Apple bans comic book from iPhones because it's seriously disgusting
Infurious Comics created an iPhone app called Comic Reader, which does just what it sounds like it does, and featured a book called Murderdrome as the app's first title. Murderdrome is a story about a "game where the only way to score a goal," one character explains as he cuts into another's skull, "is with the severed head of an opposing player." Because Apple prohibits "any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content" in iPhone apps, Apple quickly booted Comic Reader and Murderdrome from its iTunes App Store.Naturally, this upset Murderdrome's creator Paul Jason Holden, who called — "infuriously," we suppose — for action on his blog: "PLEASE leave a comment. We’ll forward ALL of these to Apple, so that we can ensure that not only Murderdrome, but that ANY comic submitted to Apple doesn’t fall foul of the same censorship." (Do hyperviolent comic book authors also always go by three names?) By this morning, tech-news aggregator Techmeme was dutifully full of sympathetic retellings of Infurious's plight. Not here though. We'll only make the obvious point that we'd never heard of the Comic Reader app, Infurious Comics or its just-plain-gross comic Murderdrome until now. Publicity for being banned worked commercial wonders for even James Joyce's unreadable Ulysses, so we bet it helps Mr. Holden's gore-porn sales just plenty.