As for editing in manga, it has thankfully not been THAT widespread in the States. The great majority of the manga edits have been done by VIZ and even then it's usually been limited to their Shonen Jump and Shoujo Beat titles, the great majority of which I don't read. Small things like incidental nudity, religious imagery, and some of the more graphic violence are sometimes cut down. It's upsetting to some people but VIZ usually gets by because a.) they get the original artist's permission and b.) they're VIZ! They're big enough and successful enough to not care too much.

The issue with the I"s release came with how it was originally labeled and solicited. It was one of the launch titles for VIZ's Shonen Jump Advanced line, which were advertised as being the SJ titles that they would leave alone and not try to 'make appropriate' for kids. But the first volume came out with its nudity covered up (and yes, they used the 'strip club stars,' which looked every bit as ridiculous as you'd think.) Apparently somebody got cold feet at the last second in VIZ's editorial. That was what caused alot of the kerfluffle around I"s, was some fans feeling like they had been lied to. The editing continued for several more volumes until somewhere around volume 7 or 8, VIZ dropped the "no nipple" policy and started allowing the nudity to work its way back in uncensored, though many of the book's original readers had dropped it by then.

VIZ has also cut out some brief female nudity in some of its older skewing titles like Flame Of Recca and Midori Days, to some fans' consternation. It should be noted however, that VIZ has seemingly had a change of heart on many of their editing polices, as they have started releasing more books with "M" ratings and shrinkwrapping. Heck, they even just licensed the very mature "Black Lagoon" manga and are releasing it uncut.

Though I have let a lot of it go (like the Fullmetal Alchemist cross scene), I hate the editing myself and fall very much in the camp of "leave it alone." I feel silly sometimes and pervy arguing about nipple content in a comic book, but hey, I like to read the work as the artist intended.

Most Japanese aren't practicing Christians of any sort and so tend to associate the idea of crucifixion not necessarily with Christ's specific passion, but just with the idea of unjust torture and cruelty. One of the shoguns decided to clear Christians out of the country with mass crucifixions that were quite nastier, and involved more people, than records indicate Roman crucifixions did.

What this means in the long run is that a characters end up crucified in kid's shows and comics just to indicate the idea that the villain is very bad and the hero is in a dreadful, near-fatal situation. The earliest such situation I've personally observed was a 1972 episode of Getter Robo wherein the villain crucified the robot, but I would not be at all surprised to find manga has its share of antecedents.

A good example of this was a volume of Fullmetal Alchemist where a character was destroyed by being lowered into a vat on a cross; Viz changed the art to a chunk of rubble. That's an example of a scene that was pretty neutral symbolically to a Japanese audience, but would have been much more symbolically charged to a Western audience (and in a completely misleading way, as the character in question was pretty much the opposite of a Christ figure).

"I recall a slight kerfuffle about I”s, in which the publisher (Viz?) put stars over a girl’s nipples, like she was decorating the front of a strip club"

If I remember the scene correctly, it wasn't a shot of an actual live girl, but a photo of a character's head pasted onto a nude photo; in other words, it wasn't meant to be a naturalistic image in the first place. (Later volumes have apparently also edited out nipples but in more subtle ways.)

Apart from Tenjho Tenge, most of these controversies have been tempest-in-a-teapot affairs; some people on message boards get worked up over it, but it doesn't affect the wider manga-reading population that much. (I don't know if the Tenjho Tenge affair has affected the general opinions of the manga reader on the street much either, but some people are still using it as a brush to tar the publisher, even though AFAIK they haven't done anything similar since.)

Re: censorship - there are some interesting cases out there, like Negima, which Del Rey was going to edit/censor until fans complained, so they released it shrinkwrapped. And there's also Oh! Great's Air Gear, which was shrinkwrapped due to a shower scene that includes a young (i.e. pre-teen) girl. There's probably some other stuff (I recall a slight kerfuffle about I"s, in which the publisher (Viz?) put stars over a girl's nipples, like she was decorating the front of a strip club), but I don't know if there have been many other controversies. Most "censorship" is probably what was discussed above, making the books more palatable for a Western audience. The Japanese are pretty cavalier about religious imagery, for example, so scenes of, say, characters being crucified wouldn't bother them like it would most of us. This is anime, not manga, but I read about an episode of Sailor Moon in which the characters were tortured by being crucified, and it had to be heavily edited before they would air it stateside.

Alan Coil
In TCJ’s defense (something I don’t do often), that is a sticker that peels off, leaving the artwork clear of interference by the TCJ logo. That way, the mag has the TCJ face recognition and the reader can also have a nice looking from cover.

Oh yeah. It does come off. Awesome. I'll try and get the full cover scanned, next time I go do some scanning.

The arrogant attitude comes and goes. TCJ is fairly low-key on the arrogance right now. And I'm not sure what "Juvenille antics" you mean.

Simon Abrams
Thanks for the kind words, re: my piece on TWD. Always nice to get feedback, especially of the positive variety.

It was quite good. I just didn't have anything to say about it.

Keep on feeding my ego. EXCELSIOR!

In TCJ’s defense (something I don’t do often), that is a sticker that peels off, leaving the artwork clear of interference by the TCJ logo. That way, the mag has the TCJ face recognition and the reader can also have a nice looking from cover.

Oh, cool. I had no idea.

In that case, I recant my statement!

Wow, whoever laid out that cover and decided to obfuscate Ryan Ottley’s fine, fine art should be fired.
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In TCJ's defense (something I don't do often), that is a sticker that peels off, leaving the artwork clear of interference by the TCJ logo. That way, the mag has the TCJ face recognition and the reader can also have a nice looking from cover.

As for Kirkman, was he being ironic or sarcastic with

"I’m a firm believer that all guys who read comics are sissies that wish they could watch soap operas, but instead they have a medium called “comics” that wraps soap operas into fight book."

That does explain how he turned Ultimate X-men from a solid, fun, team book (easily one of the better X-titles) and turned into the piece of shit it is today.

"Advice for aspiring comic writers “Nobody is going to read your fan fiction so nobody is going to read your scripts. I don’t like reading scripts. I don’t read MY scripts.”"

Funny, it seemed to work for some people. I see the current directions of DC and Marvel as the fanfiction fantasies JQ, Didio, Morrison, Johns, Bendis et al always wanted to tell...

They completely sanitized the work, taking something aimed at older males in Japan and trying to make it suitable for your average 10-year old Naruto fan. A massive mistake that put an albatross around CMX's neck for the first few years of operation. Its original editor-in-chief resigned in frustration and CMX was the receipient of a large-scale write-in campaign urging them to publish it uncut. So far, CMX have shown no signs of ever doing so.

Manga fans hate editing in general, but this was one case that was particularly upsetting because it was so extensive and DC/CMX's initial response to the situation was to ignore the complaints, which only inflamed the fanbase even further, especially in the online community, where "CMX" is still treated like a dirty word in some places.

It's definitely worth it to me - But I'd much rather have black and white newsprint and cheap paper and save a couple bucks.