Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for January 05, 2024

Thank God. I was waiting for somebody to exploit this, and I am very happy.

As a former Mickey Mouse writer, I approve. Well done!

NEXT WEEK: Red Mickey gets blacklisted!

And Lover Mickey gets banned from libraries in Florida!

Dan O’Neil was ahead of his time.

“M-I-C…K-E-Y … M.O.U.S.E!” Please read my new book FLORIDA LIVING – How I Learned To Hate the Mouse and Love The Bomb.

Up yours, Mickey! Talk more about workers’ rights and how capitalism sucks!

Uh-oh, the Lady Chatterley Mickey is wearing a white glove – copyright infringement!

“… too generic for copyright protection.” I’ve often wondered about this: everything about Mickey Mouse is notably generic, that is, he’s a generic minstrel figure with no character attributes whatsoever. That’s why he’s so iconic in emptyheaded American “culture,” since people can project whatever they want onto him. What was under copyright? His shape?

And i still wonder why copyright extends so many years, long after any creators are dead & buried?

Super fun reading these exploitation comix, hilarity ensues.

So when does the copyright expire on “Spuds” Mick-Enzie?

Very funny and professionally done! But if it wasn’t I could now legally say, Hey, that’s pretty Mickey Mouse.

And why are US copyrights so long? Because after Disney grabbed up – and copyrighted – a bunch of public-domain characters (Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Beauty & The Beast, Winnie-The-Pooh, etc., etc.), they lobbied long hard, and successfully to extend the period of protection by many years.

You tell him Pinocchio.

Said this under the strip on Daily Kos, but the Air Pirates were definitely several decades ahead of their time! – >

I’m wondering if only Steamboat Willie is public domain and the name Mickey Mouse is still protected.

What does any of this have to do with Donald Trump? I don’t get it.

Remember, a corporation is a legal entity. (Those of us with a cynical bent are apt to say “a legal fiction.”)

A 1932 pop song, authorized by Disney, anticipated Mickey’s Labor Comix by referring to “that tricky, wacki, wicki, bolsheviki Mickey Mouse.” See Https://Boardwalktimes.net/Disney-a-to-g-part-three-mister-mouse-escapes-the-studio-1ab1da61fd64

Why isn’t there a “Tricky Mickey” strip, patterned after “Lucky Ducky”?

Cameo by Quentin in the lower right corner!

Regardless of Disney’s bad qualities Walt rescued Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards’ career by signing him as the voice of Doc and then Jiminy Cricket. Abuse of the public domain had at least one good side effect.

I’ll never read “Billy Dare” again if they don’t bring back Quentin!

Hey Ruben, I see that you’re depicting Micky (and more to the point, his clothes) only in black and white, even in otherwise colour comics. But remember, he appeared in colour (red shorts, yellow shoes, green or blue hat) in 1928 advertising posters, so you don’t need to restrict yourself! And there were even posters showing him in (yellow) gloves, so you can use those too if you like.

Unca Walt may be frozen, but he’s getting hot under the collar. Lady Chatterley took it right over the top.

Nice work, Ruben! But I see that Alexandra Petri beat you to the punch in WaPo by just a day!

https://www.washingtonpost.COM/opinions/2024/01/04/chatterley-mickey-mouse-copyright/

That stick-nosed toon may have been perpetrating a falsehood.