What does it take to be obscene in the eyes of Uncle Sam? A 1973 California case established a three-fold definition: the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the material, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; the material depicts sexual conduct in a "patently offensive" manner; the material, as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

Or, as prosecutor Stuart Baggish interpreted it: "Pinellas County has its own identity. It doesn't have to accept what is acceptable in the bathhouses of San Francisco...and the crack alleys of New York."

Never before has the government successfully prosecuted an artist for obscenity. Not that they haven't tried. There have been numerous cases where a distributor has been found guilty of disseminating so-called obscene material (a McCarthy-era case ruined Bill Gaines' EC Comics but, ultimately led to his creation of MAD magazine). Nailing an individual has proved more difficult because of the Miller test's slippery criteria. The 1966 Massachusetts Supreme Court case against William S. Burroughs ended when the judge determined that Naked Lunch, though offensive, possessed literary merit.

Now, Florida seems to be picking up where Massachusetts left off. The state is famous for going after nasty boys like Jim Morrison (for allegedly unleashing his zipper snake at a Miami concert), 2 Live Crew, and Pee Wee Herman. Ironically, Pinellas County boasts the most famous psychosexual shrine in the world, The Salvador Dali Museum, which features a painting called "The Profanation of the Host," a depraved Eucharist hallucination Dali painted when was the same age as the town's homegrown heretic, Mike Diana.

Though he says he's relieved to be in the city, crack alleys and all, Diana still fears the residual witch hunt from his hometown. He says the best consequence of being found obscene has been increased sales, but the worst is going to bed every night afraid that someone might break down his door and throw him back in jail for drawing an erect penis.

"I'm not a child molester," he drawls in his turtle voice, "I'm just an artist. They don't know what art is down there in Florida."

Although he insists his trailer park childhood was "happy," the sickly loner found something else to inspire his crude, violent drawings: Catholicism. Largo's stream of wealthy retirees who, Diana says, "get senile and start falling for God and stuff," spawned up to four churches per mile. Every Sunday, Diana was being dragged "kicking and screaming" to services, an experience that would later feed Boiled Angel toons like "Get a Prize in Every Box of Jesus Freaks Cereal!" and "Priests Fuck Little Boyz!!"

Of course, all this attention has helped Boiled Angel find its way into zine history and now the racks of Tower Books. Diana's work has garnered an international audience through big city shows and altcomic mainstays like World War 3 and Snake Eyes. With a documentary film about his case in the making, Diana might become the most famously controversial comic artist since R. Crumb.

For others who are 'tooning in the underground, Diana's saga has ominous implications. Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of Maus (first published in zines), believes the case perpetuates a bias against comic art. "There's still an assumption that if it's in comic book form, then it must be for kids," he says. "There's a danger in using children as an excuse for censoring comics. It infantilizes adults."

Peter Kuper, a comic artist who served as an expert witness for Diana's defense, insists prosecutor Baggish played on the fears of the jury to gain a conviction. To add some perspective during the trial, Kuper compared the violent nature of Diana's work to Edvard Munch's, "The Scream." "This is the youth of America screaming out how desperate the situation is," Kuper later said. "What's amazing to me is that [Diana's] talking about victimization: kids being victimized by the church, by authorities, by parents. What happens? He gets totally victimized by the system. It couldn't be more ironic."

Diana's new friends agree. One of his recent collaborators is Kembra, the lead singer of New York's notorious macabre rock band, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. She warns that, even for New Yorkers, Diana's saga has ominous implications. "This might not be as much of a redneck state as Florida, but we're always being censored here," Kembra says, citing the recent rash of bar raids downtown."We're in danger all the time."

While Diana awaits for a response from the Supreme Court, he spends his days churning out new art (like a black-light painting inspired by the Hale-Bopp suicide cult). To help pay off his fines, he works the occasional Friday night at Squeezebox, the pansexual party at a club called Don Hill's. His gig: go-go dancing in drag. Though it might seem incongruous to picture the timid recluse shimmying on the bar in stockings and nosebleed heels, it makes perfect sense. Diana always had the devil inside him, he just was in the wrong place to let it all hang out. His New York sanctuary is divine retribution. As Kuper says, "this will only confirm what they're thinking in Florida. He's with all the drag queens and serial killers now; he hasn't repented one iota."