One of the problems with censorship is that what we can imagine is usually far worse than what’s actually being censored, something which I realized while reading the next graphic novel to be bowdlerized by at patron at my local library. I already told you about what he or she did to Wonder Woman. What was done to the Justice Society of America is even more amusing.

The latest collection to get the Wite-Out treatment is JSA: The Liberty Files, which is a bit ironic, don’t you think? A book with the word “liberty” in the title being censored?

As before, the book is filled with numerous instances of what I assume to be words such as “hell” or “damn” or “Christ” being obscured. But what this censor doesn’t seem to realize is what happens in the mind of a reader when facing such blanks, or as in the case of the page on display, replacements, such as the kind encountered when watching movies which, as the euphemism goes, have been edited for television.

I don’t know what goes through your mind when you read a character saying “Who [and what] are you?,” but if you’re anything like me, it’s far worse that what was probably originally lettered there, which I’m assuming was something as bland as “Who the Hell are you?”

So the censor, in his or her efforts to save my soul by blanking out the rather tame epithets which comics usually allow (or rather, the souls of those supposed impressionable little kiddies, as my soul is beyond redemption), has given me room to imagine the most feared curse word of them all.

Doesn’t he or she get that?

But here’s the funniest part—not only does this unseen censor not mind the fact that Superman is announcing “I’m the guy who’s about to take your friggin’ head off” in the page’s final panel, but he or she has actually taken care to correct “friggin'” to “frigging” to ensure proper spelling and punctuation. After all, we wouldn’t want those kids to get into the bad habit of dropping those g’s, would we?

Personally, if I were the one wielding the Wite-Out, I would have thought “friggin'” far more offensive than any “damn” or “hell” which was removed. I know, I know … I shouldn’t expect logic from anyone unbalanced enough to do this. But a part of me still expects consistency, even from a censor.