Sunday, August 24, 2008

Wow. We Do Not Approve

Rarely are we disgusted. Rarely are we offended by comics. Rarely are we disgusted by violence. Rarely are we offended by violence in comics. However, we saw this image from Avatar Press' first issue of Crossed and it pretty much damn near freaked us out:



So, what's up with our reaction? For one, it is worth knowing that we knew nothing about this upcoming title beyond the solicitation in Previews. It so shocked, no disturbed us, that we did a bit of sleuthing and found this article on Newsarama. Okay, interesting premise ... but the images of people being thrown alive from what appears to be a moving plane, we could do without. Flying is disturbing enough, we just don't need this kind of imagery floating around our grey matter at 30,000 feet. Some of you might be freaked out at the more obvious murder angle, or perhaps violence against women (or the elderly, or anyone else for that matter). Others may cheer for violence in all it's forms. Even we wonder how this differs from the senseless violence not shown, but usually understood, in many of the superhero books we crave. Another caveat: We've always liked Garth Ennis's writing, but this seems to have gone too far for us. Not our cup of tea. Still, it does point to the diversity of markets for graphic fiction that something like this could be published. So, what say you? Where does this fall in your acceptability continuum? Perhaps we are getting old. Sigh.

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