Saga #12 which hit stores today has been banned by Apple, so no getting it there or on apps like comiXology or the Image app for the iPad and iPhone. You will be able to buy it on the comiXology website (and then probably download it from that purchase). The problem appears to be gay oral sex and the two pages below which shows gay oral sex and that act’s completion.

I read the comic already and that small detail totally over my head. There’s a scene in one of the earlier issues where we see the same character having “doggy style” sex, which I guess is totally ok with Apple. We’re digging to see if we can find an example of straight oral sex being sold.

Writer Brian K. Vaughan has released the following statement on the issue:

As has hopefully been clear from the first page of our first issue, SAGA is a series for the proverbial “mature reader.”  Unfortunately, because of two postage stamp-sized images of gay sex, Apple is banning tomorrow’s SAGA #12 from being sold through any iOS apps.  This is a drag, especially because our book has featured what I would consider much more graphic imagery in the past, but there you go.  Fiona and I could always edit the images in question, but everything we put into the book is there to advance our story, not (just) to shock or titillate, so we’re not changing shit.

Apologies to everyone who reads our series on iPads or iPhones, but here are your alternatives for Wednesday:

1) Head over to you friendly neighborhood comics shop and pick up a physical copy of our issue that you can have and hold forever.

2) While you’re at it, don’t forget to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which helps protect retailers who are brave enough to carry work that some in their communities might consider offensive.  You can find signed copies of Saga at the CBLDF site right now.

3) Download the issue directly through sites like https://comics.imagecomics.com or on your non-Apple smartphone or tablet.

4) If all else fails, you might be able to find SAGA #12 in Apple’s iBookstore, which apparently sometimes allows more adult material to be sold than through its apps.  Crazy, right?

Anyway, special thanks to Eric Stephenson and everyone at Image for supporting our decision, and for always being so supportive of creators.  Sorry again to readers for the inconvenience, but I hope everyone will be able to find an issue that Fiona and I are particularly proud of.  And after you do, please check out PanelSyndicate.com, the new digital comics site I own with artist Marcos Martin, which remains 100% uncensored by corporate overlords.

The questionable material….

I’d like to point out in this same issue this guy explodes in a gruesome manner, which is totally ok: