Yesterday, Apple banned a comic book they were supposed to sell on their digital apps because it featured “gay sex.” After I reviewed said controversial images, I determined that Apple was right to ban the comic — not for the gay sex, though, but for the life-size hamster goblin committing murder with an egg beater. There’s also explosions, blood, and death.
You can still buy this comic, SAGA #12, on Image and Android apps or you can walk into a real-life store and pick it up, but I don’t know why you’d want to unless you’re OK with nightmares about half-human peacock animorph drag queens and whatnot. The one thing this series actually had going for it was the controversy surrounding the gay sex, and I would have never known this comic existed if I didn’t hear there was gay sex in it. But after I easily looked up the banned images online to see what all the fuss was about, even those didn’t deliver. I actually Googled “gay comic sex” just so I could look at better stuff… lol.
These naughty images Apple so proudly labels as “gay sex” in SAGA #12 are actually two “postage stamp sized” shit stains of what could actually be Tilda Swinton from the Oscars 2009 playing a harmonica. And even if you do define the images as two men giving each other sexual happiness, I can’t imagine how that would change a reader’s world view in any manner — negative or positive. On the off-chance this comic does do that, I’m pretty sure it will be because of the violence-ridden comic book-sized images (featuring the aforementioned rodent/demon) surrounding the postage stamp sized “gay sex.” Gay sex is *real* so why are the detectives at Apple not more offended by the imaginary, creepy stuff?
Maybe they banned the comic not because it had gay sex in it, but because the gay sex just seemed to be stuck into the comic for no fucking reason. I haven’t read the entire comic so I don’t know the context of the scene, but here is what I gathered from the two panes I read:
– The comic book version of MegaMan (who has turned into a drag queen with a peacock getup) found out his friend, a robot prince with a hipster Aryan messenger bag, needs a medic because he is somehow bleeding raspberry Kool-Aid.
– Demon psycho rat pops in to save the day with an egg beater to break what’s already broken and scare young children.
– MegaMan flies away.
I’m sorry, but a gay BJ fits into this how? Also why is it on a TV where the hipster robot’s head should be? Maybe the artists of this comic should have approached gay sex in a less subliminal, blink-you-miss-it way. They had no problem doing that in their other non-banned issues featuring straight sex (below), so why are they sticking these gay sex images into their work like disgruntled Disney animators?
Maybe I’m looking into it too much. Or maybe not enough. Or maybe I should actually read SAGA #12 in its entirety first (lol). Anyway, if everybody is going to get all butthurt over Apple banning a comic for gay sex, at least make sure that comic has gay sex in it that’s worth getting butthurt over (wink)! Or you could just read Curbside by Robert Kirby:
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The whole thing is Apple holds itself out as a beacon of tolerance and equality, but when it gets down to the nitty gritty it has the same double standard that permeates US society: lesbians with strap-ons okay a real dick not.
BTW the robot prince is showing his real feelings as he dies. IOW he’s a homo-robo-prince.