His work came to the attention of the FBI during their investigation of serial killings in another Florida city, and they forwarded it to Diana's local police after ruling him out as a suspect.

The jury found him guilty, and his sentence included supervised probation, during which any art or writings he produced were subject to unannounced, warrantless searches and seizure by the police.

[4] His mother placed him in an after school art program where, for one assignment, his class was to collect seashells on the beach and incorporate them into a collage made with plaster of Paris.

[3] Diana began drawing comics in high school, influenced by macabre subject matter such as Topps Ugly stickers, Wacky Packages and Creature Feature cards.

Publications that he drew inspiration from included Heavy Metal, Creepy, Eerie, Basil Wolverton's Plop!, Bernie Wrightson's run on Swamp Thing,[4] and the work of Jack Davis.

[3] He also enjoyed underground comics from creators such as S. Clay Wilson, Greg Irons, Rory Hayes, and Jack Chick's religious tracts, which he describes as "sick".

He eventually came to so loathe the donating of money into collection baskets following sermons that spoke of burning in Hell, his Sunday bible study class, and the denouncing of popular music among his fellow congregants that he stopped going to church by age 16.

The content of his work was often characterized by nudity, violence, caricature of the human form and scatological themes, which he says he produces in order to "open people's eyes" by shocking them.

Later that year Diana created another zine called Angelfuck, which was named after a song from the Misfits album Static Age, of which he published three issues.

[6] Later, after Diana had printed Boiled Angel #7 and 8 (the final issue of that series) and a new graphic novel called Sourball Prodigy, he received a total of ten letters from a police officer named Michael Flores.

[7] In 1992 the Assistant State's Attorney, Stuart Baggish, later came across the books and sent Diana a certified letter that said he was being charged with obscenity,[5] pursuant to Florida Statute § 847.011(1): once for publishing the material, once for distributing it, and once for advertising it.

Baggish also called as a witness Tampa psychologist Sidney Merin, who stated that people "of questionable personality strengths" could be aroused by the comic book.

"[5][6] On March 29, 1994,[6] after a week-long trial,[9] the jury found him guilty after deliberating for 90 minutes,[5][11] making Diana the first artist to be convicted of obscenity in the United States.

[7][10] According to Robyn Blumner, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida, the comics' political and anti-establishment themes, which included its depiction of pedophile priests, crosses smeared with feces, and a drawing of two eggs frying atop a Bible with the caption "This is your brain on religion" should have protected Diana from an obscenity conviction under the First Amendment, but instead inflamed the jury toward a conviction.

[4] Judge Walter Fullerton ordered Diana held in jail for four days[4] until sentencing without bail, which drew criticism from publications such as St. Petersburg Times and Mother Jones magazine, with the latter's Sean Henry stating that while this was the norm for murderers and drug lords, it is not so for those convicted of misdemeanors.

Fullerton also ordered Diana to follow a state-supervised psychiatric evaluation[5][6] at his own expense,[4] to take an ethics-in-journalism class, and ruled that he was to submit to unannounced, warrantless searches of his personal papers by the police and deputized probation officers from the Salvation Army, which would allow them to seize any drawings or writings.

Susan Alston of the CBLDF branch in Northampton, Massachusetts argued, "There have been about half-a-dozen comic book obscenity cases in the United States, but most involved store owners--and nobody was ever ordered to stop drawing.

Richard Wilson, a national officer of the First Amendment Lawyers Association, called the sentence "absolutely illegal", saying that it amounted to unconstitutional prior restraint.

During that time, Diana took up painting, and he produced one for Wired magazine that depicted himself as a tiny figure in the courtroom and the judge and prosecutors as monsters surrounding him, which he jokingly suggested violated his probation.

Upon conclusion of the exam, which involved an interview, an examination of his work, true/false questions, and a Rorschach test, she charged him $1,300, informing him that she had spent 10 hours reviewing his comics.

blurb that ran in issue #7,[3] and the Court agreed that it was improper to convict someone for advertising material that had not yet been created since Diana could not, at the time, know the nature or character of the work.

[7][9] In 1996, while his case was still on appeal in Florida, Diana moved to New York City, where he was granted permission to serve out his sentence, and fulfill his community service obligation through volunteer work for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

[3] Mike Diana's legal troubles inspired Busted Jesus Comix, a 2005 off-Broadway play written by David Johnston and directed by Gary Shrader.

The play borrows many particulars from the legal case and punishments meted out to Mike Diana, while the character of the comic artist in Busted Jesus and the background story are entirely fictional.