The Pirates and the Mouse: Disney's War Against the Counterculture | 
 enlarge | Author: Bob Levin
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
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Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 702265
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Fantagraphics Books Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 270
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 156097530X
Dewey Decimal Number: 346.730482
EAN: 9781560975304
ASIN: 156097530X
Publication Date: May 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: BRAND NEW
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| Editorial Reviews:
Book Description
They fought the Mouse and the Mouse (eventually) won—but it was a battle that left everyone bloodied... During a time of unprecedented political, social, and cultural upheaval in U.S. history, one of the fiercest battles was ignited by a comic book. In 1963, the San Francisco Chronicle made 21-year-old Dan O'Neill the youngest syndicated cartoonist in American newspaper history. As O'Neill delved deeper into the emerging counterculture, his strip, Odd Bodkins, became stranger and stranger and more and more provocative, until the papers in the syndicate dropped it and the Chronicle let him go. The lesson that O'Neill drew from this was that what America most needed was the destruction of Walt Disney. O'Neill assembled a band of rogue cartoonists called the Air Pirates (after a group of villains who had bedeviled Mickey Mouse in comic books and cartoons). They lived communally in a San Francisco warehouse owned by Francis Ford Coppola and put out a comic book, Air Pirates Funnies, that featured Disney characters participating in very un-Disneylike behavior, provoking a mammoth lawsuit for copyright and trademark infringements and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. Disney was represented by one of San Francisco's top corporate law firms and the Pirates by the cream of the counterculture bar. The lawsuit raged for 10 years, from the trial court to the US Supreme Court and back again. The novelist and essayist Bob Levin recounts this rollicking saga with humor, wit, intelligence, and skill, bringing alive the times, the issues, the absurdities, the personalities, the changes wrought within them and us all. Includes never-before seen art from the Air Pirates archives! Two excerpted chapters of this book in The Comics Journal in 2001 proved to be one of the magazine's most popular features in recent memory. Black-and-white illustrations throughout.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Interesting topic...bad book January 7, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The topic of this book certainly sounded interesting, especially since I was taking a Media Laws course at the time I read it. However, this book was bogged down with too many problems for me to recommend it.
First of all, the book is full of small errors that make it seem like it was hastily thrown together and shoved onto the shelves. The author is listed as "Bob Levin" on the front cover, but as "Bob Levine" on the spine. A citation on the back page quotes an editor as calling the book "The definitive history of this wonderful, mad (and, I believe, signficant) episode in Amercan [sic] popular culture." And one of the illustrations and comics in the book are listed as being from 1971, even though Levin later says (correctly) that they were from the mid 90s.
Aside from these annoying but ultimately forgivable problems, the author just doesn't have a very fluid or gripping writing style. Some of his sentences so grossly overuse punctuation marks that they may discuss three different topics in a single sentence. I will admit that he does a passable job describing copyright laws, but that was just one part of this book. His footnotes also tend to be places for him to get in his two cents rather than truly informative additions. And he ultimately fails to make the characters endearing to the audience, which is frustrating since he admits in the book that each author is trying to sell a story or viewpoint to the reader. It may be more objective to paint the Air Pirates as nothing more than a bunch of stoned twenty-somethings following an even more-stoned thirty-something, but it sure didn't sell to me that we should be rooting for them.
The ending of the book also let me down. I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that after discussing a series of lawsuits brought against the Air Pirates, the story ends very abruptly, without describing the final decision in any great detail. This should have been the climax of the narrative, and it just fizzles out.
So while I appreciate Bob Levin pointing out this interesting case that has apparently gotten very little recognition, I wish that he would have discovered it, and then turned it over to a better author.
 Too bad August 12, 2005
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
The history outlined in THE PIRATES AND THE MOUSE is essential reading. Unfortunately, Mr. Levin has foreclosed the chances that a *great* history, as opposed to a good one, of the Air Pirates controversy will ever be written.
As a researcher, Mr. Levin is fearless and gratifyingly thorough. As a prose stylist, however, he cakes on the pretension as if imitating--poorly--the academic and cultural-studies historical texts with which both his subject and his approach prompt comparison. He injects himself needlessly (as a participant in the counterculture, as a "wit," as an eloquent commentator, &c.) into the history wherever he can, and rarely uses one adjective or adverb when he can stack three or four atop each other like cords of wood.
I'm perplexed that Groth and Thompson--two critical writers I've admired since I was a teenager, both of whom are enviably well-read in multiple genres--could let THE PIRATES AND THE MOUSE slip through their editorial fingers in this state. It's a beautifully designed book loaded with information and images that can scarcely be found anywhere else, but I can't read even three pages of it at a time without craving another kind of prose: matter-of-fact, eloquent, and focused. This ain't hairsplitting. The greatest archive in the world will reach no one if the text that mediates between archive and public keeps jerking the spotlight back upon itself.
 Dan O' Neill Gets His Due October 28, 2004
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
bob levin's writing style aside, this book is an extremely informative expose of the first amendment with regards to copyright infringement and parody. the champion here (or protagonist if you will) is the enlightened dan o' neill. even though the "air pirates" was a collective effort by london, richards, halgren, and flenniken, o'neill was the one who braved this whole mess out with humor, wit, and defiant intellect. the famous phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword" underestimates the relentlessness and ruthlessness of the disney empire against an intellectual threat that put the "disney intellect" to shame; i am again refering to o' neill.
a fine prep in copyright law, the beginings of the underground comics, disney's wrath, and an american champion of free speech: "they should have known he was irish" dan o' neill. you will have more than a few chuckles during your reading....thank you bob levin, dan o' neill, and the rest of the "pirates". you are not forgotten!!!
An Important Episode in American Popular Cultural History June 18, 2004
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
According to Bob Levin, copyright law has become a way by which big corporations screw the public trust. Back in 1971, a group of artists calling themselves the Air Pirates put out an unauthorized Mickey Mouse comic book that was heavily pornographic in nature. The ensuing battle lasted for about a decade until Disney finally won. This book rates 3 stars out of 5 due to the fact that it is mostly bogged down in all sorts of highly legalistic language and is hard to read by someone who, like this writer, does not have a law school education.
For all who are fed up with corporate media November 1, 2003
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
An hilarious blow-by-blow account of Disney's war on independent culture. A look back at the late 60s and early 70s that's all too disturbingly relevant today.
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