The panel also looks tense for the scene. Shadow looks like a psychopath.
>>538268446

I have no idea why you idiots are defending Evan when she completely showed that she misunderstood Shadow's character by having him use lethal force against an opponent that had not shown themselves to be a major imminent threat to everyone's physical safety.

She was writing Shadow as a violent psychopath and you idiots were cheering her on.

>eriirocksss asked: Sooo was Shadow originally going to wield a sword in issue 81?? Why did it ended up getting removed?

>Evan Stanley: Yes, Shadow was going to grab a sword from the sword-swallower's throat in #81. I wanted to use the moment to meaningfully use the story's unique setting and highlight Shadow's versatility and aptitude with varied weapons, but SoJ flagged it as being too great of an escalation. Shadow is very skilled in pretty much all forms of combat, and the kind of damage he could do with a sword just wasn't warranted. Which, yeah, fair.

>Problem was, they flagged this while the comic was about to go into color-- well beyond the point where we could make big art changes. They very rarely have notes this big on the comic these days and didn't know how far along the comic was with production, so we all worked together to find a solution that could be done in the limited time we had left. It's OK if you don't know about the original version, but if you do it feels very...

>Insert side by side of Bandit Keith from Yugioh holding a gun scrubbed out of a scene

>But for characterization, not censorship!

So yeah the mandate was never bullshit, that does not excuse Ian and Evan for not trying to work with it when ti was at tis strictest but it exists.

From Evan's Tumblr