Here's a parody of Disney's characters from a 1960s satire magazine called "The Realist." Wood was actually a big fan of Disney. Maybe that's why the quality of the artwork is so good. Click to enlarge.
Friday, May 25, 2007
WOOD'S DISNEY PARODY
Here's a parody of Disney's characters from a 1960s satire magazine called "The Realist." Wood was actually a big fan of Disney. Maybe that's why the quality of the artwork is so good. Click to enlarge.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
15 comments:
Hey Edward,
If I'm not mistaken, didn't this spark some kind of lawsuit?
Doc and Dopey? I never would have pictured those two together. Sneezy and Happy, maybe.
Got any air pirates?
One of my favorite Wally Wood drawings ever!
TK
aaah haha ahahah! hilarious! look at fazed mickey with the beret !shooting up and being a negligent guardian while his girlfriend gets nailed by goofy!! too funny!
Wow, this sure brings back memories. I hadn't laid eyes on it since 1967, when I saw it in a tobacco shop (remember tobacco shops?) on Telegraph Ave. in Bezerkely. To this day I remember the pile of Dumbo droppings and the centaurette being mounted by the faun. --- It's also a devastating satire, since it brutally points out the excessive idealization of the Disney product. Thanks Edie!
Oh my. My oh my oh my.
On an unrelated note, thought you'd get a kick out of
"The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies"
http://www.drawger.com/show.php?show_id=32
I'm stupified by how much of that stuff I have and still use!
Wood was the best "Style Ghost" during Mad Magazines reign. He could do the spot on copies of other artists better than anyone, be it aping Walt Kelly or whoever. Elder was pretty damn good during the Mad Comic Book days, but Wood was just Wood in the comic. In Feldsteins Mad, Wood was everybody.
Paul Krassner, publlisher of the Realist says
"The Disney corporation considered a lawsuit but realized that The Realist was published on a proverbial shoestring, and besides, why bother causing themselves further public embarrassment?"
That is, sounds like they swept it under the rug, rather than bring it to light by actually suing, but I'm sure they probably did their own days version of Cease and Desist letters.
I guess Air Pirates may have gotten a bit further amongst the legal staff. Google could probably pull up some history on that too.
But, again, fair use was a lot more fair back then too. No one thought that a black light poster with Uncle Scrooge doing the "Uncle Sam wants you" thing amidst other pop culture icons, was trying to rip off or damage the corporate product so mentioned.
Charlie, Anon: Somewhere packed away I think I do have an issue of Air Pirates. The art work was pretty good but at the time I bought it, it gave me the creeps.
It looked like the real McCoy except that Mickey and Minnie had sex sometimes. The cover looked like a real comic cover would have if there had been comics in the 1920s. To me the use of the character just seemed like theft.
Dan O'Neil's point, if I remember right, was that Mickey's copyright had run out and the character was in the public domain. A lot of the hippies who defended O'Neil did so for their own reason, which was that they didn't believe in any copyright laws at all, which is silly in my opinion.
Dan O'Neil did a mainstream comic strip I used to like called "Odd Bodkins." I looked it up on the net and discovered that the name was used by an earlier strip artist. I wonder what story lies behind that?
There is a theory that the entire movie colorization trend of 20 years back, was not really so much about using an inappropriate technology for movies they clearly shouldn't be touching, as much as creating a claim for works that were about to fall into the public domain, by re-creating them as new copyrightable works (while still being nearly identical to the property they were about to lose.)
I'm not quite sure how, or if, WB may have reclaimed the early Loony Tunes for themselves after them having fallen into public domain. Perhaps digital masters for laserdisc production or restoration brought them somehow back into the fold (or at least, helped keep the cheap knock offs which may or may not have been uncut from keeping a foothold in the market.
Sometime in the past couple of years, there has been a PDF of Air Pirates completely downloadable on the web.
Anon: A really useful insight! Maybe the owners of the cartoons had no choice but to remaster them!Thanks for posting it!
I'm pretty sure some of AIR PIRATES was drawn by the talented Bobby London, who's DIRTY DUCK strip sometimes appears in Playboy. Bobby drew the POPEYE strip briefly in the late 1980's and elevated the readership for awhile. Speaking of copyrights, that got him in trouble with the syndicate, who apparently only wanted to keep enough life support going on the old sailor to keep him out of Public Domain. Making him successful (to them) was more trouble than it was worth...
Will: Fascinating! You'd think they would liberal about the handling of the character since they don't care about it that much but it seldom works out that way.
I looked it up and you're right, London had more to with the comic than O'Neil.
This drawing was also produced in day-glo colors and looked great under a black light. It was sold in many headshops in the late 1960s
I love Donald Duck waving his fist at Dumbo who has just dumped on Donald, Minnie doing tricks while sitting in the cash register till and Tinker Bell stripping. Hilarious satire!
Post a Comment