» About/Submit     » Archive     » Authors     » Search     » Random     » Statistics     » Forum     » RSS Feed     Updates Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday

No. 971: Archie Decensored, Part 1: Our Guns Are Missing

First | Previous | 2025-06-12 | Latest

Archie Decensored, Part 1: Our Guns Are Missing

First | Previous | 2025-06-12 | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/itoons/?comic=971

Strip by: KelpTheGreat

Title panel text: Archie ---- "Our guns are missing"
Archie (over the radio): Mr. Lodge, can you lower a cable to haul away the panda cage?
{In the nearby woods, the two criminals are hunting down Jughead. Jughead holds up his trademark hat on the end of a stick}
Criminal #1: I see him!
SFX: BANG!
{The criminal shoots through Jughead's hat, thinking he's killed the teenager}
{Archie is trying to attach the helicopter's cable to the panda cage}
Archie: If I can just fasten this cable before those goons return!
Criminal #2: Look! The helicopter is taking the pandas away!
Criminal #2 (pointing at Archie): There's the other kid! He's the only one left who can identify us!
Criminal #1 (pointing his gun at Archie): Okay, junior G-man! Here's where you get yours!
SFX: BANG!
{A police officer shoots the criminal's hand, causing him to drop his gun}
Criminal #1: COPS!
Police officer: Don't move, punks! We've got you surrounded!
Criminal #1: You better do as he says, Lefty!

The author writes:

In the Archie digest I scanned this from, this story is censored. I seem to have memories of reading an older (older than the one I scanned, that is; the one I scanned is itself at least 20 years old) digest at one point that had the original, uncensored version of the story, but maybe I'm just making that memory up, as it's extremely easy to spot where they censored it for this printing and let your imagination fill in the gaps. Either way, the censorship of this story is egregious and offensive, nearing 4Kids levels of nonsensical butchery and disregard for the original work. So I took it upon myself to let the world see what this should have looked like all along (more or less), by adding back in the guns and violence. I'm pretty proud of how well it turned out! I'm completely self-taught when it comes to photo editing and I'm not very good at it, so although some edits look bad, I'm pleased with the ones that look passable. In addition to adding guns back in, I fixed a couple minor mistakes, like the lack of comma in the first panel, and the hook in the fourth panel being broken.

I'm sure you'll readily notice how dumb the censorship was without my spelling it out here in these comments, but this has bugged me for years and I don't have anyone else to rant to, so I'm going to spell it out here anyway!
In the second panel (not including the title text as a panel), it's pretty clear that the criminal was supposed to have shot through Jughead's hat, which he naturally assumed was on his head, which would have killed him. This is backed up by Lefty in the fifth panel, who says that Archie is now the only one left who can identify the criminals. In this censored version, though, the criminal just... points his finger! At a kid in the woods! That definitely permanently removes him as a witness, right?
In the sixth panel, you could make the case that the criminal was just going to beat Archie up by hand (ignoring that one doesn't normally hold up one's hands unless at gunpoint), but the last two panels make that interpretation impossible. The way the guy physically reacts in the penultimate panel makes no sense if he's just been taken by surprise, and he's clearly holding his wounded hand in the last. One thing I should mention here is, I don't know for sure that in the original version of the story, the police officer shot the guy in the hand. He might have been a crack shot and just shot the gun itself out of his hand, which would have made the guy's hand hurt for sure, but wouldn't have had a bullet lodged in it or be bleeding or anything, of course. (And yes, I realize that the bullet probably would have traveled straight through the hand, it's just this way was easier to edit.)
Here's the unedited version of the scans:
unedited pandas are missing panels

Finally, you might have noticed that I labeled this as part 1 - that's because this isn't the only time an Archie adventure was censored in this way! The second one is even dumber. It'll probably take some time for me to do that one, but it will happen eventually.

Fonts used: KG Happy (the word "GUNS" in the title panel text), Komika Axis (the sound effect for "BANG!")
Clipart used: Pistol #1, Pistol #2, Bullet holes, Blood spatter #1, Blood spatter #2