particularly the smaller publishers. It was also telling when the comics industry suffered the one-two knockout punch in the mid-1990s of the Oklahoma City comics bust and teenage cartoonist Mike Diana becoming the first artist in U.S. history found guilty of obscenity in his home state of Florida. The Mike Diana case was absurd and horrible: at the time, Mike was still a teenager, drawing his own small-press photocopy horror comic BOILED ANGEL for a circulation of about 200 subscribers. The local police, having been unsuccessful in associating Mike with a series of unsolved serial killings, thereafter went after him for his artwork and comics, which were most definitely horrific and provocative by nature. They crucified Mike, and though the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund got behind Mike's case and mounted a defense, it was ineffectual and Mike was found guilty on obscenity charges. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund's attorney petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case; they declined, and thus the obscenity ruling against Mike stands. It was a sickening miscarriage of justice, and it played out in the context of another volatile obscenity case involving comics. The Oklahoma City retailers were targetted and caught by in a 'sting' operation by a coaltion of local fundamentalist Christians and law enforcement officials. The retailers lost everything -- their business, their homes, one of the two retailers lost his family -- while the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund tried to rally support and defend them, as usual WITHOUT any involvement or support from the major publishers; it's always the freelancers, fans, and smaller publishers who support the CBLDF, but in the Oklahoma City case their efforts failed. In the end, it never came to trial, the retailers settled out of court and thus were beaten. Now, there is a bit of a happy ending, though not for comics. The bastards behind that Oklahoma City prosecution then went after a local video store, causing the internationally-reported furor over the seizure of the German classic THE TIN DRUM; unlike the comics industry, the video industry has major legal muscle via the Video Software Dealers Association, and the American Civil Liberties Union (who had not mounted any meaningful support fighting the comics bust) got involved. The story was picked up on the wires, attracting the attention of the entire film industry, and the fundamentalists and their local law enforcement coalition was crushed by the outcry against the arrests, and the effective legal defense of the national video retailers on behalf [continues]