| There's only one surviving episode of Hell's Highway in the public domain. Other episodes were produced before the ban, and these were edited and re-used like most other strips. Indeed there are some obvious edits in the story which immediately follows the one below, which are in the Missing in Action section. This story, which looks inoffensive enough at first reading, was subjected to no fewer than thirty-two edits to script and art. Two were alterations to the story cues in the first and last panel, two more were made to the first panel story recap. Six were to remove 'foul language', although "hell" and "blast" seem rather polite these days. Nine were art edits to turn an 'offensive' grapnel into an inoffensive hook. The fact that a grapnel looked convincing in the story, whereas the hook looked ridiculous and incapable of doing the job it was being used for is irrelevant. Wasn't Danny a good shot, for getting that hook through the bloke's collar whilst standing on top of a speeding truck? Three more art edits removed visual signs of violence, it's okay to shoot a bloke in the head once, but six shell casings ejecting from a gun is bad. Four more took away threatening behaviour towards characters, you can't say "I'm gonna blast that rat!", it's just not on. The six remaining edits were political, removing all references to Cuba from the story. That this made a nonsense of the entire plot was unimportant. Better to remove all mention of communism than to give your characters a deeper motivation and relevance for their actions. Hell's Highway was slated to conclude shortly after this story. Mike White came off the art chores, and when it was decided to continue the strip, he was replaced by a Rogers Agency artist believed to be Jim Eldridge. The 23rd October scans were taken from an A5 photocopy, hence the reduced quality. |
