Friday, September 12, 2008

Printing Error Un-Censors Self-Censored Frank Miller

Yes, that was "self-censored."

According to this story in the L.A. Times' "Hero Complex" blog, DC Comics is recalling the latest issue of the Frank Miller written, Jim Lee drawn comics miniseries "All Star Batman and Robin." Not because it's overripe and laughably over the top; every issue of the miniseries is. Not because it's late; the series still hasn't matched the one-year gap between the release of two issues. No, it's because of a printer error that allowed some not-very-nice words to leak out.

Turns out Miller puts blacked-out cuss words on the page and then covers them with black bars. He actually puts the curses on the page so that the black bar will be the right size. Problem is, due to a printer's error the black wasn't opaque, so the words, er, bled through. Here's an example.

That certainly isn't the worst printing error in the history of comics. The former tradition of bad reproduction in comics (which has largely disappeared with the recent upgrade in printing, intended to make you forget the hideous price for the publications) would often make letters in word balloons run together in entirely Comics Code unfriendly ways. Comics writers learned to avoid words like "flick."

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