common rolling medium among industrialized countries, however brown paper, cigarettes with the tobacco removed, and newspaper are commonly used in developing countries. Modern papers are now made from a wide...
in the late Walt Disney's office. In 1980, weighing the unrecoverable $190,000 in damages and $2,000,000 in legal fees against O'Neill's continuing disregard for the court's decisions, the Walt Disney Company settled the case, dropping the contempt charges and promising not to enforce the judgment as long as the Pirates no longer infringed Disney's copyrights.
In Bob Levin's 2003 book The Pirates and The Mouse: Disney's War Against the Counterculture, New York Law School
New York Law School
New York Law School is a private law school in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. New York Law School is one of the oldest independent law schools in the United States. The school is located within four blocks of all major courts in Manhattan. In 2011, New York Law School...
professor Edward Samuels said, "I was flabbergasted. He told me he had won the case. 'No, Dan,' I told him, 'You lost.' 'No, I won.' 'No, you lost.'" To Dan O'Neill, not going to jail constituted victory. However, Samuels said of the Air Pirates, "They set parody back twenty years." The case remains controversial among comics critics and free-speech advocates.
See also
- "The Disneyland Memorial Orgy"
- Arne AnkaArne AnkaArne Anka is a Swedish comic strip drawn by Charlie Christensen under the pseudonym Alexander Barks from 1983 to 1995. The title character closely resembles Donald Duck...
External links
- Disney's War Against the Counterculture (article by Levin based on his book)
- Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates – excerpt from judgment
- Bobby London and the Air Pirates Follies
- Bobby London replies : Disney and The Air Pirates 22 February 2000
- RiP! A Remix Manifesto (Chapter 8) O'Neill talks about Air Pirates in the Brett Gaylor's documentary