Underground Comics: Air Pirates Funnies

Underground Comics are new types of comics that usually come from small or private publishing companies that started in the United States in the late 1960s. As comics were gaining popularity as a form of art, the new concept of comics, the underground comics, appeared. The increase in youth counter-culture of the early 1970s modified different styles of comic movements, and targeted more adult readers in graphic narrative ways.

One of the good examples was an underground comic named, Air Pirates Funnies,

created by Dan O’Neill. The Air Pirate Funnies was a parody of Disney characters, which became famous with lawsuit issues from the Walt Disney Production. O’Neill basically set the Mickey Mouse characters as villains to symbolize a conformist hypocrisy of the American culture for the purpose of satire. The antagonists usually dealt with the usage of sex and drugs. It also contained another parody of the Disney characters; they were parodies known as the Big Bad Wolf and Three Little Pigs, which offended the appropriation of US folklore. By using Disney characters without permissions from the Walt Disney Production, they battled with lawsuits over O’Neill and his employees in 1971.

I would always read generic types of cartoons or comics. However, now I read underground with a new fresh perspective, which I can use to interpret the works in realistic ways.