Yesterday the CBC reported that school divisions in Alberta, Canada, just banned 160 books, including two volumes of the FIREFLY series I wrote for BOOM. Here’s a quote from Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides:

“This isn’t censorship,” his statement said. “It’s a common‑sense standard to keep explicit sexual images out of school libraries, and we delivered exactly that.”

To be clear, there are zero “explicit sexual images” in any of the FIREFLY books I wrote. FIREFLY was a mainstream direct market monthly comic based on a 2002 Fox TV show. No one even uses a curse word stronger than “damn.”

It’s also unclear which books they’re actually mad at. They list “Firefly Vol 1” and “Firefly Vol 2,” but we did multiple arcs with multiple volumes, so “Vol 1” and “Vol 2” could refer to several different story arcs. (Welcome to comics, censors! Correct titles are important!)

But again, no “explicit sexual images” in any of the books. There’s not even any nudity that I can recall.

Things they could be mad about:

1. Inara is a sex worker. Not really a focus of these stories, but hey.
2. We introduced an Asian character named Boss Moon who’s bisexual and talks about her femme ex at one point.
3. The characters are anti-authoritarian outlaws?
4. We did a storyline called NEW SHERIFF IN THE ‘VERSE in which Mal gets hooked into becoming a sheriff and basically does the job in abolitionist-curious mode.
5. We did an anti-colonialist story called RETURN TO EARTH THAT WAS.
6. I sent Mal to therapy in the last story in the collected omnibus.
7. There’s a Black woman on the cover of the first volume.

Anyway, censorship is for weak losers and bigots.