chael Alfred Malone, one of the world's great tattoo artists, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Tuesday April 17,

2007 in Chicago, IL. He was 64.

Malone was born in San Rafael, California April 25, 1942, to Francis Barnett "Mickey" Malone and Evelyn June Essex

Malone. Mickey Malone worked in the shipyards in the north Bay Area and later as a house painter. Evelyn Malone

was a homemaker with a strong artistic streak, creating handcrafts, earrings, and dolls. The Malones raised Yorkshire

Terriers at their Malobar Kennels during the Seventies and Eighties.

Better known by his nom de tattoo Rollo Banks, Malone was a master of classic American and Oriental style tattooing

like his peer Don Ed Hardy. He apprenticed under Sailor Jerry in Honolulu, taking over his shop from 1973-99. He

was an early proponent of tribal tattooing and created the modern version of the armband tattoo. He also

standardized the look and packaging of tattoo "flash," the designs displayed on the walls of tattoo shops worldwide.

Malone's Rollomatic and Sailor Jerry Bulldog Shaders are considered to be the finest custom tattoo machines made.

In later years, Malone's work appeared at Chicago's Ann Nathan Gallery and the Honolulu Academy of Art. The book

Bullseyes and Black Eyes was a collection of his work and contained an extensive interview with him. Malone was also

a collector of art, Japanese toys, and antique carnival chalk figures.

Malone is survived by his brother Steven Malone of California as well as his closest friends Kandi Everett and Keith

Underwood, and his second wife Margaret Moser, who edited Malone's stories until his death.

Michael Malone, a tattoo artist renowned among his peers for helping to popularize and standardize tattooing through

the vivid images of dragons, daggers, cartoon characters and crests that he distributed to tattoo parlors around the

world, died on April 17 at his home in Chicago. He was 64.

Margaret Moser, 1994

Michael Malone

Mr. Malone committed suicide after a long illness, his business partner, Keith Underwood, said.

Mr. Malone, who assumed the pen name Rollo Banks early in his career, was noted for standardizing “the flash,” the

11-by-17-inch posters on tattoo parlor walls that show up to a dozen images from which clients make their choices.

“What Rollo did was produce clean yet powerful tattoo designs and circulate them across the globe,” said Chris

Midkiff, editor of Tattoo Artist magazine. Before Mr. Malone, Mr. Midkiff said, “most tattoo shops hand-drew their

own flash. Mostly it was bad drawing by people who weren’t really artists.”

Mr. Malone was also known for intricately blending iconic Asian and Western images, sometimes with a dash of

iconoclastic humor. In one design he combined a fiercely protective Buddhist deity, Fudo, with Bluto, the menacing

thug from Popeye cartoons.

In an interview on Tuesday, Don Ed Hardy, a noted tattooist and the author of a 2002 book about Mr. Malone, “Bull’s-

Eyes & Black Eyes” (Hardy Marks), described a nearly-full-body tattoo that Mr. Malone created for one client.

“He did a shortened kimono, open down the middle of the torso, down the back to the thighs, and just past the

elbows,” Mr. Hardy said. “He drew a huge multicolor Godzilla on the guy’s back, and on the front and arms were

other figures from Japanese monster movies.” The price: “More than $5,000.”

Mr. Hardy said Mr. Malone was the first tattoo artist to distribute flash sheets featuring Hawaiian designs from the

time before missionaries arrived in the 1800s — arm, leg and wrist bands of interlocked triangles, diamonds and

arrows.

Last October he was one of six artists featured in an exhibition, “Marked Men: Fine Art from 6 Influential Tattooists,”

at the Old Dominion University Gallery in Virginia.

Michael Alfred Malone was born on April 25, 1942, in San Rafael, Calif., a son of Francis and Evelyn Malone. His

father was a house painter who made kites from brown paper and encouraged his son to paint images on them. Mr.

Malone is survived by his brother, Steven, of Santa Rosa, Calif.

Steeping himself in California’s 1960s counterculture, Mr. Malone worked in San Francisco on rock shows that had

psychedelic lighting while studying ceramics and carpentry. He moved to Manhattan in the late ’60s and, under the

tutelage of a local tattooist, began decorating clients at his downtown apartment. In 1971 he helped organize an

exhibition called “Tattoo!” at the Museum of American Folk Art in Manhattan.

A year later Mr. Malone moved to Hawaii and became a protégé of the artist known as Sailor Jerry Collins, who was

famous in the industry for introducing a sophisticated style and vivid new colors to the skulls, roses, hearts, tigers and

sailing ships of classic tattooing. When Mr. Collins died in 1973, Mr. Malone bought Mr. Collins’s company, China Sea

Tattoo, in the Chinatown district of Honolulu, and with it his mentor’s designs.

With those images and his own designs, Mr. Malone started several mail-order businesses, including one called Mr.

Flash. Mr. Midkiff of Tattoo Artist magazine said that under the Mr. Flash logo Mr. Malone produced approximately

300 sheets with more than 3,000 designs.

“Rollo educated the bulk of the tattooers everywhere,” he said.

Mr. Malone, a 300-pound six-footer with a close-cropped beard, never made a fortune from his business and never

took himself too seriously. In an interview with Mr. Midkiff last year he criticized tattooers who think they are

“building a monument to themselves.”

Tattooers are “outlaws,” he said. “Like this tattoo I did yesterday — it said ‘Scalawag.’ And I like that. It’s part of who

we are: scalawags.”