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 characters, 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 Funnies 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 judgment 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 judgment 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.

Dan O’Neill lives in Nevada City, California, where he continues to draw Odd Bodkins.