Full Monty!

This morning from Marvel:

SPIDER-MAN REIGN #1 CONTENT ADVISORY

Please be advised that Marvel Comics' SPIDER-MAN REIGN #1 (OCT062135D), which ships to retailers today with a T+ (Teens & Up) rating, contains an image that may be misinterpreted by some readers as inappropriate.

Marvel apologizes for any inconvenience this may create for you and your customers.

The picture is above, and small. If you are not offended by full frontal male nudity you can click on it to enlarge. Marvel claimed on the retailer forum that this was "just a shadow" that "might appear to be male genetalia." Hmmm... it REALLY doesn't look like a shadow to me - it looks like a guy stitting buck ass naked on a bed facing directly toward me. Somehow Marvel's fantastic (dripping with sarcasm) editorial staff missed this. Maybe they don't actually READ the books they publish?? Many comic retailers are very upset by this, because they're in conservative areas where shoppers won't put up with this kind of thing, so a book that could have really sold well will have to sell to a slightly smaller crowd. Well, at least they "regret the error." They've even broken their cardinal rule and have decided to let stores return unsold copies. See, the thing is, this could have been a money making book from issue 1-4, but if you can't sell #1 because of this type of thing, it's going to be tough to sell issues 2-4. It's not that we want to order books that don't sell, and be able to return them when we don't. We WANT books that sell like gangbusters and make us money so we don't need to return them.

Personally, books like Boys have sold pretty well here, so I'm just going to use the Full Monty as a selling point.