My Censored and Uncensored Comic

Ok, so I live in an area where Greenpeace members recruit rather strongly and often. The morning I drew this comic, I was harassed by a Greenpeace member once more. I told her, "you know, I've talked to you Greenpeace people like 20 times." "Oh, so you're a member then!" This pissed me off. Not sure why. It may be a combination of many things. Though they are individually nice people who do care about the environment, they have asked me with too much gusto pretending to care about my day too many times. "No," I told the girl. "Why not?" she replied with too much enthusiasm. I shook my head at her for a few seconds. "Just leave me alone." She was nice enough to stop. These nice assholes have made me hate the environment. So I decided to take my sometimes passive aggressive nature and apply it in my comics platform to make what I considered one of my best comics. That is the pure unedited version of what I came up with


Satirical of vengeance movies and adopting a different, gritty style, I produced everything I could have wanted. Carolynn, my editor, is extremely supportive of me so when I asked for extra space, she was nice enough to give it to me. The space allowed me for more cautious pacing with a build up of three panels and even allowed me to split the joke into two panels. The second to last panel reveals the satirical spirit of the comic while setting up a bombastic last line. I did not think that last line was all that strong. The gun and gear were obviously for paintballing purposes and the line is a play on one Greenpeace's questions to draw you in. The fire only added more ridiculousness. Sure, it was violent, but Psychobevo (another comic printed in the Daily Texan) was just as violent sometimes if not more. Carolynn likes it and will put it on the page. Things were fine.

Some hours later, Carolynn calls me to tell me theres some trouble with the comic and asks me to come by the office. As it turned out, the managing editor thought the comic was too strong. Some of the language was too much for him and I found his request to change some of the language, particularly the last line, to be reasonable. I had not remembered the topic of someone snapping and gearing up to be a touchy subject given the somewhat recent Virginia Tech incident. I changed the last line to "Have you ever been paintballin, bitch?" Still snappy and more clear of John's intent, the line had the same impact as before without being as so malicious towards Greenpeace. The comic was censored/edited, but I did not feel it had been neutered. However, the next comic would be a bit different.

Here is the censored version