**Note, CB’s opinions do not necessarily reflect The Webcomic Factory as a whole.**

Hey Factory Fans, CB here. I wanted to bring to your attention a travesty that is happening in the United States. According to PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY a new version of the classic novel Huckleberry Finn will be released completely censored of several words that are deemed “offensive” here in the year 2011.

From the PW article: Twain himself defined a “classic” as “a book which people praise and don’t read.” Rather than see Twain’s most important work succumb to that fate, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the “n” word (as well as the “in” word, “Injun”) by replacing it with the word “slave.”

“This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind,” said (Gribben, speaking from his office at Auburn University at Montgomery, where he’s spent most of the past 20 years heading the English department. “Race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.”

No Gribben, in CB’s opinion you are dead wrong. This is simply a matter of you seeing an opportunity to sell a ton of books to school systems. This is not an altruistic move, but a capitalistic one. If you truly wanted Huckleberry Finn to reach new audiences you would instead put your efforts towards getting the original edition off of banned book lists.

Factory Fans, we are fortunate to have autonomy here on the web. We can write and say what we want. We must remain vigilant of such acts of aggression against literary works. Huckleberry Finn represents a snapshot of American history that needs to be preserved, not watered down for basic consumer consumption in this dark dark age.

Mark Twain, arguably our greatest satirist, was not spreading a message of hate. He was telling a story and what the reader takes from it is up to them. It’s a book worthy of discussion in its purest form. Let’s keep it that way.