“This book is over 20 years old. Something y’all gotta understand about comics, when they’re “edgy,” they won’t be in 20 years. And what’s edgy 20 years ago will go one of two ways:
1. It’s now offensive.
2. It’s now tame.
The edge that edgy comics live on, think about it like a beachfront viewed from overhead. Over a couple decades, some parts erode and are covered over and over (become tame), and in some places, the water moves out and away and are exposed (these things are offensive).
A thing is fixed in a medium, and the world changes around it.
We can argue semantics about things “becoming” offensive or always being inherently offensive, or maybe that some things are always offensive but it’s only now that some of us realize it. I think when something is intentionally offensive, like Battle Pope, it’s a fairly silly argument. If a reader “discovers” that Battle Pope is offensive, they haven’t discovered anything. It’s like discovering that a ghost pepper is spicy in a way we didn’t fully catalog before. Does it matter? The things are hot as hell all the time. They’re called “Ghost” peppers because they’re so damn hot they revive the dead (I just made this up).
If you’re offended by stuff that was edgy and maybe a little juvenile in 2000, skip this book. You won’t enjoy it.
If you like stuff like that? Give it a whirl. “