The U.S. comic code was a joke !

[osborn_fr]

Agreed, very interesting stuff! I wonder if Marvel had to give them permission also to make these changes? It also raises an interesting question concerning original art. Were the alterations done to the originals or to stats and are there two versions of the art now, original (USA) and altered (France)?

 

Interesting questions.

Marvel never gave original art to french publishers/re-printers.

Alterations were done to stats.

Some of thoses prints with original alteration art on it are collected by some guys.

I got a few pages myself but it was a long time ago, i sold them and i can tell you that they don't worth a lot.

[osborn_fr]

I remember cryptkeeper59 mentioning the censorship before.

 

One example was where the mummy was removed from Silver Surfer #7 for the cover of Strange N° 1.

 

 

 

That's a typical example

[osborn_fr]

In the 70's another publisher (Artima) tried to circumvent this July 16, 1949 law in their "Pocket Comics" title which carried characters such as Hulk, Ka-Zar, Ghost Rider, Aquaman, Kamandi among others. To do so, they had their books labeled: For Mature Readers and were shelved with Playboy and other underground-style comics! These were generally in the back dark corner of newsstands and a place where as a kid, one feared to tread because you'd get dirty looks from moms in the store thinking you were trying to get a sneek peak at the "porn" magazines.

 

As the title suggests, Pocket Comics, these were in a digest format and could literally been carried around in your back pockets. The art reproduction was therefore much smaller and of poorer quality. To add insult to injury, despite circumventing the law, the editor deemed it necessary to mess with the art board to rearrange panels and have staff artists redraw entire panels with no consideration of the original artists' style!

 

thank you for this precision, that's indeed a part of the story i forgot to mention.

[mica]

we'll buy all your comics mica

[Scrooge]

thank you for this precision, that's indeed a part of the story i forgot to mention.

 

No problem. Most of the info was lifted from a French site and translated for the board's interests. I did add the mention about walking to the back of the store and taking advantage of that to look at Lui, Hara-Kiri, L'Echo des Savanes and others titillating material

[dgillock]

Really interesting thread and thanks for sharing!

Also , interesting to note is that most (if not all) of the examples you give from the US originals were covered under the much looser 1971 revision of the CCA. Much of what is considered standard in Bronze comics would have been considered impossible under the original 1954 version of the Code. Pretty much all Horror- including any vampire or werewolf characters were completely off-limits until the 70's

[Comicdey]

That was a fun read. Sorry you had to read boiled down versions of good ol' marvel scary comics in France.

[esquirecomics]

Fascinating discussion and a great contribution.

[That Ron Dude]

Thanks. The pettiness is startling.

[otherworldcomics]

Thanks for the imformative look into French censorship. Wow, that has got to be the most ramdom and ridiculous thing I ever seen! I mean, if it was specifically for the blood and gore factor I could understand it a bit, though I disagree with any cencsorship at all, but this...They took out the barks of the dogs/wolves! How in the world is that too violent? And to remove the tongue from characters...What kind of crack were they smoking.

[otherworldcomics]

but the hidden aim was to protect the french comics industry against belgians

Sounds like a worthy cause.

 

But they make such wonderful waffles!

[weirdling-migration]

They took out the barks of the dogs/wolves! How in the world is that too violent? And to remove the tongue from characters...What kind of crack were they smoking.

 

I just figured they didn't want to translate the barking And that it looks like that tongue just got mis-colored.