This link from The Groovy Age of Horror Censored Essentials has been going around the internets for a few days. Apparently, when Marvel reprinted an Essentials version of the TOMB OF DRACULA magazine, they took it upon themselves to cover the naked boobies drawn with loving care by Gene Colan with wispy shreds of cloth. (You’ll note that the perky areolae have been left in place.)

Everyone has been yakking about this. Tom, Dirk, and best of all John Jakala.

Dirk goes on a fairly wide-ranging rampage about how mainstream comics today can’t be truy adult or child friendly but can only appeal to the twiight world of tweeners from the ages of 20-40. While we wouldn’t say that showing naked titties is the mark of maturity, it is instructive to see that 30 years ago, we were a bit looser and freer with our low-cost entertainment. While the sight of female frontal nudity usually strikes us as exploitive and juvenile, these pages somehow have an aura of Swingin’ Seventies Sophistication about them. Maybe it’s just that Colan was drawing in the era of real boobs, and not the hard plastic ones everyone seems to prefer these days. Ah, nostalgia.

At any rate, we’re not reproducing the panels here because we try to keep this site PG-13 on the visual side anyway. But the salient point to note is that in the 70s, Marvel published a line of black and white comics magazines sold on newsstands that were aimed at readers squarely over the age of 21. Marvel deemed it more proper to make the material all-ages…ish in a reprint which could easily just been marked “Mature” like the Marvel Knights Line, or RAWHIDE KID or something. Now go back to surfing your internet porn.

This entry was posted on 09/21/06 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Marvel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.