help me locate this underground comix/zine artist who spent time in jail

April 15, 2006 5:02 PM

help me locate this underground comix/zine artist who spent time in jail

I heard about and read some zines/comic books by an artist from florida who went to jail for his zines. He drew like bloody jesuses getting aborted and really sick demented stuff. Might have been in the early 90's or late 80's.

posted by psychobum to media & arts (10 comments total)

Mike Diana?
posted by lemuria at 5:13 PM on April 15, 2006

Are you talking about this guy?
posted by gaelenh at 5:13 PM on April 15, 2006

yes thank you :>
posted by psychobum at 5:19 PM on April 15, 2006

Bonus trivia: He was caught trying to counterfeit a twenty.

"Cartoonist Michael Diana, convicted two months ago of publishing an obscene comic book, is in trouble again - charged in Orlando with passing counterfeit money. As a result, he stands charged in Pinellas County with violating his probation. Diana is scheduled to be arraigned today on the violation of probation. [...] At 2 a.m. on April 24, Diana was arrested at a Hooters restaurant in Orlando when a store clerk said he gave her a counterfeit $20 bill, Orlando police Sgt. Mike Holloway said. The bill had been cut and taped together, Holloway said."
posted by gaelenh at 5:25 PM on April 15, 2006

What happened to the counterfeiting case? It sounded like he was caught just a few months after getting caught with the obscene material, so I'm guessing the charges were dropped? Taping together a ripped 20 isn't a crime, if that's all he did...
posted by delmoi at 5:41 PM on April 15, 2006

I remember his case was a big story in the UK heavy music press as he designed the cover for Iron Monkey's second album.

The Wikipedia entry on Diana himself doesn't put him in a positive light (you can't photocopy a zine like that in a school of all places and expect no-one to raise an eyebrow) but it also seems that the authorities fucked him over. Not the first time that's ever happened.
posted by macdara at 6:10 PM on April 15, 2006

Taping together a ripped 20 isn't a crime, if that's all he did...

I'll make a guess here, but there's an old trick where you take a dozen bills and cut one at the 1/12th point, the second at the 2/12ths point, third at the 3/12ths point, etc... then you tape them together so that a 2/12ths goes with an 9/12ths piece, in the end you get 13 bills that are 11/12ths in length. That would explain the counterfeiting for a taped bill.
posted by bobo123 at 6:33 PM on April 15, 2006

It's hard to believe anyone could be stupid enough to try that, if for no other reason than the serial number on the left side of the bill wouldn't match the one on the right side.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 6:47 PM on April 15, 2006

It's probably the corner-clipping scam. Clip one corner off of four twenties (so you can still pass them legally). Now get a two-dollar bill and tape all four "$20" corners on it. You use a two-dollar bill because then if you glance at the top you see "TW..." Banks reported a sudden run on two-dollar bills at some point when this became the hot new street scam, apparently. This was detailed in the book "Hoaxes & Scams" by Carl Sifakis. It sounds like it'd be easy to spot, but we're all zombies sometimes and that's the way they gitcha. Except for those super hyper self-aware dorks.
posted by user92371 at 7:03 PM on April 15, 2006

I saw a TV news article about someone who pasted the sides of a 50 to a single dollar bill, then paid for something at the state fair with it. It had a huge "one" on the backside.

Still, pretty brain dead thing to do if you're already in legal trouble.
posted by delmoi at 7:42 PM on April 15, 2006