Editing Mickey Mouse (section)

===''Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates''===
In 1971, a group of [[Underground comix|underground cartoonists]] calling themselves the [[Air Pirates]], after a group of villains from early Mickey Mouse films, produced a comic called ''Air Pirates Funnies''. In the first issue, cartoonist [[Dan O'Neill]] depicted Mickey and Minnie Mouse engaging in explicit sexual behavior and consuming drugs. As O'Neill explained, "The air pirates were...some sort of bizarre concept to steal the air, pirate the air, steal the media....Since we were cartoonists, the logical thing was Disney."<ref name="ComicBookConfidential">{{cite video|title=[[Comic Book Confidential]]|publisher=Sphinx Productions|people=Mann, Ron. Director|date=1989}}</ref> Rather than change the appearance or name of the character, which O'Neill felt would dilute the parody, the mouse depicted in ''Air Pirates Funnies'' looks like and is named "Mickey Mouse". Disney sued for copyright infringement, and after a series of appeals, O'Neill eventually lost and was ordered to pay Disney $1.9 million. The outcome of the case remains controversial among free-speech advocates. [[New York Law School]] professor Edward Samuels said, "The Air Pirates set parody back twenty years."<ref name="PiratesAndTheMouse">{{Cite book|last=Levin|first=Bob|title=The Pirates and the Mouse: Disney's War Against the Counterculture|publisher=Fantagraphics Books|year=2003|isbn=1-56097-530-X|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/piratesmouse00bobl}}</ref>