Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, dark horse, milo manara, pages

Three Pages Removed From Complete Milo Manara Volume 1 From Dark Horse Comics

Published Mon, 21 May 2012 15:00:52 -0500

Last updated Mon, 21 May 2012 15:14:36 -0500

Tony asks on the TCJ message board, regarding the upcoming collection of the work of Milo Manara by Dark Horse Comics;

Is it true that 3 pages have been excised from Dark Horse's MANARA EROTICA VOL. 1, with a notice on the introduction but no explanation of what's missing, although it's clear that is fictional sex with a fictional minor?

Fantagraphics' Kim Thompson replies;

To be more precise, Manara himself excised those pages from ALL editions of this story years ago because he himself thought he'd gone too far, and yes, at least part of them comprise a scene that makes explicit the subplot of the exasperated mother who calms her unruly son down through, uh, unconventional means you could not print on a NEWSWEEK cover. (It's not impossible that Manara's decision was partly brought about by blowback from nervous publishers at the time –the scene is definitely actionable in any country with laws against the depiction of children involved in sexual activity– but I get the impression he genuinely feels he'd crossed a line and excised the pages as a matter of taste.)

This scene, which is in the 1980s Catalan edition of the first CLICK! (which can still be picked up second hand for as little as thirty bucks on Amazon, by the way, if you think one page of child-wanking is worth thirty bucks), but not in the 1990s iteration from NBM, doesn't account for all three of the pages, though, and surprisingly no one has yet dug them up and posted them on the internet. (I think I at one point heard the scene with the dog a few pages later was also trimmed, but in that case the cut occurred even before the Catalan edition.)

Anyway, those pages are in none of the current editions, and if you trawl the internet you can find flare-ups of indignant readers in Italian and French bemoaning their absence in their current local editions. But Dark Horse has been scrupulous about NOT censoring the books on their end — as I think should be obvious from the level of explicitness throughout. Some of the stuff is jaw-droppingly filthy, especially for a Dark Horse book (even without the kiddie porn). But so pretty!

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