What Do You Mean Its Not For Kids / Comic Books

• Art Spiegelman's comment about his comic book Maus sums up the attitude and problem nicely. Maus features anthropomorphic animals as stand-ins for people (mice for Jews, cats for Germans, dogs for Americans, etc.). This does not mean it is kid-friendly. It's about the freaking Holocaust. It features drawings of ditches filled with emaciated, dead anthropomorphic mice being burned by cats with flamethrowers and gas masks. The parts that take place in modern day aren't too clean either. Those parts deal with many adult themes like continuing racism, death in your family, abuse, suicide and swearing. However, it's not at all uncommon to find it in places like elementary school libraries, because school staff decide that the educational content of it being about the Holocaust excuses the graphic content. In 2022 however, the Tennessee school board banned the book because of the aforementioned graphic content. This has sparked controversy, with both the media and children who grew up with the book accusing the ban of being a form of Holocaust denial. Even Spiegelman has commented on this, baffled and condemning the ban as "Orwellian".
• Any of Alan Moore's works will quickly crush the "comics are for kids" myth, as they deal with very complex social, political, and moral ambiguities, and do not shy away from depicting the most brutal sides of humanity. Watchmen, his most admired work, is just as ruthless as the film it inspired, if not more so. Yet many parents mistakenly will not bat an eye when their child reads them, thinking that it's no different than Batman.
• Stephen Desberg created a cutesy comic together with Stéphane Colman called Billy the Cat, which is about a teenage kid that gets transformed into a cute little yellow kitty. It features cute covers and equally cute friendly characters, but some of the comics (particularly issues 3, 5, 6 and 12) feature cats bleeding to death in alleys, a man getting impaled on one of his own statues, and a giant gorilla with a hook for a hand that kidnaps and harasses a little girl. The fact that a kid-friendly animated show was created based off the comic certainly wouldn't help matters much.
• Big Hero 6 is definitely for kids (albeit with a few mature, heartfelt moments). The comics upon which the Disney movie is based.....less so. The team was assembled in response to Hiroshima and Nagasaki's bombings, Hiro's parents were killed by a spirit made out of dead souls, Honey Lemon is more voluptuous, Wasabi throws knives at his opponents, and Gogo has ties with the yakuza. And Baymax is made out of genetic material from Hiro's dead father. It's very clear Disney cleaned up most of this for the kids.
• Stan Sakai, creator of Usagi Yojimbo, was asked at the Anthrocon 2005 panel Anthropomorphics in Mainstream Comics if he ever was told his comic was not funny and replied with the quote below:
  For Usagi, yeah, at the beginning, you know, I'd get "Oh, cute and cuddly rabbit", and then they open the book and "... He kills people!"
  • Usagi has received a Parents Choice Award - mainly for its historically accurate depiction of life in Ancient Japan - and its violence factor is relatively mild, but the characters are Samurai, and that means death is a daily companion.
• Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl. Creepy, 10 years old, Undead Child who kills and slaughters without knowing it.
• In 1985, United Feature Syndicate tabbed political cartoonist Jim Meddick to create a comic strip based on the Robotman And Friends line of toys (and short-lived cartoon). Meddick took the original characters and settings for the original strips... and quickly abandoned them, turning the strip into an absurdist humor strip with decidedly not-kid-friendly storylines and dialog. Angry letters to editors followed. After about two decades, Meddick—at the request of UFS—wrote Robotman out of the strip permanently (he left Earth to be with his robot alien girlfriend) and rechristened the strip Monty.
• Benoit Sokal's comics about a detective duck in a world of talking animals are decidedly not for children.
• Mouse Guard by David Petersen. Similar to Usagi Yojimbo, but with mice (and not in Edo Japan). Includes complex themes about survival and Utopia Justifies the Means, as well as mice (and other creatures) dying very violently.
  • Possibly that is the reason why his movie was canceled..
• The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics were definitely not child-friendly, being loaded with incredibly over-the-top violence and gore to parody the increasingly dark comics of the time. The problem, of course, is that the cartoon based on them was for children, and thus clueless parents could easily find themselves picking up an issue of the comic for a kid who was really into the Turtles…
  • Issue #15 has a letter from a woman who complains that her son had bought a couple of issues which included "foul language and violence," without specifying any further, and that the company which "prints material for children" should know better. This was shortly after the cartoon started airing, but it's not mentioned at all in the letter. In his response, Peter Laird wonders what language and on-panel violence she's talking about (the foulest thing in the earlier issues being on the level of "let's go kick some ass!"), and points out that just because it's a comic doesn't mean that it's for children. Complaints like this led to the creation of the Archie series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures, which was based on the TV show and more kid-friendly.
• The Mask. While the comic book was not for children, and neither was the movie based on it, the cartoon series based on that, as well as the infamous Son of the Mask movie, clearly was. This caused Dark Horse to turn the comics more family-friendly.
• Jhonen Vasquez got a bit popular with a TV show called Invader Zim (and kept getting in trouble with the suits who wanted less psychotic rampaging), and since kids easily know how to type a name on Google, they not only found out he did a cute comic about a schizophrenic, crazed killer, but bought it as well, 'cuz... you know, the guy created GIR for crying out loud!
  • Originally, when Nickelodeon decided this man should be put in charge of a children's program, they wanted him to adapt his comic Squee into a cartoon. He refused, on account of the fact that, despite having a cute six-year-old protagonist, the comic was about a Hilariously Abusive Childhood involving Abusive Parents, Anal Probing, and The Antichrist.
    • Within the first issue of Squee alone, there's Mind Rape, gay BDSM, graphic violence, castration, and a child being literally eaten by a dog. It's Lighter and Softer than JTHM but not by much.
• Many people consider Spider-Man to be kids' stuff, but consider that some of the storylines in the comics would have to be heavily toned down for television—Spidey's got Serial Killers for villains, many characters dying or being murdered with often graphic results, brutal beatdowns, characters using or selling illegal drugs, and references to sex and rape.
• Woe betide anyone who thinks that Batman's rogues gallery consists of only the colorful, largely Harmless Villains they saw on TV, along with the odd mobster or two. Many of the dozens of minor Bat-Villains from the comics (like Cornelius Stirk, Mr. Zsasz, and Jane Doe) were Adapted Out of the cartoons for a reason. Hell, even the ones that have been shown on television generally have at least one or two "absolutely under no conditions show to little kids" scenes in the comics. Exhibit A: victims of the Joker's Laughing Toxin when they've gotten a BIT too ripe.◊
  • Yes, this even applies to the likes of Penguin and Riddler. The former? Used a flame-throwing umbrella to burn the wooden masks of three of Black Mask's henchmen into their faces. The latter? While he was possessed by the demon Barbathos, gleefully stuffed a ping-pong ball down a baby's throat and forced Batman to remove it with nothing but a rusty knife.
  • This blog post covers the article in question.
  • In an interview in Amazing Heroes #119, writer Max Allan Collins said that, in reference to a Frank Miller written story which had Catwoman as a former prostitute, he found that inappropriate—the equivalent of doing Peter Pan and having them face historically accurate pirates. Collins felt that Catwoman was derived from children’s entertainment, appearing in a series that had turned into a much more overtly juvenile version of The Shadow (Catwoman debuted soon after the début of the Kid Sidekick with shaved legs, short shorts and elf shoes) and therefore people should keep that in mind when handling her.
• Batman: The Animated Series is a dark and gritty series, but still considered family friendly. The Batman Adventures tie-in comic is considerably darker, has more blood and violence, and has references to sexuality. One one-shot "annual" comic loosely based on the series was guest-illustrated by more mature comics artists (including Klaus Janson, Frank Miller's partner on Batman: The Dark Knight Returns!) and had a character saying "Who the hell are you?" - the likes of which was never uttered on the TV series. It's taken even further in the Harley and Ivy subseries, where hinting at the sex lives of the title characters is arguably a large part of the point, and Ivy makes several direct references to the Joker's physical and psychological abuse of Harley, which she (Ivy) is disgusted with.
• Similar to the above, Wonder Woman '77, a comic tie-in to the old live-action series, has had several instances of profanity and shown a woman with bruises received from her abusive husband; the kid-friendly show would never have depicted something like that.
• WE 3, by Grant Morrison, is about three talking animals trying to find their way home; the covers feature "missing pets" notices written in childlike style. Kids'll love it, right? Sure! Except for the scenes featuring the cybernetic animal soldiers literally tearing apart the soldiers meant to come kill them, the part where the rabbit explodes while hurling itself at a car, and all sorts of graphic violence in between. Oh, and it's being adapted into a movie directed by the guy who made Kung Fu Panda. Prepare for some traumatized children... As if the Vertigo label wasn't a warning already...
• Swedish comic strips Arne Anka and Rocky are filled to the brim with funny animals. They're also filled with alcohol consumption, sex and deep, deep cynicism.
  • Even if you don't know anything about contemporary Swedish comics^note These are two of the most famous comics in Sweden (at least the last 20 years or so). Rocky strips have been in daily newspapers and Arne Anke even got a stage adaption in the 90's, starring one of Sweden's most popular comedians., Arne Anka is drinking a beer on almost EVERY single cover while Rocky alternates between fairly harmless to featuring alcohol, naked breasts and at least one where he actually has sex.
• Somehow, the first six issues of Jeff Smith's Bone were excerpted in issues of Disney Adventures. Needless to say, it suffered some Bowdlerization (including two whole scenes getting cut out and all mentions of "God" and "beer" being changed to "Gosh" and "soda"). Most bookstores carry it, especially the colorized version, in the children's section instead of the Graphic Novels/Comics area. The fact that it was published by Scholastic doesn't help either.
• Frankly, danged near any mainstream Super Hero comic produced during the Darker and Edgier Dark Age that ran from about 1988-1996. Even today, the only Marvel and DC comics even remotely meant for kids these days are the Adventures and Johnny DC lines. It's gotten to the point that pasting "HEY, KIDS! COMICS!" over hyped up and massively nasty pages has become a wide-ranging Internet meme.
• Played with in an issue of JLA: a woman receives a book of fairy tales from a recently deceased relative's estate, and decides to read one to her young daughter. She soon realizes that these are old school fairy tales involving cannibalism, mutilation, vampirism, and murder. Oh, also: the fairy tales are alive. Then when the Justice League get trapped in those same stories, The Flash asks, since they're in a fairytale, how bad could it be? Green Lantern then reminds him that he is an artist who had to study these stories and knew very well that they weren't so nice. Moments later, they are almost eaten by the witch from Hansel and Gretel.
• Invincible is a superhero comic that has a bright and colorful art style. This means that it's for kids, right? Well, not quite. For starters, the series is a very violent and dark comic with plenty of Gorn. It's also written by Robert Kirkman, the creator of the family-unfriendly Walking Dead. What doesn't help is that the series starts off as a normal lighthearted superhero comic, and even so, flip-flops from being dark to lighthearted.
• Whistles, a graphic novel by Andrew Hussie of MS Paint Adventures fame, was once listed in the Children's category on Amazon. Well, it's a comic drawn in a cartoony style about a funny clown, so it must be for kids, right? To quote the summary: "Whistles, a clown in the Starlight Calliope circus, was beloved by all. One day an accident nearly cost him his life, and he became exposed to the corrupt underworld of the circus, rife with murder and cannibalism. Forced to flee, he experiences the hardships of the world such as homesickness and prostitution."
• Fables is a comic series about a whole community of fairy tale heroes who live in New York and their lives and adventures. The kids are gonna love it, right? Some of those adventures include: A murder mystery with an apartment drenched in blood, Snow White being raped by 7 dwarfs in the past, the nice, friendly and charming Boy Blue going on a trip to murder the Adversary and slaughtering anyone who gets in his way, a war and so on.
• The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is a fund that takes on the cases of comic store owners who they believe are wrongfully sued and/or arrested for which comics they distribute. Its two most famous cases are the Gordon Lee case (where he accidentally gave a copy of a comic with non-sexualised panels featuring a naked Pablo Picasso to a child on Free Comic Book Day) and Jesus Castillo (who sold an adult comic book, clearly labeled adult, and featured in the adult section of the store, to an adult, who turned out to be an undercover cop and arrested him for two counts of obscenity.) An excerpt from a prosecutor's speech in the Castillo case that perfectly summarises this trope:
  I don’t care what type of evidence or what type of testimony is out there; use your rationality; use your common sense. Comic books, traditionally what we think of, are for kids. This is in a store directly across from an elementary school and it is put in a medium, in a forum, to directly appeal to kids. That is why we are here, ladies and gentlemen. We’re here to get this off the shelf.
• Savage Dragon was not at all appropriate for children, but there was once a kid-friendly cartoon series based off of it (just like the aforementioned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).
• Gear featured artwork (by Doug TenNapel of Earthworm Jim fame) that honestly looked like a throwback to Disney cartoons from the 1920s and 30s. In said comic, the characters fight in giant mecha and many die very gruesome, tear-inducing deaths. Only one of the 4 main characters makes it out alive. The fact that it was adapted into a show that clearly was for kids only added to the confusion (and made said confusion that much more justifiable).
• Steve Purcell gleefully subverted this with his original Sam & Max: Freelance Police comic books. With the expectation that cheerily illustrated funny animals would be purchased by and sold to minors, he often addressed kids across the Fourth Wall with encouragements to engage in dangerous or vandalistic acts. Fizzball is one example, a sport where a full can of soda or beer is shaken up to extreme levels and beaten around with a big stick — try it indoors, kids! He was not content to simply give bad role models, but to get in on the fun. These were then adapted into a show ostensibly for children that aired on Fox Kids.
• Barbara Slate's Angel Love comic book series of the 1980s, having rather cute cartoonish artwork, yet dealing with serious topics such as drug abuse, abortion, critical illnesses, and incest. The lead character's roommate also goes on a blind date with a child. It doesn't help that the style of writing also clashes with the topics it is dealing with. The Angel Love Special which closes out the series was the only book to have a "For Mature Readers Only" warning on the cover.
• French series Les Légendaires could almost be considered as a trap on this side: the story involves a fantasy world where everyone has been turned into a kid following a magical accident, and follows the heroes trying to get a cure. The first book actually has a very kid-friendly tone with a large amount of humor, and the second, while slightly more violent, is still arguably suitable for kids, as death scenes are not shown and are proven to be temporary. As a result, you can believe so far that you're dealing with a kids series... then come books 3 and 4, which involve Heroic Sacrifice, The Plague, and even one of the protagonists mistakenly being infatuated with his teammate's mother due to him not seeing the age difference since they both look like kids anyway. Books 5 and 6 have a villain who killed his own wife after she cheated on him. Books 7 and 8 involved Fantastic Racism and slavery, as well as scene of Evil Sorcerer Skroa slaughtering a group of slavers and impaling a Jaguarian kid on his claws. The Anathos Cycle delivers us a slaughter scene that could have figured in Happy Tree Friends, where the protagonists are mercilessly crushed by Greater-Scope Villain God of Evil Anathos (he takes possession of The Hero, impales the Magical Girl on his sword, burns the Action Girl's eyes, cuts The Big Guy's arm off, and scarred The Lancer everywhere on his body), attempted genocide of humanity and a mildly implied after-sex scene. And if that wasn't enough, books 13 and 14 shows us the decayed body of one of the protagonists before displaying Incest Subtext between the villain and one of the heroine. The fact the author keeps a chibi look for his character all along only makes it more disturbing.
• British comic Viz looks just like The Beano, but there's a reason it's high up on the shelves and has a "NOT FOR SALE TO CHILDREN" label on the front. It's loaded to the brim with swearing and sexual humour. Not helping is that the Billy the Fish comics are actually tame, with the VHS of the animated series getting a U rating while the other animated adaptations got an 18 rating.
• Those who have seen Wendy Pini's ElfQuest comics (themselves not totally kid-friendly in spite of careful scenery censoring in certain scenes) need to take warning that one of her later works, a sci-fi retelling of "The Masque of the Red Death", is definitely not for kids, containing as it does fairly explicit homosexuality and very graphic death via a disease which causes uncontrollable bleeding and breakdown of all body cells.
• Most incarnations of the GI Joe comic book are VERY different than the more well-remembered cartoon show. Characters (both the Joes AND Cobras) get Killed Off for Real, and many of the stories deal with real world Political issues (arms dealing, evil dictatorships, freedom fighters, political corruption,etc). Despite being based off of a toyline, the comic likely had an older audience in mind.
• X-Men. Many imagine the X-Men brand as being fun superheroes that all audiences can enjoy. In reality, not so much. They've often stood as being Darker and Edgier and Hotter and Sexier than the rest of the Marvel Universe (not that the rest is lacking, either). The themes of Fantastic Racism towards mutants are very overt, sometimes even hitting very close to home in mirroring the struggles of real life minorities like segregation, abuse, neglect and even mass murder. Not only that, but there is tons of violence, and explicit violence at that, as characters are shown hitting each other, causing visible injury, and there have been graphic deaths. That's also not getting into the fact that the comic are often filled to the brim with sexuality from fetishistic artwork, S&M situations, implicit sex, Male Gaze shots, Stripperiffic costumes being the norm for female characters, among other very sexual themes. Needless to say, a lot of this tends to be toned down when adapting the comics to a more family-friendly medium.
• The Teen Titans animated show is often dark but still suitable for small children. The opposite of the latter can be said for original comic version. It has a sexual relationship between Deathstroke and a sixteen year old Terra, Starfire being a very big case of Ms. Fanservice, Raven being a child of rape, and plenty of violence. The characters are generally more angsty as well.
• The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec was a very successful PG-rated blockbuster in its native France. Given that it's kid-friendly one would expect its source material, which is the comic book of the same name, to be kid-friendly as well. It is rather the opposite, seeing as in the comic book she has a neighbor that kills cats for fun, a sect worshiping a satanic abomination and multiple realistically drawn murders. It can probably best be described as the kind of thing Hayao Miyazaki (the actual creator is only known under the pseudonym Tardi) would come up with if he would for some reason make an anime with the intent of getting it banned in its native Japan. Considering how much anime is on this list, this speaks volumes.
• Anything from Archie Comics has to be family friendly, right? Nevermind that the main comics have been risque in their own right, the spinoff series' like Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Afterlife with Archie are at minimum PG-13 and rather graphic horror series. Even the 2015 reboot is a little Hotter and Sexier than the original comics.
• Diabolik caused great controversy in Italy when it first debuted, because, being a comic book, was automatically assumed to be child-friendly, nevermind the series' title derived from the Italian word for "devilish" or that the first story was titled "The King of Terror". That first story features a series of gruesome murders (none seen on-page, but bloody nonetheless), a woman seeing her husband murdered and being Driven to Madness twice, and an implacable criminal chasing a sympathetic character to kill him all to commit a theft, has the main character seduce a woman for a one-night-stand just because he was in the mood (and actually shows the aftermath of them having sex), and ends with Ginko shooting a group of scarecrows in the belief Diabolik was hidden in one, leaving when no corpse fell down, and then one of the scarecrows showed Diabolik's terrifying eyes and started bleeding. Eventually protests from worried parents turned it more kid-friendly... But the series was still about a knife-happy criminal who could be anyone thanks to Latex Perfection and it did not shy away from the implications, before eventually returning closer to its roots.
• This One Summer by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki is a Coming of Age Story about two preteen friends who spend their summer at a small town, which already sounds like an innocent preteens' tale. The graphic novel carries strong profanity, frequent sex talk, and dark themes of adolescence, such as a Teen Pregnancy and suicide attempt. The fact it ironically won a Caldecott Honor fooled many parents and kids into thinking it's for kids.
• Albedo: Erma Felna EDF, big time: Due of the cuddly design of many characters, especially in later issues due to the author's Art Evolution, one could think this is another kiddie comic with cute animals, until those "cute animals" start blowing each others' brains out almost every issue. So far it depicts murder, war crimes, sexism, partial nudity, gore, profanity, socio-political problems, racism, implied homophobia (albeit of the innocent type, mind you), propaganda, mass genocide and enough Mind Screw that could give friggin' Neon Genesis Evangelion a run for its money, despite predating it for a decade.
• Static Shock has its share of Darker and Edgier content with the tackling of gang themes and the struggle of ghetto life, but was still family-friendly and enjoyed by all audiences. The comic book universe Static originated from, Milestone Comics, not so much. The gang themes are more overt, swearing is common (including both "fuck" and "faggot"), political incorrectness is used to show how bad characters are (for example, Hotstreak in the original comics is a white supremacist), there's a great deal of political satire, and the overall comics are much more cynical than what the animated series would present.
• Nearly all of the off-Code independent imprints dating from the late 1970s onward (such as First Comics, Comico, or Eclipse Comics) were well ahead of the mainstream publishers in being Darker and Edgier, with titles such as Grimjack, The Badger, American Flagg!, Elementals, and The DNAgents being only distributed in specialty shops for good reason. Later independent publishers such as Dark Horse Comics and Image Comics continued this trend for a time, but as the popularity of comic book shops in the late 1980s and early 1990s grew, it led to these more and more often getting into the hands of underage patrons (and/or unwary parents looking for something to bring home to their kids), they tended to back off from this somewhat (the fact that the Dark Age was already underway in mainstream comics also tended to undercut the uniqueness of such titles).
• When the Wind Blows is a sequel of sorts to the children's comic Gentlemen Jim, starring a cheery elderly couple in a nice soft art-style... but this story revolves around two attempting to survive a nuclear apocalypse and failing. Due to the art-style and lack of any overtly mature elements like profanity, sex, or gore generally associated with adult-oriented comics, many libraries mistakingly place the book in the children's literature section despite the incredibly grim subject matter.
• The Comic Book Story Of Video Games looks appealing to kids because it's a comic book and about video games, both things kids love! Even kids' favorite video game characters show up as Easter eggs in the graphic novel. It's however meant for teenage audiences with content a children's history/video game book would lack, such as depictions of mature games and depressing historical events, a mention of pornography, partially-censored strong profanity, and bit of alcohol and drug usage.
• Gender Queer: A Memoir is frequently put in the "Teen" or even "Children's" section of libraries and book stores. It has a bright art style and is a LGBTQ Coming of Age Story, but it's aimed at adults. The comic has received critique from parents who are offended by its sexual references.
• The Italian comic Bianca: Little Lost Lamb is about a female anthropomorphic lamb, despite the cover and artwork looking innocent. It's actually about the lamb seeking revenge for the death of her flock by a pack of wolves and other predators. Eventually the female protagonist starts losing parts of her sanity as the story progresses. It contains a lot of gore, violent imagery, and heavy subject matter. The graphic novel is aimed at teens and young adults as a result.
• Kaijumax has a colourful, bubbly cartoon-like art-style, and is based on the giant monster genre, which strongly appeals to children, and has many characters and story elements inspired by kid-friendly franchises like Transformers, Pokémon, and Puff the Magic Dragon, but the series is meant for adults. There's heavy themes like PTSD, prostitution, drug abuse, police brutality, racial profiling, prison rape, gang violence, extreme gore at times, and lots of profanity, both real and made-up. Eventually, the creator was forced to put a "for mature readers only" warning label on the covers to keep kids from accidentally reading them.
• Word of God is that Big Nate is not aimed at children, despite the fact that the titular character and his friends are 11-year-olds. The books and the cartoon (which are Lighter and Softer) are aimed at children, but the strip itself, while mostly suitable for younger readers, has the occasional raunchy joke, such as one where Nate claims he's obsessed with violence because he's "not old enough yet to be obsessed with sex" and Nate's dad repeatedly acting like a Dirty Old Man. One early strip had to be excluded from a book compilation due to risqué content.
  Lincoln Peirce: Even though the strip has come to be thought of as a kids’ strip, I’ve never thought of it that way.
• Life in Hell has some cute bunnies, two funny-looking Charlie Brown-like midgets wearing fezzes, and an art style that wouldn't be too out of place for a simplistic innocent series. However, the series is known to convey topics that children wouldn't understand fully yet like sex, work, and death not to mention some of the strips have the characters say some cuss words too with the word "hell" being a notable red flag. By the way, this is also made by the same guy who made certain adult cartoons you should have known of by now for crying out loud and is much more suggestive than any of Matt Groening's other works.