So, I tend not to post on a few things coming out as new news, either because of apathy or because other people tend to communicate my thoughts more effectively. One such debacle is DC’s recent fiasco with an issue of All-Star Batman and Robin (or, as long-time readers of the blog may remember it, “That book written in Idiot Pentameter”) where Frank Miller wrote out the swear words “so that the editor could space them correctly” and then black bars got put under them. In a printing error due to the different shades of black on the computer screen, the words ended-up being perfectly visible behind the black bars when printed. DC fixed the error, but not before issues had already shipped out with the swearing, including the use of the C-word.

Now the reason why I bring this up is because according to a statement made by DC on Newsarama, DC is instituting a new review policy of their books after their printed to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again, as well as not using the actual swear words beneath black bars again like that.

Well why the heck weren’t they doing this in the first place?! Are you telling me that at comics companies, people just print the books up and no one picks one up and takes a look to make sure the pages weren’t put on backwards or something?! Maybe this explains ASBAR in its entirety – no one actually paid attention to what Miller was doing and never picked up the book because they were too busy reading the awesomeness of Blue Beetle.

Furthermore, they were using the actual swear words “for correct spacing?” Oh, that’s complete horse crap. It’s four freaking little letters. One could easily have written “cant” or “dann” under the bars and had the same effect. And whatever happened to just using ampersands and pound signs for swearing? It worked for Judd Winick’s Outsiders.

Of course, while it’s certainly DC’s screw-up, I think blame for all this eventually comes back to Frank Miller for feeling the need to include this crap in a Batman book in the first place.

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