| Named after | Mickey Mouse antagonists of the 1930s |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1971 |
| Founder | Dan O'Neill |
| Founded at | San Francisco, California, U.S.A. |
| Dissolved | 1980 |
| Purpose | to parody old-time comic strips and The Walt Disney Company |
| Products | Air Pirates Funnies comic books |
Key people | Bobby London, Gary Hallgren, Ted Richards, Shary Flenniken |
| Subsidiaries | Mouse Liberation Front |
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 Walt Disney Productions.[1] Founded by Dan O'Neill, the group also included Bobby London, Shary Flenniken, Gary Hallgren, and Ted Richards.
The original Air Pirates were a gang of Mickey Mouse antagonists of the 1930s; Dan O'Neill imagined Mickey Mouse to be a symbol of conformist hypocrisy in American culture, and therefore a ripe target for satire.[2]
- ^ Tom Sito (October 6, 2006). Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 236–37. ISBN 0-8131-7148-2.
- ^ Gomez, Betsy; Levin, Bob (May 6, 2013). "Disney's Bloody Attack on The Air Pirates". Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Retrieved April 26, 2024.
As the '60s cultural revolution roared on, O'Neill decided that what America truly needed was the destruction of Walt Disney. So after the Chronicle canned him, he rounded up a ragtag band of rogue cartoonists who called themselves the Air Pirates, after a group of evildoers who had bedeviled Mickey Mouse in the 1930s. In 1971 they produced two issues of an underground comic book in which a number of Disney characters, particularly Mickey, engaged in very un-Disneylike behavior, particularly sex.