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China Censors Rage Comic from 2014

They've found them in sonograms. Some are using them for educational purposes. teaching English to the Japanese. Others find them a home in cosplay. Still others use them to tell their tale of 86 years on the planet so far… and now they have been adapted into full-blown anime and Netflix has paid almost what they paid for Millarworld to acquire the rights to one.

The rage comic has become a ridiculously adaptive for of comic book storytelling, a series of fixed, crudely drawn faces, that have been widely adapted for all manner of purposes. But now, it seems, the Chinese government isn't best pleased with what it has found. The newly passed Heroes and Martyrs Protection Act makes it against the law to make jokes about Communist Revolutionary heroes or martyrs.

Comics site Baozou, behind the rage comic 7723 currently being adapted by Netflix into a film called Next Gen, has been censored over a video posted in 2014. It featured someone wearing a "rage face" mask mocking Dong Cunrui, a young communist soldier who blew himself up to destroy a Nationalist party bunker during the Chinese Civil War.

The speaker says, in a parody of a KFC ad from the time, "Dong Cunrui stared at the enemy's bunker, his eyes bursting with rays of hate. He said resolutely, 'Commander, let me blow up the bunker. I am an eight-point youth, and this is my eight-point bunker.'" He also parodied army general Ye Ting's poetry, changing "Climb out! Give you freedom!" to "Climb out! Painless induced abortion!". You probably had to be there.

But as a result, and after the Cyberspace Administration of China spoke to a number of internet platforms, Weibo shut down Baozou's account amongst many others. As a result, CEO Ren Jian has apologised saying "The company is very grateful to the media and fans' supervision and criticizing, so that we can see our deficiency clearly and do better in the future," though their account has yet to be restored.

It's a serious blow for the digital comics publisher, who are doing whatever it takes to be re-approved again.

Rage continues to outrage…

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