Dan O’Neill
Dan O’Neill is an underground comix artist and writer who began his career in 1964 with a strip called ‘Odd Bodkins’ in the San Francisco Chronicle. Parodies of Walt Disney, like Mickey Mouse, frequently appeared in O’Neill’s ‘Odd Bodkins’ strip. In 1971, O’Neill and several other artists, such as Bobby London and Ted Richards, produced the comic books ‘Mickey Mouse meets the Air Pirates’ and ‘Air Pirates’ number two. In short, the books were Walt Disney characters grown up, and some depicted sexual scenes.
The Disney Corporation sued O’Neill and his associates for
copyright infringement. In 1975, they were found guilty and fined to $190.000 each. In Supreme Court the judgement was the same in 1979. Dan O’Neill pressed on, announcing the foundation of the Mouse Liberation Front (MLF) with a four-page Mickey strip and a fine art show depicting various Disney parodies by several artists. The huge judgement garnered him a great deal of favorable press, and in late 1979 Disney gave in. O’Neill stopped his Mouse War, and Disney dropped the fines.
During the lawsuit, O’Neill travelled to Ireland and Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where he pioneered the genre of comic strip journalism with The Penny-Ante Republican. O’Neill was later present in the National Lampoon with the adventures of the ‘Hamburger Snatcher’, and back in the Chronicle with his weekly ‘O’Neill’ strip (1980-85). He lives in Nevada City, California, where he continues to draw ‘Odd Bodkins’.