Back in the early 70s, a group of like-minded cartoonists led by one Dan O’Neill decided to take on Disney and their copyright litigation lawyers by publishing their own Mickey Mouse comics. The groups of artists, known as both the Air Pirates and the Mouse Liberation front spent most of the 70s in court, fighting over the legality of not only the comics the underground groups created, but the ownership of Mickey Mouse as well. The first issue of Mickey Mouse Meets The Air Pirates has been recently scanned and uploaded to the web in it’s entirety, though it’s only a matter of time I’m sure before Disney manages to have it taken down.

But to their fans, the Air Pirates were free-speech martyrs and innovative artists who were unfairly penalized simply because they worked in the popular but disdained medium of the comic book. “The judges deciding this case were all pretty much 60 years old or older,” notes San Francisco lawyer Bob Levin, whose new book “The Pirates and the Mouse: Disney’s War Against the Underground” (Fantagraphics) provides a lively reexamination of the case. “Their whole take on comic books was to think of them as trash, not as anything of significance. If the same thing had been going on in a different medium — in the visual arts, literature, or cinema — [the Air Pirates] probably would have gotten a more respectful hearing.”

In 1971, the group released their most controversial comics, “Air Pirates Funnies” nos. 1 and 2, in print runs of 15,000-20,000 copies, under the aegis of Hell Comics. The highlights were stories that showed Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters in distinctly unsavory situations. But for all the references to sadomasochism and drugs, the Air Pirates’ work was fairly mild compared with other underground comics of the era, which tended to feature disturbing tableaux of mangled bodies and orgies. By contrast, “Air Pirates Funnies” were impeccably drawn to imitate the warm and gangly style of the Mickey Mouse strips of the early 1930s (those strips were drawn by a cartoonist named Floyd Gottfredson, although always credited to Disney).

O’Neill was certainly spoiling for a fight. When his comics met with no response, he had a friend — the son of the chairman of Disney’s board of directors — sneak copies into a board meeting and lay them out. Disney filed suit against the Air Pirates, charging them with copyright infringement.

Link to the full comic (via BoingBoing via Drawn!.
Link to the article.

Comics