The Masked Cartoonist, a.k.a. Rick Ray was an artist in Euclid Ohio. In 1975 he started drawing on everything blank, indicator boxes, backs of signs, any surface clean and drawable. For 2 1/2 years the Euclid Police were after him. At their evening meetings before they went out on patrol, their last words were, "lets get the Masked Cartoonist tonight!" By June of 1977, the city had thousands of Masked Cartoonist drawings everywhere, made the front page of The Euclid News Journal twice, and was finally caught.
A friend of his (over 18) talked the Masked Cartoonist (age 17) into going out drawing one hot summer night in June and at about 1:00 am in the morning a patrol car pulled up while the Masked Cartoonist was drawing on a sign. Within minutes, just about the whole police force showed up, including off duty officers. They argued over who would get to bring him in, the highest ranking officer there won the argument.
At the police station, the Masked Cartoonist was treated very well, drawing pictures for the officers kids. He was then released to the custody of his brother John.
When the court dates finally came around, the friend who was over 18 was sentenced to clean garbage trucks for a few weeks on hot summer days. The Masked Cartoonist who was under 18 had to go before a substitute referee. She said, "you're charged with defacing public property". The Masked Cartoonists reply was, "if you really think about what I was doing, I was putting faces on public property, no defacing it". That broke the ice. She said, "your punishment is, you have to clean off all your work". The Masked cartoonist replied, "the only thing that'll take that off is gasoline, do you want me walking all over Euclid with a can of gas?" She said, "forget it, just don't do it anymore".
