Ack! I hate censorship. Put a warning on the cover if you must, but let the artist's work in peace.

I wonder what Cinebooks will do with Aldebaran's several sequels and spin-offs, as the level of nudity increases!

I agree. Cinebooks has also censored Thorgal for nudity whenever it may occur. I mean come on, publish it all or not at all. Well, i do still enjoy it, so maybe I don't mean that, but it makes me angry. The censorship is not even usually to protect the vulnerable from the mean or the exploitative, it's just to shield us from "offensive" biology. The attitude behind the "protection" is more juvenile than those supposedly in need of protection.

I don't know if it is the same for the other Cinebooks publications, but at the start of The Scorpion that say that some of the art has been altered (which I took to mean censored to remove the toplessness) and that this had been done with the consent of the original creators.

I find such a disclaimer disingenuous at best. The average cartoonist makes very little money, and unless they're really into the "starving artist who remains true to their vision even in the face of starvation" groove, they will readily accept to see their art slightly modified if it means getting a few thousand more books printed. For the publisher to claim that the creators are fine with editorial modification is pretty meaningless in such a context. 

Naturally, covering a breast here or there or having people make love in their underwear is not going to fundamentally change a story. Nor does having Greedo try to shoot Han, for that matter. But I'd expect publishers to have an artistic interest in the vision of the creators whose work they print, and to leave it well enough alone, without worrying about what the Tea Party might think about a bit of nudity here and there.

I mean, we're not talking about porn, here. How is it bad for young readers to see a bit of skin but all right for them to see scenes of decapitation or evisceration? There is something twisted in that view of what is proper and what is not.

I'm not defending the practise. I assume it was done to allow them to sell the book in the American market, as only the US (in the English-speaking world) kicks up much a stink about a little tasteful nudity. Personally, I would love to be able to see the art in its original form. However, as I can't read French (or any language other English for that matter), this is my only way to access this material.

IDW has started their Euro line in translation with the Corto Maltese books and others are already in the works. They have a rep for doing projects like this right, it's just a matter of what they will translate and what they think has legs in the American market. However, if the early books in the line sell disappointingly, the line may not last long enough to get to some of the more obscure stuff from Europe. 

Humanoids Press is another who does it right, but again, their presence in the American market has been negligible as people aren't buying it in big numbers. 

I have no knowledge or experience with Cinebooks, but they may be making decisions trying to try to make the potential market in the US as big as possible. PG movies sell 4-5 times the number of tickets as R rated movies in the US, so trying to make the book PG may be an attempt to court a larger audience to keep the books viable. Not sure, but sometimes publishers actually know the market they are selling to and what sells and what doesn't. Not always, but you know once in a while. I'd prefer unedited unabridged version, but even translation is altering a book as a translation is an adaptation of the existing work. No language really translates directly into another as connotation of words and idioms convey different meanings in one language than in another, and translators often have to choose between capturing the intended meaning and an actual accurate literal translation of the words used, so it's all an approximation anyways. 

I had an associate who was fluent in Italian who had read Umberto Eco's novels in both Italian and English, I asked him why he did it in both and his response was, well they're two entirely different stories as most of Eco's humor, intent, and nuance is lost once it's rendered out of the Italian into another language and translators essentially have to rewrite the story, and you have to hope whoever does the translation has a knack for writing readable prose because a literal translation will make a terrible read. 

So if you really want to read an unaltered version of the original, you're going to have to become fluent in the original language. If you are going to settle for a translation, you are already settling for an altered version. 

-M