Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri's Druuna series is famous for its meticulously-rendered depictions of sex and violence. Beginning with Morbus Gravis (1985), Serpieri's sci-fi comic-book opus was made available to North American readers in Heavy Metal, the adult-oriented comics magazine inspired by France's Métal Hurlant.
Heavy Metal published Morbus Gravis in the Summer 1986 issue, and Morbus Gravis 2 (aka Druuna) in Spring 1988. Neither were censored. But 1990s episodes Creatura, Carnivora, Mandragora, and Aphrodisia were cut or altered, sometimes radically.
Edits to Druuna in Heavy Metal Magazine
In some instances, Heavy Metal's censorship involved adding extra speech balloons to cover up objectionable material – usually explicit sex, or details related to sexual violence like bondage or rape.
But at times Heavy Metal's censors cut without much regard for the logic of Serpieri's story. In one early scene of Mandragora (1995), for example, a female starship officer comes on to Druuna. Druuna says "Hey!" in an oversized speech balloon, which covers a close-up of the woman fondling her.
The balloon was clearly added later, since through most of the following page, there is no sign that Druuna was initially shocked. Another giveaway is the thickness of the balloon's outline, which is inconsistent with Serpieri's original artwork.
The Druuna Scenes Heavy Metal Couldn't Print
Elsewhere, the Druuna series was too explicit to be effectively censored by balloons. Heavy Metal got around this by literally cutting up the artwork. Near the end of Creatura, a mutated creature forces itself upon a tied-down Druuna. The original panel showing this is divided in two in the magazine version, leaving out the middle part which, in the original, depicts the penetration.
Whole pages were cut out in other instances. A graphic orgy scene from Mandragora, in which a drug-addled Druuna services male prisoners before they are brutally killed, was dropped entirely.
Hardcover Druuna Restored Serpieri's Art – Partially
When Mandragora was reprinted in a hardcover edition for the American market in 1995, those same excised pages were added back in. However, those which were censored with extra speech balloons were not restored. With some explicit Druuna drawings still covered and some equally-explicit ones not, the logic of censorship became all the more confused.
Yet Heavy Metal did not present an altered version of Carnivora (1993), for instance, when it was published as a stand-alone hardcover volume. Ironically, that edition went on to win a 1995 Harvey Award for Best American Edition of Foreign Material.
Heavy Metal Magazine and Serpieri Pull Back
The next installments in the Druuna series, Aphrodisia (1997) and The Forgotten Planet (2001), were less provocative (though still very adult-oriented), and only had a few speech balloons added for censoring (usually anatomical) details.
Serpieri's most recent works demonstrate that he has reined in the more explicit tendencies of his mid-series Druuna books. Clone (2003), the last Druuna volume, was not cut at all by Heavy Metal, and Serpieri's latest, Hell (2008), does not feature Druuna or any graphic sex – only some comparatively tame nudity.
None of the European Druuna editions were censored, and they also feature more provocative cover art. But the apparent self-censorship motivated by the 1990s Heavy Metal magazine cuts meant that not even European readers would be free from its influence. Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri's toned-down style in Clone and Hell suggests that merely the likelihood of censorship may still have a censorial effect.
Luke Arnott - Luke Arnott has a Master's Degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Western Ontario, where he is currently enrolled in the ...
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