When higher-ups get involved, sometimes the results aren't so funny...
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Archie Comics
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
- According to writer Ken Penders, Sega started off largely hands-off with the exception of a few moments, including sparing Princess Sally from her death in "End Game". Somewhere along the line, Sega started pushing for more game-centric stuff, which obviously clashed with then-writers Penders and Karl Bollers.
- The legal case between Archie and Penders. It was said that everything made for the Archie comic was now property of Sega. That meant characters, concepts, etc. Back in the early '90s, it was obvious no one minded the house at Archie and when Penders caught on about 15 years later, he quickly copyrighted his characters, which led to the lawsuits. The problem here was that the lawsuits put Archie in a bind - Sega was adamant that those characters were theirs and if Penders won, then it would go against the mandate and threaten the comic. To save face, all of Penders' characters and concepts (and later, all of those not made by Flynn) were dumped and Penders was given a mandate to cut off all of his characters from everything Sonic, which led to the Continuity Reboot that was Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide.
- According to conversations with Ian Flynn, one of the big mandates was that the video game characters could only have relatives that were established in the games. This would initially led to Sonic and Tails being unable to call their parents by those familiar titles and Eggman's connection to Snively downplayed. When the Cosmic Retcon hit, Uncle Chuck was no longer Sonic's uncle, with the name being just an endearing title to the scientist, and Snively was renamed to "Julian Snively" with no familial connection at all to Eggman. This is despite the fact that both characters were part of the Saturday morning cartoon. This also makes utilizing Sonia and Manic from Sonic Underground harder as many Sonic fans would recognize the two as siblings and expect them to be as such, but they could never say they were.
- The reason why you don't see characters like Sonia, Manic, Sara and Cosmo interacting with the Freedom Fighters is due to Sega preferring the use of more modern Sonic elements and prohibiting the use of past characters and elements in the comic, with the only reason the SatAM cast stayed was because they were part of the comic from the beginning.
- Archie Comics's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures: The creative team at the time was preparing for its big epic storyline towards issue #75, "The Forever War", which would have brought back the future "Green Earth Turtles" and showcased the final fight with Shredder. However, the editors at the time balked at this as they absolutely hated the more violent path the comic was taking as well as the "Green Earth Turtles" (it was also because Mirage had started going color around this time and it was taking away from Archie), so they canned the creative team and, ultimately, the title.
- Archie Comics:
- There was once a comic called Josie that ran for six years. It was basically a Distaff Counterpart of Archie until the success of the The Archie Show and (more importantly) the success of the hit song from said cartoon "Sugar, Sugar".
Hanna-Barbera then approached Archie Comics and asked them about adapting another one of its properties. So in December 1969, Archie retooled Josie. Josie and her friends decided to form a rock band. It was all done so Hanna-Barbera could adapt the then upcoming cartoon as a music-based series. - The last two pages of issue 6 of Afterlife with Archie had to be rewritten after the editor found the story to be too dark. Note this is a dark series set in a Zombie Apocalypse that deals with anything from incest to domestic abuse. The fact that the same issue ends with Sabrina about to become the Bride of Cthulhu makes fans really wonder how you could get darker than that.
- There was once a comic called Josie that ran for six years. It was basically a Distaff Counterpart of Archie until the success of the The Archie Show and (more importantly) the success of the hit song from said cartoon "Sugar, Sugar".
Other Comics
- Sonic the Comic:
- The British Sonic book was eventually brought to cancellation because the publishers did not have faith that the book would continue its popularity. Despite selling more than 2000AD at one point, they began decreasing the budget and demanding that there only be one new story per issue, the others being reprints of older stories. Then the comic became 100% reprint, the cover illustrations being the only new thing in them, until finally, the comic was axed completely.
- Nigel Kitching, a writer for the comic, wanted Amy to be a funny Action Girl who teased Sonic for kicks and giggles. He wanted the two to have a bond similar to the ones in early twentieth century "screwball comedies" like the 1939 film, It's A Wonderful World. A director was fearful this would make her a bad role model, so Amy's personality was changed to be more sensible than the boys. Kitching noticeably had Creator Backlash, saying Amy became a one-dimensional stereotype. He gave up writing her until the final arc, Sonic Adventure's adaptation, where she returned to something more similar to her original persona. It's glaringly noticeable that Amy is less active than usual in that arc.
- Publishers operated under the bizarre, nonsensical idea that some comics won't last beyond a certain time despite what all sources and sales figures might say; they even considered cancelling 2000AD, Britain's most popular sci-fi comic book and the "birthplace" of Judge Dredd. Fortunately, the computer game company Rebellion bought the title, which continues to this day.
- Amongst the other comics they did cancel at around the same time was Red Dwarf Smegazine, which was canceled just at the point when a sales spike from the 1993 series might have been expected. In an example of Tropes Are Not Bad, this ended up being the right move, as the 4, 2, and 10 year gaps between each of the next series would likely have killed it off anyways.
- The Transformers:
- Bob Budiansky, original writer of the Marvel comic book, was continually forced by Hasbro to introduce new characters during his run. He eventually got burnt out and passed the writing duties on to Marvel U.K.'s Transformers writer Simon Furman.
- Writer Simon Furman spent a few years writing a series of epic Transformers stories for IDW publishing that featured a large cast, as well as new concepts like the Dead Universe and a plausible Decepticon invasion plan that made vehicular disguises relevant to the story. Then, due to falling sales, IDW decided to truncate Furman's twelve-issue Grand Finale into four issues of the "Spotlight" series (necessitating each chapter focusing on a single character's thoughts in addition to all the action), and a five issue Maximum Dinobots series so that they can put their publishing power behind All Hail Megatron.
- In 2010, the Transformers Collector's Club dropped their "Nexus Prime" plotline which had been running for about five years across various continuities. This is because Hasbro themselves have taken charge of stories regarding the Thirteen original Transformers.
- The very graphic death scenes in The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers were, according to Nick Roche, put in at Hasbro's request, who had apparently grown tired of how easily resurrectable Transformers were starting to be shown and wanted some definitive kills to show that death still meant something in Transformers. According to the trade Springer, Kup, and Perceptor were all going to die in one version. Hasbro vetoed one, IDW another, and the writers didn't go through with the last one.
- Hasbro has, over the years, forced numerous characters to change their names when the original G1 name either fell out of copyright or they were unable to secure it. This is why, for example, Hot Rod changed his name to Rodimus. However, the weird example is Slag the Dinobot. "Slag", as it turns out, is an extremely offensive term for a sexually-immoral woman in certain parts of the English-speaking world. Hasbro decided to change the character's name to Slug. IDW's comic did not handle this transition well. Arcee told Slag that his name meant something crude and offensive. Slag, who was characterized as making a point of being crude and offensive, responded by agreeing to change his name to Slug.
- The Muppet Show Comic Book: The Family Reunion arc (which involved the reintroduction of Skeeter, Scooter's twin sister) had to be pushed forward because the "Guest Stars" arc was scrapped on a veto and there was a gap that needed filling. However, the Disney executives had not decided whether to make Skeeter a full cast member, or to bring her in at all, so they told the writers to make the story ambiguous. The arc was framed by two celestial beings, who are NOT Statler and Waldorf, who throw in various characters as a way of livening things up a bit, leaving its status as canon murky.
- Werner:
- The title of the sixth book, Besser is das!, had to be censored after the first edition because the Flensburger brewery understood it as comparative advertising in favor of Werner's recently launched own beer brand, "Bölkstoff". Werner had been drinking Flensburger beer all the time before, in fact, he was the reason behind the immense increase in popularity for the small brewery near the Danish border in the 1980s.
- Merch with the "Red Porsche Killer" on it had to be censored upon request by Porsche. The book Das Rennen names it "Red XXXXXX Killer".
- The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: Writer Don Rosa dropped a seven-page prologue of dense McDuck family history and to completely rewrite chapters 3 and 8 on requests from Egmont editor Byron Erickson.
- The Simping Detective: Originally envisaged as one of many stories of a strip called Mega City Noir (the first story, Gumshoe, is under the MC-Noir name) which was to be a Sin City-style strip featuring various characters around Angeltown and their dealings with both sides of the law. Megazine editor Alan Barnes felt that Jack Point was simply too good to be wasted as a One-Shot Character and he was given his own series. Mega City Noir was given a second story, which explained what happened to Muggro Keevish after the events of Crystal Blue and focused on mob enforcer Gaz. Unfortunately, it wasn't anywhere near as good as The Simping Detective and further plans for any more Mega City Noir stories have been indefinitely postponed.
- Done in-universe in a Mickey Mouse story dealing with the in-universe tv series Bolton (a counterpart to Columbo), showing both the bad and the good of this trope:
- The bad: When the writer disappears (as he, the director and the main actor all feel that the series has gone long enough and would like to do something else but the producer is forcing them to continue, so they hope to kill the series and replace it with their new project this way) both Mickey and Mortimer are brought in as replacements, with Mickey writing scripts that could be mistaken for being written by the original writer... Except Mortimer, who didn't even see an episode before joining the staff, convinces the producer to dumb down Mickey's scripts, introduce nonsensical magic and science fiction elements, turn the main character in a goof and generally Jumping the Shark. This gets the original fans to leave and get replaced by teenagers who treat it as a comedy (instead of the adventure series that Mortimer intends) and the director, the main actor and Mickey leaving in disgust, with the latter deciding to track down the original writer to save the show (only to change his mind when he succeeds and finds out why).
- The good: As the first episode of Mortimer's run as the director, writer and main actor is aired, he and the producer find out that the original writer, director and main actor, together with Mickey and his friends, have literally stole away both the original fans and the new ones with the fan-financed pilot of a new adventure series. The sponsors, already enraged by getting the original crowd replaced with fans that won't buy their adult-targeted watches, aftershaves and similar products (with the original fans not wishing to be associated to a moron), takes this as the last straw and intervene by killing Bolton, replace it with the new show, and force Mortimer to star in a last episode written by Mickey in which his version of Bolton is exposed as an imposter by the original and kidnapped by a robot that wants to go back to Mars (one of Mortimer's characters) as punishment for ruining the old show.
- This trope led to the Creator Killer of Take-Two Interactive's own comic company, Double Take. Take Two had hired former Marvel Comics editor Bill Jemas (who was also responsible for the tripe that was Marville) to create a new comic universe and planned to do so using X-COM, Civilization and BioShock as a massive Shared Universe (how that would have worked is really unknown). However, the games division was really protective of their franchises and didn't want this "outsider" messing with them, forcing the entirety of Double Take being yanked out of Take-Two's offices and into a new office. Scrambling for something to replace what they lost, they decided to focus on Night of the Living Dead (1968) and try to turn that into a superhero universe. However, that was met with incredible disappointment and the company would ultimately fold without really getting its foot out the door.
- Mortadelo y Filemón: A lot in the early years - the Bruguera company even tried to "steal" the characters from Ibáñez and give them to other authors a couple of times. He also had to deal with the Francoist official censorship, which was pretty hard at suppresing Toilet Humor and anything that denoted "subversion". For instance, the cops are called "gendarmes" and their uniforms and cars do not look anything like the Spanish police ones of the timenote ; when a character made any reference to the Spanish Civil War it either disappeared or was changed to "the '14 war", a war in which Spain never took part, and so on. One character of 13 Rue del Percebe (another comic strip from the same author that sometimes Cross Overed with Mortadelo y Filemón), a parodic Mad Scientist that built monsters for a living, was eventually written out and substituted by a tailor because the dead-hard Catholic government thought that "Only God can create life". This is also why women do not appear at all in late 50s strips - each time Ibáñez drew one, the censors eliminated so much in the way of curves that it ended looking like a broomstick.
- Even some dialogues had to be changed because censorship. In one instance, Mortadelo sees a monster, and runs to Filemón in panic, trying to alert him. He tries to say "¡Un monstruo!" ("A monster!") but he's so scared that he can only babble: "¡Un mo... un mo...!". Filemón thinks he's trying to say "un moco" ("snot") and says "Si tiene un moco, suénese" ("If you've got snot, blow your nose") as he produces a handkerchief. "Moco", though a quite colloquial, innocent word, was such a profanity for some censor that Filemón's answer was rewritten as "¿Un mono? Aquí no hay monos" ("A monkey? There are no monkeys here"), making the gesture of producing the handkerchief completely absurd.
- The publication of “Little Annie Fanny” in “Playboy Magazine” was often met with this. According to comic historian Paul Buhle, Harvey was ever more frequently kowtowing to the demands of High Hefner for more nudity and titillation in place of stories centered around current events.
- The DC produced BIONICLE comics were not allowed to adapt the movies or games as per LEGO mandate. This meant that whenever the comics reached the same point in the plot as one, it would abruptly stop with a "Watch the movie to see what happens next!" and then pick up right after said movie in the following issue.
- This became a problem for the original 2001 story line as the game meant to tell it was cancelled. The novels where fortunately not under the same mandate though, so the entire story can be experienced through them.
- Mike: The speech impairment of the East Asian anthropomorphic light bulb Birne — he pronounced "R"s as "L"s — was seen as unfit for the young readers, and so he was forced to learn it. This didn't last for long: After fans protested, Birne forgot it again.
- The reason why the infamous Tintin - Tintin in the Congo exists. The Belgian government was at time heavily promoting tourism to their colony and Herges chief editor Norbert Wallez wanted to support this. So he told his subordinate to write a glorified travel advert starring the Tintin character and as it was a direct order from his boss he had no real choice in the matter.
Newspaper Comics
- The Far Side: A few strips were never published due to fear of their bizarre content causing backlash, such as one strip that appears to have a dog humping an upside down car due how the artwork was done, while others were given edits without creator Gary Larson's permission. In the The Prehistory of The Far Side book (which contains the unpublished strips) Larson admitted that he would occasionally go a bit overboard, but he did have a small gripe about the changes being done without his input.
- Pearls Before Swine: Creator Stephan Pastis has talked about several strips over the years that his syndicate has asked him to change for one reason or another, and he had usually agreed due to the strips in question being so edgy that the risk outweighs the reward. In the treasury Pearls Sells Out, Pastis writes about a particular strip that his syndicate wanted changed because it showed the characters drinking beer. Pastis flat-out refused to do so, arguing that he wasn't "gonna keep looking over...[his]...shoulder" every time he submitted a strip and worrying about their attitude. With the exception of a few minor edits, Pastis says that the syndicate has since left him alone and that he understands most other syndicates wouldn't have even published Pearls to begin with.
- Dilbert:
- In the early days, Scott Adams was planning on adding Satan to the strip's cast. The syndicate wouldn't let him, so he ended up creating the character of Phil, Prince of Insufficient Light, the ruler of "Heck". Adams later said that it turned out much funnier than his original plan.
- Played for Laughs In-Universe in a strip where Dogbert tells a writer to make a few changes to his manuscript so it can be more publishable:Dogbert: Make the main character a purple dinosaur instead of a detective. Add some upbeat songs and eliminate the murder.
Writer: It's a murder mystery!!
Dogbert: Oh, that's original.
- The Perry Bible Fellowship: A couple strips were removed because they were offensive.note
- Liberty Meadows, during its syndicated period, was heavily censored. The strip relies quite heavily on sexual allusion and was more than willing to nudge the line between PG-13 and R whereas the executives wanted something "five-year-old-friendly". This eventually led to the artist Frank Cho dropping syndication altogether. However, Cho has stated that he is still grateful for the suggestion to change Leslie into a frog, instead of keeping him as a talking lima bean.
- Garfield: Jim Davis was told by his syndicator to change Odie's ears from black to brown a year after he was introduced to the strip. Apparently, readers were confusing Odie with Snoopy.
