We’re not sure who, exactly, it was who first laid down the classic adage “Once you’ve seen Batman’s peener, you can never go back,” but it’s as true now as it was way back in Bible times. And yet, DC Comics is now trying to act like we have not, in fact, all taken a quick peek at Bruce Wayne’s shadow-clad bat pole this week, announcing today that all future copies of Batman: Damned #1—the comic that will go down in history as the home of a tasteful, artfully drawn, and semi-canonical image of the Batman’s penis—will censor the picture in question.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, DC made the switch because it was worried that Lee Bemejo’s rendering of the organ in question “did not add to the story,” which is something that they maybe should have considered before they let the proverbial bat-horse out of the barn door. The image was already censored in the comic’s digital version, and now it’ll be obscured in all future printings. Really, it’s a lot like the classic George Orwell novel 1984, except instead of mass-censorship of any information that might bring a repressive government down, it’s a picture of Batman’s penis.
Anyway, THR reports that there are still 115,000 copies of the contraband comic in print, but we can probably count on copious palm sweats to cut that number down significantly. Still, if you managed to grab one, you might want to keep a firm grip on it; someday, it might be the sort of valuable, collectible bat phallus you can eventually pass on to your kids.