After Revealing Bruce Wayne's Penis in Batman: Damned, DC Is Rethinking Its Black Label Imprint

In the months leading up to its launch, DC Comics touted its new Black Label imprint as a part of its publishing arm where big-name comics creators could tell bold, mature stories about its heroes, exploring aspects of their lives that more mainstream titles tend not to. Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo’s Batman: Damned made the biggest splash, in part, because a few panels featured a full frontally-nude Bruce Wayne. Now DC is wondering if it made a mistake.

When news first broke that Damned showed off Bruce’s goods, there was an understandable amount of buzz because historically, comics marketed to broad audiences like DC’s have shied away from really centering male bodies in a way that reads as sexual (Nightwing being the exception that proves the rule.)

In response to the internet’s thirst for the Caped Crusader and the apparently unwanted attention it brought to Batman: Damned, DC edited out the panels in question from digital editions of the first issue. According to the comic publisher’s heads, more changes are in store for DC Black Label going forward—changes that are a direct response to the whole Batawang “controversy.”

Speaking to Polygon at this year’s New York Comic Con, DC Publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio were frank about their feelings that including a penis in shadow was a “production error” DC regrets because, from the company’s perspective, it dominated Damned in a way that was less than ideal. The focus of the readers, Lee explained, is meant to be on the story itself in addition to the art—and in the future, the publisher’s rethinking just what all the Black Label is meant to be:

It’s made us, certainly, look at what Black Label is and think about whether these elements are additive to the story. And that’s something that we’ll be mindful of going forward, because I don’t think we want necessarily a repeat of what happened with the first issue.

DiDio echoed Lee’s sentiments and added that part of the reason DC’s taking this so seriously is because a number of older series with similarly darker, more adult content are being reprinted under the Black Label:

As a matter of fact, we’re excited by all the books that we have under Black Label. And it’s an important line for us, so much so that we’re actually repositioning some of our older material that has that same tonality and bringing it in and reprinting it under the Black Label name.

Had Damned been released like any regular Batman comic, lumped in with the likes of, say, the Justice League or Titans books, DC’s reaction to this would be a bit more understandable. But Damned is explicitly marked as being intended for “mature readers,” and that’s kind of the whole point of “Black Label” branding. For example, Sean Murphy’s Batman: White Knight is a recent series set to be reprinted under the Black Label branding, and one of the differences between this printing versus the original is that it will now feature a more explicit sex scene between the Joker and Harley Quinn that was initially censored.

DC Publisher Jim Lee Talks About Changing Black Label Comics In The Shadow Of The Batpenis
Posted by Rich Johnston October 9, 2018 60 Comments

Jim Lee, publisher and CCO of DC Comics talked to Polygon about, what else, Batman: Damned #1, the comic he drew a variant cover for. and the Batpenis. And the fuss that followed its publication, getting worldwide headlines and spawning many a joke on late-night chatshows like Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert.

However, rather than appreciating the publicity that the book got, DC Comics chose to not reprint the comic book at all – leading it to currently selling from between $45 and $60 on eBay.

At New York Comic Con in the bars, it seems that this was all the comic book professionals could talk about. But Bleeding Cool also got the word that there had been a smackdown from above and anything vaguely controversial was being picked up. That the male nudity seen in Batman: Damned #2 was being scrubbed away, and delaying the long-completed comic book. And that even though DC Comics had printed hundreds of proof galleys in advance, the art of which was greenlit, somehow this was now a ‘production error’ rather than something played for and got, but that didn’t go over well with the publisher’s new President.

Talking to Polygon, Jim Lee seemed to confirm the bowdlerisation, on other Black Label books at least.

“It’s made us, certainly, look at what Black Label is and think about whether these elements are additive to the story. And that’s something that we’ll be mindful of going forward, because I don’t think we want necessarily a repeat of what happened with the first issue.”