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Originally posted by Ian Jane
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Ok, the most nudity you get is a little bit of ass crack, that is it. One little black line. Here, I put this together for you guys to see how its been messed with:
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Totally not cool. I had read about Marvel doing this with some of their Essential titles, but didn't realize Dark Horse were doing it too. There's a good article that I read a while back covering this here...Originally posted by Robin Bougie View Post
http://groovyageofhorror.blogspot.co...ssentials.htmlComment
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Very strange. It wouldn't surprise me to see Marvel do it (as they obviously did) but it DOES surprise me that Dark Horse did.
As an ass man, I find this unacceptable!Rock! Shock! Pop!Comment
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I collected many issues of the original run of this comic back in the late 80s, but sold them off years ago. Pretty good stories extending from the film franchise as I recall. Interesting review there on Amazon talking about how this reprint has apparently been edited/altered from the original.Originally posted by Alex K. View PostComment
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I have originals of the six black and white issues kicking around here somehwere. Mark Nelson's line work was killer in those.Rock! Shock! Pop!Comment
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The Aliens comics were altered very slightly in that the names Hicks and Newt were changed to Wilks and Billy years later to not upset the continuity of the Alien films. The 2nd series (also in the TPB) has some of the best Airbrushed art I've ever seen in a comic."Ah! By god's balls what licentiousness!"
Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom.Comment
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Yeah, I have that one too - it was four issues, right? The early Aliens comics from DH were great.Originally posted by Alex K. View Post
So I got an explantion re: the Conan stuff from a friend of mine who works as an editor at Dark Horse - I just want his permission to post it before I do so (I'm sure he won't mind but I still want to ask first!). He's on the west coast so he's probably still asleep.Rock! Shock! Pop!Comment
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In addition to the butt blocking, what's up with the adding of dialogue, and reformatting of the panel size and word balloons in Robin's examples? The loss of detail in the reproduction also quite sucks.Comment
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To be fair, the dialog free version shown here wasn't how it originally appeared. It had the same text, but this scan is taken from a wordless version that Alter Ego magazine reprinted. The art is the same though, and doesn't explain why it should have been reformatted and had the text moved around.Comment
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Here's the response from Philip Simon, my pal at Dark Horse:
"Hello, fellow comic book fans - the censorship claims made against Dark Horse are false. Dark Horse did not censor the Savage Tales #4 "The Dweller in the Dark" Conan story, and proper research wasn't done before those claims were posted. That original "Conan panels" post is very misleading as it's labeled now - but I'll explain how you can relabel it so it's more accurate and won't lead people to false assumptions about censorship. I have the original comics here - and from what I can tell, it seems that Marvel editors (who made publishing decisions in the early 1970s with the Comics Code Authority watching over their shoulders) are to blame.
Check this out: "The Dweller in the Dark" first ran in Conan the Barbarian #12 in color (Dec. 1971). I have the printed 1971 issue right here in front of me. On story page 5 in that issue, you'll see that the lady's butt is covered completely. The butt was COVERED when the story first ran in color. I do not have access to the original art, so I don't know what the artist turned in (the "purest" iteration of the image would be the original art board), but once again: the butt is covered in the color 1971 story, where it first ran. Marvel reprinted "The Dweller in the Dark" in black and white a few years later in Savage Tales #4 (May 1974). I have a printed copy of that right in front of me, too. On page 53 in Savage Tales #4, you'll see that Marvel made several changes to the panel, shortening the panel's height, re-lettering the word balloons in the panel, and even EXPOSING that butt a little. (gasp!) The looser content restrictions on the B&W magazine format in the 70s could have allowed the Marvel editor way back when to show off a little cheek in the artwork when his team was reformatting the story for a B&W magazine. (That's the final image in your friend's image sequence.) I
n Dark Horse's Savage Sword of Conan Vol. 1 reprint collection - which is a reprint series for the black and white Conan stories only - "The Dweller in the Dark" appears EXACTLY as it's seen in Marvel's Savage Tales #4, with that cheek showing as it originally showed in 1974. I don't think the story EVER showed a fully-exposed female butt in print. Can your friend provide a full-page scan, showing that fully-exposed butt panel in context, if it's not doctored?
It's easy to doctor images these days, as we all know, and that progression of panels your friend posted is very misleading. Censorship is an extremely hurtful claim. (Also, it's odd that there are no word balloons in that first posted Conan panel. It's possible that Barry Smith drew a fully-exposed butt, and then Marvel editors - with the Comics Code Authority over their shoulders in the 70s - had to "adjust the butt" in order to run the story in a color comic.) As far as I can tell, after researching things a bit and taking into account that I don't know if that first panel was doctored or not, I think the panels should be labeled this way: 1971 (Artist probably turns this in) - 1971 (Marvel runs covered butt in color for comic newsstands) - 1974 (Marvel runs a less-covered butt for magazine newsstands)... 2007 (Dark Horse reprints the B&W story, doing an archival job and not changing anything!!)... If the story was censored, it was something Marvel decided to do and put in print decades ago, when the Comics Code Authority was something people actually obeyed. Dark Horse's Savage Sword of Conan trade paperback series is an archival program. Savage Sword of Conan Volume 1 (Dec. 2007), page 107, which I have right in front of me, is EXACTLY the same as Marvel's Savage Tales #4, page 53 - so that's that. We reprinted the story and did no wrong. Censorship is disgusting. If you want to see some saucy, violent, uncensored Conan art, I humbly refer you to the run of Dark Horse's Conan the Cimmerian comics that I edited recently and the current King Conan comics that I'm working on. No censorship there. And a final word on some of those censorship claims that were made so quickly against Dark Horse without proper research: "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." -Mark Twain"
So there you go, looks like Marvel probably doctored this stuff first, and the trickle down effect is now seen.Rock! Shock! Pop!Comment
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Interesting!
So it *was* censorship from Marvel, and Darkhorse just printed it not knowing anything about it. I got that first butt panel from the new issue of ALTER EGO magazine #105, which has a giant article all about Censorship in comics.
There was nothing in that scan I made that was "a lie". But he's right that it does paint a negative assumption about Dark Horses involvement in censorship.Comment
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Now I feel bad for besmirching the good name of Dark Horse. Should have assumed that it was leftover censorship from Marvel. I mean, who else would do that, right? DUH. They have a long history of it, including what they did to their Tomb of Dracula trade essential collections:
http://groovyageofhorror.blogspot.co...ssentials.htmlComment
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Marvel restored the above referenced nudity in the hardcover Tomb of Dracula Omnibus 3. I guess you gotta pay a premium if you want to see cartoon ta-tas.Comment
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But the nudity is still censored in the Essential Tomb of Dracula B&W newsprint editions, correct?Rock! Shock! Pop!Comment
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http://www.bookdepository.com/Hairsh.../9781906838270Comment
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