On March 25, 1994, 24 year-old Michael Diana became the first American 'zine publisher to be convicted of producing and distributing obscene materials. His offense? The creation of Boiled Angel, a self-published comic book whose eight issues feature images of rape, dismemberment, murder, and child abuse. Two days later Diana was fined $5,000 and sentenced to three years' probation with conditions suggestive of incarceration: He must undergo psychiatric evaluation (at his own expense); submit to periodic searches to ensure against his producing "obscenity"; forgo contact with minors; maintain full-time employment while performing eight hours of community service work each week; and complete a course in journalistic ethics-also at his own expense.

Diana was tried in Florida's conservative Pinellas County, about midway between Pensacola, where a doctor who performs abortions and his escort were recently murdered, and Broward County, site of the unsuccessful 1990 prosecution of the rap group 2 Live Crew for obscenity. His case-like the recent high-profile obscenity trials of the Cincinnati Art Center for its Robert Mapplethorpe show, and 2 Live Crew-underscores the vagaries of the American obscenity laws and its implementation. Although the power to define obscenity resides with the highest (federal) court, the Supreme Court's definition simultaneously invokes national and local standards. Based on the 1973 Miller v. California ruling, a work can be deemed obscene only if it appeals to prurient interests, is patently offensive, and "lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

Each of the three criteria must be met-and the first two may be determined on the basis of so-called 'community standards.' At Diana's trial, Assistant State Attorney Stuart Baggish played this community standards card for all it was worth. To impugn the defense's expert witness, Baggish told jurors that, "[Pinellas County] doesn't have to accept what's acceptable in the bath houses of San Francisco, and it doesn't have to accept what's acceptable in the crack alleys of New York."

With (presumably) equal revulsion, he also asserted that Diana sells his drawings in SoHo galleries for $500 apiece. Diana's lawyer Luke Lirot categorically denied this assertion-as did the cartoonist himself, who works as a low-paid clerk in his father's convenience store.

Florida law enforcement officials' interest in Boiled Angel began during the 1990 search for the killer of five Gainesville college students. Applying logic worthy of anti-porn campaigners like Catherine McKinnon, they apparently conflated Diana's representations of violence with actually committing violent acts. Although Diana proved that he was nowhere near Gainesville when the murders occurred, Baggish unearthed-and unleashed-the discredited allegations in his inflammatory summation to the jury.

"Step one, you start with the drawings," Baggwish said, after likening Boiled Angel to a training manual for the recently-confessed Gainesville serial killer, Danny Rollins. "Step two, you go on to the pictures. Step three is the movies. And step four-you're into reality." As the St Petersburg Times editorialized, "That simply isn't true. There isn't a shred of evidence to link Rollins with [obscene or pornographic] material...Since when are prosecutors allowed to win convictions by fabricating stories?" Baggish might also benefit from a court-mandated ethics course.

Putting prosecutorial (mis)conduct aside, what's really at stake here? That Stephen King can publish bestsellers about psycho-killers mutilating their child-victims' genitalia is a potent reminder that American literature is far better protected from censorship than the visual arts. That many of Diana's topics-especially rape and child abuse-are staples of prime-time television testifies to this cartoonist's (and cartoonists' collective) lack of economic and political clout. Did anyone accuse the network that aired The Burning Bed of encouraging wives to murder their husbands? While Diana's work shares 2 Live Crew's incendiary vulgarity and crudeness-inspired in this case by S. Clay Wilson's classic Zap Comics-the 'zine publisher has no entertainment conglomerates or Congressional Black Caucus members to back him.

The economically marginal are, of course, handy targets for their right-wing demonization of nudity, feminism, and gay rights. But this is no longer merely an American phenomenon. French author Jacques Henric was recently charged with purveying porn for the reproduction of Gustave Courbet's L'Origine du Monde on the cover of a book, and Canadian attacks on artist have increased since the passage of art-encompassing anti-kiddie porn bills and the Supreme Court's McKinnonesque Butler decision equating pornography with violence against women.

The Right now takes aim at both high art and popular culture-and must be gratified by the appearance of conservative popular culture in hip mufti-like Whit Stillman's movie Barcelona. It's easier to assault Robert Mapplethorpe's pictures than Calvin Klein ads and Madonna videos bankrolled by Fortune 500 firms. Small or self-publishers are the easiest of all to intimidate, or-better yet-to force to censor themselves.

Although Diana has no formal support form the American Civil Liberties Union, PEN, or any of the other major free-expression groups, he has been aided by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund-which has paid part of his legal bills and posted the $3,000 bond that has stayed parole while an appeal is being prepared. According to attorney Lirot, the appeal, which may not be resolved until 1996, will demonstrate that "this material is not obscene because it's not intended to appeal to anyone's sexual interest. It may be gruesome, but it's still social commentary."