The Comics Journal

 

Geist read­ers who take in the Globe and Mail will have seen a sober­ing fea­ture not long ago report­ing the jail­ing, flog­ging and even mur­der­ing of car­toon­ists who dare to sat­i­rize the gov­ern­ments of var­i­ous coun­tries, offi­cial reli­gions, promi­nent cit­i­zens, etc. The car­toons in ques­tion were so gen­tle as to seem innocu­ous to North Americans who assume that mak­ing fun of pub­lic fig­ures is not only a right, but a nec­es­sary check on those with power. And we can’t help think­ing that these things don’t hap­pen here, eh? The last two issues of The Comics Journal, an American trade pub­li­ca­tion, cov­ers the story of Michael Diana, a comics artist-writer who pub­lishes some of his own stuff. Last March, the State of Florida found Diana guilty on three counts of pub­lish­ing, dis­trib­ut­ing and adver­tis­ing obscene mate­r­ial. He got three years’ pro­ba­tion and a $3000 fine. He was also ordered “to undergo psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion within thirty days of sen­tenc­ing, main­tain full-time employ­ment, serve eight hours of com­mu­nity ser­vice per week, have no con­tact with chil­dren under eigh­teen years of age, take a course in jour­nal­ism ethics [at his own expense], and cre­ate no new obscene mate­r­ial through­out the pro­ba­tion for pub­lic or per­sonal use.” If Florida (the state that gave us Anita Bryant) doesn’t like what the psych exam says, they can order Diana to move at least one mile away from any schools attended by minors. And any time Florida wants to make sure Diana isn’t cre­at­ing any new obscene mate­r­ial, they can search his place, and he has to let them. Murder, can­ni­bal­ism, bes­tial­ity, dis­mem­ber­ment and sex­ual vio­lence fig­ure strongly in Michael Diana’s work, and even though he says he means to shock peo­ple, so that they will have to see how ter­ri­fy­ing and ugly some of our social prac­tices and atti­tudes are, it’s not easy to like his work. But — sub­mit to peri­odic searches? Stay away from chil­dren? And who among us could “pass” a court-ordered psy­cho­log­i­cal evaluation?