Several people sent comments to my blog yesterday saying they noticed that my comic on 9-6-05 that featured a porpoise killing a lawyer was published in two different versions. The tame version ran in newspapers and the edgier one ran on my website. What’s up with that, they wonder.
Sometimes I create two versions if I know that newspapers will have a problem with the edgy one. It’s not censorship per se, just a case of keeping the customers happy. I don’t feel artistically stifled because showing the edgy one to 1.5 million people on the web satisfies whatever tiny molecules of artistic integrity I possess.
Here’s the tame one. My editors at United Media had no problem with showing the lawyer being killed, but we negotiated the cause of his demise to look this way.
[missing image]
It’s amusing, I think, but the original version was punchier. See if you can guess why newspapers would have had a problem with this next one.
[missing image]
Apparently there’s an unwritten rule about showing a porpoise with his head in a lawyer’s ass.
I still got complaints about the tame version, but only from people who said my drawing of a porpoise looks more like a dolphin. That offended some people.