For those of you that don’t know, the below panel appeared in the new Action Comics #1

A retailer in, well we’ll call it one of your favorite God-fearing states, believed this to be a version of “goddamn” and has thus boycotted the title, along with writer Grant Morrison and any other Morrison titles.

So what do the denizens of Hell(ions) think of this blasphemy?

Overall opinion is that this is not offensive.  Because its not a goddamn.  Its an expression of pain.  No different than Biff Pow or Bamf.  I know its the time of text speak and some feel that this is no different than OMG, WTF, or LMAO.  However, I unfortunately work with a lot of children (as I call the teens today) and not a one of them has ever posted a GD on their Facebook, Twitter or the like.  Not to say that its never been used in the history of fast fingered communication, but its rare.

Follow me on this one.  Warrant had a few hit songs.  “Cherry Pie”, “Heaven”, and I’d even thrown in “I Saw Red”.  Lets use these as OMG, WTF and LMAO.  They exist, they’re big and people know of them.  Now lets take a lesser known Warrant song, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.  If I were writing a book and had the line, “its like Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.  Chances are I mean the novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and I’m calling on the reader’s shared literary history to understand this reference.  Chances are that I am not, however, saying I know a secret that I just cant tell.  Don’t put the bodies in the wishing well.  Huh!

Super heroes get hit, punched, kicked, blown up, attacked and any other aggressive word you want to throw in there.  That’s the whole point of their books.  It also means that every couple panels there will be an expression of pain.  Ugh!  Ow!  Urg!  And so on and so on and a list of every sound effect used to designate pain or a hit would be an uber site unto itself.  As in, not here right now.

I’m not saying Grant Morrison cant be a nutball, nor that he has never done anything in his life to be controversial.  But I don’t think this is it, nor is there a battle to be fought here.  Move along.  Nothing to see.

Sometimes you people make something out of nothing.  I mean WTF.  GD it all.

Oops.