Shane Bugbee’s dog, Roxanne, is a pit bull, but she doesn’t seem particularly ferocious. She sleeps on the sofa for hours at a stretch and, when approached by a stranger, drags herself to the floor to allow more efficient ear-scratching. Her stump of a tail twitches like a beating heart.
“I put stuff out for examination,” he says. “I don’t edit. It’s all artwork to me. It’s all up to each person’s interpretation. Some people could say those books are obscene. Some people could be horrified by them. Some people could find them entertaining and laugh at the whole thing.”
“Most of the killers deny what they’ve done [even though] they’ve been caught red-handed,” he says. “I’d write to them and always say, “I read about you and some of the stuff I heard just doesn’t seem right. I don’t believe it. I sympathize with you. My dad locked me in the basement too.’ Whatever. I’d lie to them. I’d ask them for their side of the story. Richard Ramirez was at least man enough to admit what he’d done, so I asked him what it was like to watch someone die. He said it was the most powerful feeling in the world.”
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The five subsequent issues of Naked Aggression were printed by professionals. “I remember a couple of times I would use my rent money to publish it and I’d get kicked out two months later. I’d be back in my car or on someone’s couch.” Naked Aggression was distributed free in stores in the suburbs and city. With each issue it attracted more advertisers.
Before his troubles began, Diana had put together eight issues of Boiled Angel in relative obscurity, copying and stapling no more than 300 of each one and mailing them out to the few fans who’d read about it in Factsheet Five or some other zine. His artwork looks like it had been imagined by a sophisticated but troubled 12-year-old: full-page illustrations of mutilated, multilimbed monsters with engorged genitals and dripping orifices; comics about adolescents raping dogs, dogs raping little boys, men sodomizing infants and then processing them into dog food–all rendered in thick splashes of inky gore.
“A lot of really upset, jealous artists complain that his work is horrible and he doesn’t deserve this kind of press. But I think those kinds of debates are good for everyone. People sit around and look and look at Mike Diana’s work and it says what? Priests fuck little boys. Date rape happens. People talk about it, and they’re not watching Jeopardy.
