It Fair Makes One Yearn For The Days When Symbols Like '$#!+' Were Used To Denote Swearing

I'm not much of a fan of Frank Miller's over-hard-boiled writing on 'All-Star Batman and Robin The Boy Wonder'; it's as if he's writing Sin City with capes, and given the solid work he's done on the character twice before, it's rather disappointing.

I find its over-the-top-ness mildly amusing, though - which is almost a shame, as if I actively disliked it I'd be able to use the phrase 'Wholly Crap Batman', but as tempting as that is, I have to be honest and admit to more of a 'meh' reaction.

Anyway, it turns out that the latest issue (10) of the book has been pulled and pulped by DC Comics, because it featured Batgirl and some criminals sparring and swearing - with the black bars (in the speech balloons) which were there to obscure the naughty words not being dark enough to actually, um, obscure the naughty words.

Want to see the pages, and see Batgirl saying and being called rude things? Well then, brace for strong language and click here.

It's mildly amusing, sure, but it does seem to raise some questions about the production process involved - why actually go to the trouble of having someone letter the words into the balloons, just to impose black bars over the top of the letters? Why not just put in a bar of appropriate length? Given that much comic lettering is done on computers anyway now (offhand, I think that this title's computer-lettered by Comicraft, though I could be wrong), why not just save yourself the potential hassle? It's all rather strange.

It's hard to imagine that DC Comics are deliberately trying to stir up the publicity here, as they're very conservative when it comes to the characters they own, and so I don't see how this is anything other than a rather silly production error. Still, given that the book stars the comic character who's this year's biggest box office draw, you'd think a closer eye would be paid to such things, wouldn't you?